Moss Rock Festival, Gold Addy in the Arts and Sciences category: This promotional campaign employed sustainable ideas and included branding, magazine ads, online ads, social media strategy, event promotional materials, invitations, signage, apparel, and a website. Creative Director: Kelly Housholder, Designers: Paul Halupka and Anna Reynolds.
Read about it. | See the campaign.

The business stationary for Oikon Inc won a GOLD Addy award in the Stationary, Multiple Process category.  Creative Director: Anna Reynolds of Whitespace Studio, Art Director: Kelly Housholder, Letterpress: Patrick Masterson. See the Work.

We are thrilled to be a part of this extremely talented Birmingham Community!!

Read the article.

What a fun idea! Photo courtesy of kimcreativestar.com. You can see her photos, recipe and how she matched the colors here: kimcreativestar.com

The smell of these rolls, fresh out of the oven, floods back memories of being a kid, playing with my cousins, helping my grandfather with his latest carpentry projects*, and our annual family “walk” around the neighborhood after Thanksgiving lunch – the one where my cousin Margaret and I somehow always got lost. Papa’s rolls were written up in the Hartwell, Georgia, newspaper and made for church functions, neighbors, and friends. Despite their local popularity, I like to think that these Papa rolls were just for us. The family. Several years ago my Papa passed away, but his kindness, goodness and memory of his rolls live on.  So now, Papa, I make these rolls in your memory. I love you! And thanks for leaving us the recipe. It’s a bit vague but after a couple years I think I’ve got it pretty close to right…

This Thanksgiving (yes, I am behind on blogging), I documented the dough making and baking. Below is the recipe and photos… enjoy!

*Speaking of Papa’s carpentry projects, in these photos I’m using his invention for perfectly rolling out the dough. A 12in circle complete with tic marks so you know where to make the cuts! Patent pending…

Ingredients:

2 pkgs of dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
8oz sour cream
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 eggs slightly beaten
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
4 cups unbleached bread flour

Directions: (In Papa’s words)

Dissolve yeast in warm water, let stand 5 minutes.  Place sour cream in small saucepan, cover over low heat 105-115 degrees.  Combine sour cream, butter, eggs, sugar, salt in large bowl, add yeast mixture and stir well.  Gradually stir in flour.  Place dough in refrigerator (in well-greased bowl, turning to grease top).  Cover and let rise in regrigerator at least 6 hours.  May leave in regrigerator up to 24 hours.  Does not double in bulk, rises very slightly.

Divide dough into 4 equal parts.  Roll each part into 12 inch circles on a floured surface.

Cut each circle into 12 equal pie-shaped wedges.

Roll up each wedge tightly and place on well greased baking sheet with points down (roll from wide to pointed edge).

Cover and let rise in warm (85 degree) draft-free place 30-40 minutes.  An ideal 85 degree draft free place is the oven with the light on.  Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes.

After removing from oven, brush with melted butter.  This enhances appearance and taste.

Remove from baking sheet and place on rack to cool.  This prevents sweating.

And there you have it.  My Papa’s Papa Rolls.  I hope you enjoy them as much as my family has over the years.

Goal: To not create or purchase any new materials for Christmas wrapping.
What we did:
-Used boxes that we a)already had b)creatively wrapped sans box! No new cardboard boxes purchased for gift wrapping.
-Re-purposed newspaper and used it as wrapping paper. We’ll encourage our families to recycle the wrapping after opening gifts.
-Used leftover string and paper from other projects to complete the wrapping.

Last year we made kahlua, and bottled with new bottles:

This year we made 5 different homebrews and we’re bottling in re-used (and sterilized) bottles that we collected from friends and the recycling center. We hope that our friends will continue to re-use the bottles or recycle them. We did purchase cardboard 6-pack carriers and I hope to brainstorm a more sustainable/re-used packaging for next year.

Merry Christmas to all!

Kelly and Andrew

I’ve been busy crafting stamps and logos for Andrew’s line of homebrews, House Brews, and EMBA. The stamps arrived early this week and we’ve been putting together cardboard 6 packs and stamping away! Here’s a few pictures:

Another plus – this is actually an economical paper and is being stocked at our local distributor. The price to use this paper was comparable to the house stock. whoo!

I’ve been working behind the scenes since July on a comprehensive new branding and website for Moss Rock Festival. The folks at Moss Rock Festival threw a Launch Party to officially release the 2010 branding and ad campaign to sponsors and supporters. I had so much fun! After some mingling and chatting, Anna Reynolds and I gave a presentation on how we created the 2010 campaign. (There was definitely some sweating and nauesea pre-presentation. I’m not one for public speaking contrary to my mother’s favorite story of me stealing the mic at 5yrs old during a talent show…) Once we took the mic and started the presentation, I came around. After all, I’m incredibly excited and proud of this new campaign :)

Located in The Preserve in Hoover, Alabama, Moss Rock Festival is an annual Art and Eco Festival that drew over 15,000 people in 2009. I visited the festival last year and knew instantly that I wanted to be a part of this giant festival of creativity, beauty, and environmental awareness. I approached the festival about letting me take on their branding as From Scratch Design’s community project for 2010 and they agreed!

How we did it: It all began back in July when I flew fellow collaborator, Paul Halupka, in from Chicago for a 72 hour Design Charrette (Anna, I had to look this up in Wikipedia). We had a great time eating, designing, eating, digging through trash, brainstorming, designing, oh more eating. Around hour 36 we hit the idea. We wanted to create a design that reflected the festival both in process and imagery. Above is a sneak peak of the festival’s poster. Paul and I are pumped about the format and idea behind it. We had a certain paper size (donated by a generous sponsor) and 1 press sheet to work with. In the end, we were able to create a design that enables the festival to have more than twice the number of promotional materials from 2009 with the same amount of paper. This poster above actually doubles as the festival catalog. Pre-event this piece will be used to promote the festival and during the event it will be folded down (according style) to create a catalog of artists and sponsors for the event. Bravo! You’ll see another post about this poster once it goes to press.

We spent hours digging through trash, finding objects to re-purpose, visiting the recycling center, and putting it all together for a campaign with $0 in the budget and not quite enough bug spray. The result: found object words to describe the festival both in meaning and in imagery. Each item represents a different aspect of the festival: Nature, Eco Ideas, Art and Design. (Below – 2 Snapshots from my presentation)

To top it all off, at hour 70, Eileen Kunzman, Director of Moss Rock Festival and Fine Art Services, absolutely loved the campaign. We all win.
Special thanks to Alan Barton for agreeing to photography our recycled words on super short notice. You rock.

After the Launch Party, I launched the new website. (below)

And here’s Anna and I at the Launch Party. Anna and Paul, thanks and much love!

kelly