Wednesday, April 6, 2016

NEW for April!

We're super excited to preview what's coming soon...including a new Double Flip series for 2016!

***We don't have an exact ship date to shops yet, but we're crossing our fingers and planning to ship on April 18.

L*K Yearbook Double Flips!!!

What's a Yearbook Double Flip? We're doing another monthly series. It's been years and years since we've done a monthly series, and decided it was the perfect way to celebrate L*K's 20th anniversary in the needlework biz. And you know...we have the same 12 months every year...so this never goes out of style.



After considering lots of options, we decided to name this series Yearbook because it seemed fitting for our 20th year. And who doesn't love enjoying a good Yearbook? Check out pics from my Class of 1973 yearbook at the end of this post.



This time we're packaging our yearly designs as Double Flips - 2 months in one little leaflet. Because they're Flip-its, we're including a charm for each design.



Here's a couple fun facts about our new Yearbook Double Flips:

* We're using the same 12 antique gold charms we used for our original "A Year with Charm" Flip-its from back in the day. It was a fun design challenge for me to incorporate the same charms and it's a nice nod to our L*K Flip-it history.

"A Year with Charm" was the first Flip-it series (F1-F12), where we learned to put charms in tiny 1" x 1" sacks. We even pioneered using fugitive glue (Glu Dots) to attach the tiny bags inside each Flip-it. Twenty years later, we're still busy putting embellishments in tiny zip bags, "stripping" them, and attaching to Flip-its and Double Flips.

* Every Yearbook Double Flip month contains an L*K motif, previously seen in another L*K design. What does that mean? I thought it would be fun to "hide and seek" some familiar L*K motifs. Example: the little house in January previously appeared in F115 Snow Day. I tweaked the roof line and windows a bit, but the house is mostly the same. On some months, you can spot an exact "copy" from a previous L*K design. With 20 years worth of designs, there's a lot of territory to "borrow" from. And it's OK to copy yourself...right? Another fun little design challenge for me and a little "historic" note.

* Every Yearbook Double Flip contains a little house, and a "boxed" motif. I've been talking in my previous Cross Stitch Design 101 blog posts about how repetition is a great design tool. Here's a perfect example of using repetition in a design series. Each Yearbook Double Flip contains 2 months, so I included a house in one month, and a little "boxed" motif in the other month (check out the pics). It was fun to vary the style of the houses...there's even a schoolhouse and a log cabin! I also varied the shape of the "boxed" motifs, using all sorts of geographic shapes to outline a featured motif. Maybe this all sounds silly, but it's part of my design process, and how my brain works.


* Every Yearbook Double Flip has our little 20th Anniversary "alarm clock" on the cover. I designed a little celebratory motif for the recent Nashville Market, and decided to use it for 2016 designs. Fun reminder of 20 years and counting...

Yearbook Double Flips are coming soon! We're busy printing and assembling, but we plan to ship to shops everywhere in mid April. Contact your favorite supplier to pre-order.

A funny thing happens when you move...you find all sorts of interesting things you didn't know you still needed...like my Class of 1973 high school Yearbook!

I have fond memories of my time at historic Wichita North High School, and was thrilled when our daughters were able to attend the same school. The lovely old building was a few years older (and still not air-conditioned) but the 1929 building was still so pretty, sitting on the banks of the Arkansas River with it's own matching bridge. Hey...we were the only school in town who did canoeing in gym class while wearing those crazy bloomer gym shorts!




Thought you would enjoy my senior photo. Why wasn't I smiling? I was rocking the "Farrah Fawcett" layered look and seemed to be having a good hair day (1973 style). Who knows what high school angst I was dealing with back in 1973, or was the photo lady playing a trick on me?


Alas, this photo will haunt me for years to come in the 1973 Yearbook and hanging in the antique halls of North High. 


Farewell, hallowed halls of Wichita North High. I will still visit you whenever there's a North High Open House or a great basketball game. 

Hello...L*K Yearbook Double Flips!






2 comments:

  1. Looking forward to your new flip it series! Your high school looks incredible; thanks for sharing your senior photo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've been thinking about this new series since I read about it in your last post. It looks great... now I have to break the promise that I wouldn't buy any new pattern until I'm done with my current project!

    ReplyDelete