papershine

This is a poster I made for Abe for Christmas. There’s a rainbow skid steer loader up on our wall right now.

Coming soon, a birthday version of the same poster!

After a long hiatus on updating this blog, I have started adding new content as papershine prepares for the New Year. I’ve added a new page on planning with a PATH, as well as a PATH tutorial.

I’ve also added some new art cards, including these of stonework completed at my other job. Stay tuned for a new bulldozer poster.

For the last four years (working on five) Kristin and Marc have been creating their own distinctive Christmas cards designs. The simple black and white collages have become a beloved tradition, eagerly awaited by family and friends. Start your tradition by sending your loved ones and colleagues these elegant and festive cards.

• Printed on bright white cardstock.
• White or off-white enevelopes.
• Blank inside.
• 4.5 inches by 6 inches.
• Free shipping inside the U.S.

Check out all the card designs and place your secure on-line order.

On Friday Papershine hosted it’s first Poster Party and Art Show at the West End Bakery in West Asheville. The event was to celebrate the creation of Papershine- our educational design studio- and the release of Learning Murals, our first product line. The event was well-attended by the under-7 set and their parents. We had four poster-coloring stations set up around the bakery and hundreds and hundreds of crayons and colored pencils. It was great fun and very noisy. The bakery provided tiny PB&J sandwiches, cookies and brownies.

Our friend Todd brought his one year old son Lucas, seen here exchanging crayons with Abe before they tackled Abe’s Alphabet together.

It was fantastic to see how many parents got involved and colored with their kids. The greatest thing about the size of the Learning Murals is how it allows collaboration. A whole family can work together on a poster. It’s such a natural and fun way to interact and play together.
Kristin and I would like to thank the many people who made this all come together: Cathy, Krista, Louis, Reid and everyone else at the bakery for letting us take it over for an evening; all of our contributing artists- Lucy, Chelsea, Amy, Athena, Bergen, Sirus, Jerome, Sara, Jason, the Red Stick Ramblers, Grace, Matt, Henry, Linda and Gary; Will and compnay at Henco Reprographics for printing the posters and being so supportive; Merrimon Galleries for an excellent job mounting the art work, Sara for staffing the wine table and the Asheville Mamas for showing up in force.

Thanks for the color.

On Sunday evening we hung the show with a lot of help from Reid. It looks great and fills the walls well. We may add one more poster after the show, but that’s too much to think about right now, with trying to get everything together in time for Friday.

This is the poster that we hope to complete the night of the opening. The current plan is to cut up a few of them and put the pieces in a basket, inviting kids and their families to color and sign them. After the show we’ll gather them up and glue them over the blank poster.

This is a small sample from the Friends with Hobbies Learning Mural. Kristin and I completed this one as a ’sampler’ to show several different media on a single poster. This fellow is done with collage- mostly from toy catalogs, magazine ads and origami paper- and magic marker. The butterfly is a digital print of a gulf fritillary we photographed at the butterfly exhibit at the WNC Nature Center a couple of weeks ago.

This poster just arrived in the mail from Lucy, Chelsea and Amy Gartland, a family of artist-friends from Rhode Island. It’s at the framers right now, getting matted for the show. It even includes a couple of pages from Mo Willems’ book, “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.”
By the way, we are not affiliated with Mo Willems in any way. We’re just fans.

Practice the alphabet with this Learning Mural. Animals, toys and household items help your young ones learn their ABC’s. When it’s time to take the poster down, turn it into an alphabet book, or even your own dictionary.

This is the last poster that will be completed before the Poster Party in two weeks. We’re going to cut up a couple of these posters and pass out individual letters to kids and families attending the event to color. We’ll mount the colored (and signed) letters onto a blank poster hanging on the wall to be a part of the show. All the posters will hang until the end of September.

ASHEVILLE, NC – Papershine, an educational design studio, is hosting its first free Poster Party and Art Show at Asheville’s West End Bakery on August 10th from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Families and kids of all ages are invited to color Learning Murals- gigantic educational coloring posters- and enjoy an art show of finished posters created by families.

Learning Murals, which are 30 inches tall and up to 54 inches long, feature a specific theme with images and facts related to that theme. Each poster comes with a booklet of activities and art projects that engage kids and promote further learning. Suitable for parties and for quiet time, they are designed to facilitate interaction between children and their parents, foster creativity, and enhance cognitive learning at any age. The Poster Party will introduce five Learning Mural designs, appropriate for all ages.

About Papershine
Papershine is an educational design studio based in Asheville, North Carolina. They create products and design tools that use color, images and words to engage people and spark their creativity, curiosity and understanding. For more information on Papershine, Learning Murals or the event, please email Kristin Cozzolino at kristin (at) papershine (dot) com.

We are getting ready for the offical launch of our new Learning Murals on August 10th in at the West End Bakery here in Asheville. The art show will hang on August 5th and be up until the end of September. Sirus, Jerome and Sara colored in a copy of the The Coral Reef poster for the show with some help from friends Jason and members of the Red Stick Ramblers. I believe the drummer colored in this vivd filefish.