Tell us a bit about your business.
I consider myself a freelance illustrator, and I specialize in lettering and maps. I also design wedding and personal stationery using all of my own illustrative and lettering styles. My work reflects my love and passion for travel, design, handwriting and beautiful paper. What makes my product unique is that all of my stationery is custom made for each client.

How did Couture Maps get its start?
A long time ago in my little Greenwich Village studio, I began working as an illustrator and started designing all sorts of strange and unusual stationery products, including hand drawn wedding maps and stationery.  Art school taught me the importance of breaking rules and making mistakes, so I set out to redefine the standard wedding invitation.

Many years later my map work became more widely accepted, and I decided to give them a name and their own website.

After doing extensive research, I was surprised and excited to find that there were no online sites that featured personalized illustrated maps. So I trademarked my business name, and began creating all sorts of maps and map products in addition to my stationery line.

How long have you been working in the industry?
I started my illustration career 20 years ago in New York City when I was at Parsons School of Design, and I began working in the wedding industry as a stationery designer soon after.

How has your process changed over the years, with the introduction of email and social networking?
The process in which I create my work has not changed over the years–all of my illustrations are created by hand in ink and watercolor without any digital design.

I started my career just before the popularity of the internet so I actually took the subway around the city to drop off my portfolios and met my clients in person. I definitely miss that aspect of my job!

When email began taking the place of face to face meetings, I had the luxury of moving my studio to wherever I wanted. Without the requirement of working near the publishing industry in New York, I decided to move to San Francisco, mostly because I wanted a new adventure.

Unfortunately I’ve been slow to embrace social networking into my business, but I do acknowledge that it can be a useful tool. Even though I know this is the direction the world is going in, I still love to write a personal note, purchase the postage stamp, walk to the post office and pop it into the mail.

Has your style always been as accepted by the wedding industry as it is now?
It was punk rock anti stationery when I first started, so it was not very accepted, and I was told that it was too unusual for the wedding market. However many art directors and editors loved it so I was lucky to get a lot of press.  At that time, I was working for mostly people in the industry.

After my first trip to Paris, my work changed course, and I began including a French flair that more clients could relate to.

When you did receive resistance to your personal style, how did you adapt?
Even though my offbeat styles and products were not originally embraced by the wedding industry, I worked as a freelance illustrator for the publishing, advertising and fashion industry so I was always busy.

It probably doesn’t make much business sense, but I always create things that I love and not necessarily what is popular.

All photos courtesy of Stephannie Barba

{Today’s Guest Post is an interview with Monica Holtsclaw, the face behind Boom Box Bindery. Not only is she incredibly talented with books, boxes, and more; she has her very own bindery in her home!}

What is a bookbinder?
First and foremost, a bookbinder is one that makes books! When a book is created, there many details on which to focus – thickness of paper, strength of thread, adhesive properties, durability of cover materials, color theory and design aesthetics. When a person spends the time to think about all of those details, plus some, it doesn’t hurt to go the extra mile and make a protective box or enclosure for it!

Preventative measures can be taken when books are custom made for a specific purpose or person, but a typical trade binding is read once or twice and will rest safely on a shelf untouched for many years. That is until one day the book is pulled off of the shelf into someone’s hands who finds so much meaning between the pages that a certain chapter is revisited a million times and the book becomes broken because it is so well loved. That is the time for a bookbinder to come to the rescue and create a new plan for the future of the binding. By reenforcing and resewing the pages, and repairing the cover that has been exposed to general wear and the elements, a binder will return the book to working order.

What types of projects do you work on?
Bookbinders can be trained with many specialties, from paper conservation and restoration to historical binding techniques. My focus is making custom books by hand, restoring older books of sentimental value, and creating custom enclosures and boxes.

For the past year, most of my work has been for private clients creating custom photo albums, guest books, and archival clamshell boxes. When I’m not working on a job for a client I still keep myself busy in the bindery, either making books using unexpected materials, or putting books together that I list in my Etsy shop.

What are the benefits of having the bindery just a step away? Are there any downsides?
My bindery is in our home, which is a great benefit. With some of the work that I do, time is a big element. If something needs to sit and dry for four hours, I can glue it up at the end of the work day and go check on it after dinner! It can be tricky to strike a balance between chores and work, especially when I have a full day of bookbinding ahead, but guests are coming over in the evening and the dishes in the kitchen are calling my name. Usually, unsewn pages and half built boxes call a little louder, and it all works out at the end of the day!

We’ve heard that you might have some upcoming travels?
Yes! An amazing opportunity has come up for Boom Box Bindery. My husband, Josh, will be working in Paris for three months, starting in a few weeks, and I get to join him! If you’re curious about what might strike this bookbinder’s fancy while traveling abroad, stay tuned because I’ll contribute a few photo heavy posts to the It’s Better Together blog while I’m away.

{You can visit Monica’s website at www.boomboxbindery.com and her Etsy shop at www.etsy.com/shop/boomboxbindery}

1. How did Kitchen M get it’s start?
I went to college in small-town Kansas where ethnic food mostly meant Chinese buffet and Tex-mex. One summer, I got accepted to an internship at UC Berkeley. It was my first time visiting the Bay Area and I was just amazed by beautiful foods and culinary art. I was eating out all the time in the three months, yet I felt like I had not explored all the great restaurants. I was so fascinated that I started taking pictures of food that I was eating. By the time the internship was over, I had 3-4 CDs, about 80% filled with food photos. So after I returned to Kansas, I started a food blog to share my dinner experience with family and friends.

2. Tell us a bit about Kitchen M and what you do.
I actually had no intention of making Kitchen M into what is it now, either a hodge-podge of my culinary adventures or a gallery of healthy takes on traditional recipes. I was simply enjoying taking pictures of food and blogging about it. But a couple years later, I encountered another internship opportunity which was a three-day food styling and photography workshop. It was one of the best and fun experiences I’ve ever had besides working at Walt Disney World. It really changed my view of food photography. My first published work was through a friend of mine from college. She was working on a cookbook with her mother and I was recruited. Now I’m working as a freelance photographer, and getting paid to do what I love is just astounding to me.

3. What advice would have for an individual wanting to start getting their work out into the community?
Just do what you love persistently and forget about profiting from it, if you even care about that. In any case, it will follow naturally.

4. What advice would have for an individual wanting to start their own company or collection of work?
Get out there and prove that you can do the work by just doing it – taking pictures! Creating a portfolio from that is a good start.

5. What things have you personally done to get your work out there, and build a name for Kitchen M in the online community as well as San Fransisco?
Use social network sites wisely. You don’t want to exploit your business or spam people’s website (it’s annoying), but do participate judiciously. Also it’s important that you value other people’s work. There are many talents out there that continue to inspire me today. Specifically in San Francisco, I try to promote local restaurants and events such as SF Chefs. Food. Wine.

6. What has been one of Kitchen M’s proudest achievements?
It’s not trivial when someone leaves me a genuine comment on my blog. It always gives me big sense of achievement that someone appreciates what I do.

7. Do you have a favorite recipe from you blog that we must absolutely try?
Kitchen M’s Tofu Cheesecake.

8. Where do you hope to see Kitchen M in the next five years? Do you have any specific goals?
I don’t have specific goals other than to improve the quality of my work and hope not to compromise my blog from what it is – a gallery of food and art.