Like a Glove: A Love Story

Some ideas take a while to surface, time to percolate, breath and take the shape of what they are meant to be. A few years ago I hosted a Julefrokost and made some fun invites – a knitted nordic advent-calendar-inspired card with little flaps that open to show party details like 1) how much pickled herring would be consumed, 2) what time to show up promptly by, and 3) a partial menu printed in both English and Danish.

Julefrokost party invitation with knitted nordic design. Invite has four advent calendar style door flaps that open to reveal party information.
Julefrokost is hard to pronounce for Americans, so my friends called it Joogala Froogala.

Some time passed, and I added a title to the idea when I was inspired by someone and sent them a book of words and pictures. More time went by, and the moose wouldn’t leave me alone. I thought: they need to be Bigger! Grander! Fuzzier!

Most things start out simple and kind of ugly, like this. Usually they get better. These sketches gave me enough of an idea of what the thing should look like to fire up Illustrator.

So I started working on the most complicated illustrator file I’ve ever made and nearly succumbed to carpal tunnel syndrome. My hours of toil wouldn’t be for naught as I planned to share the story of smitten moose, fuzzy creatures and a house in the woods. Stories are for sharing, right? Friends, people I admired or who inspired me, clients, agencies, people I’d like to work with – the list was all encompassing. I even sent one to Conan O’Brien. I hope he got it.

A large part of this project was finding a vendor to produce the poster. Flocking seems to be a very niche market, and my goal of producing it in the U.S. was a long shot. After Googling for weeks, following endless phone leads from local screen printers, and being told that China was the place to go for this kind of thing, I found the American Flocking Association. Flocking has many purposes: lettering on t-shirts, lining telescopes, glove boxes and jewelry cases, and looking like fake snow on fake Christmas trees. All of the companies who flock these items were mighty confused when I called and asked if they could just flock a piece of paper.

Finally, I found Great Lakes Flocking, who was not only in the US of A, but also had a very nice employee WITH MY SAME LAST NAME that helped me on each step of my flocking adventure. After a few weeks of production, a giant pallet arrived at my studio. “Like a Glove: A Love Story” had finally arrived!

I think the third time was the charm on this idea, and I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. If you ask very nicely, I will send you a copy.

My pioneer rabbit, lurking in the background. Sneaky fellow.
What it's all about.

7 comments on “Like a Glove: A Love Story”

  2. I just received mine! Thank you so much, Mette. The flocking is just awesome. It will be on the wall as soon as I figure out a framing option that does the piece justice. Love it!

  3. Mette!

    I just received this flock-tastic poster. It is gorgeous! What a lovely holiday treat. Thank you for thinking of me. I’m going to have to keep my eyes on this poster because the other designers here are trying to steal it!

    Best wishes!

    Emily Craig
    Jr. Marketing Designer
    Chronicle Books

  5. This is awesome! I have never heard of flocking before, I have seen it but never thought to figure out what that fuzzy stuff was called. Now I hope I get a project that will allow me to do something like this! It must be a really expensive process.

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