Even a speeding ticket being clocked at 82 MPH, or so I was told, on Saturday morning couldn’t squelch my enthusiasm to go hear Matt Armendariz, world famous food photographer,  author of MattBites.com and famously nice guy along with his partner, professionally and personally, Adam  Pearson, who is one talented food stylist and nice guy in his own right.

An intimate group met in a photography studio near Venice Beach and listened to Matt and Adam share their mercurial rise to fame without one teaspoon of pretention.  They touched on social media and their travels, the unglamorous event of a photo shoot and showed us some of their work.

I was able to speak with Adam at the break and asked him some questions about my blog and styling cookies which most the time need to be photographed overhead.  He was very complimentary which helped me forget about my little snafu on the north bound 5.  To add insult to injury two days later, I was called up for jury duty – again!  How does this keep happening?

Anyway, both Adam and Matt were very informative and fun to listen to.  I know  from personal experience how it can be challenging at times to work with someone you live with so I loved seeing how these two interacted with one another.  Matt was the self-professed extrovert but Adam chimed in with the best one-liners.  Very subtle.  Very Roger Sterling.  Very funny.

After the morning spent with Matt and Adam and being only five miles from Venice, I decided to slowly drive to a paper/stationery store that I’ve been receiving emails from quite awhile called Urbanic Paper.  It’s a tiny store full of all the things I love – and I love paper like nobody’s business!

Here are a few things I could not leave without. 

You guessed it.  I love stripes and polka dots too.

It was like pulling for a story board.  Inspiration was found at every crackle of a paper bag and cellophane wrapping.  The colors were intoxicating and I couldn’t get enough of them in every texture.  They spoke ‘summer’ to me.

This week I’m designing cookies using some of these influences and I’ll post them later in the week. 

Have a great day!