10 Questions with Julie Comstock, Founder of Cosmo Cricket

by Michelle Francis (Mar 29, 2010)

Cosmo Cricket is known for their fun graphics, including some which are reminiscent of vintage 50s advertising. It is one of the companies I stalk to see sneak peaks of what they are releasing next. I recently was able to visit Cosmo Cricket and talk with Julie Comstock, who, with her husband Eric, owns Cosmo Cricket. Even though they were in the middle of getting ready for CHA, everyone was joking and laughing. They acted a lot like a family, discussing a battle over the thermostat controls. Surrounded by beautiful paper, and eying some bolts of fabric behind Julie with Cosmo Cricket designs on it, I started the interview.

How did you become involved in scrapbooking?

I didn’t actually start scrapbooking, myself, until after we started Cosmo Cricket. I had two sisters-in-law that I would say are scrapbooking addicts and they tried for years to get me hooked. It wasn’t until three or four months into Cosmo Cricket that I started to. When we came out with the Souvenir line, I really liked the papers and I had these baby photos of my son and I thought, “I want to try a layout.” My first layout was with my fourth child, Jack, and I thought it went kind of well, actually. I thought maybe I could do this.
How did you come up with the name Cosmo Cricket?

Cosmo Cricket is my husband’s name scrambled up. His name is Eric Comstock and if you scramble up all the letters in his name, it’s Cosmo Cricket. We both worked in advertising before we started Cosmo Cricket and Eric was working on a campaign for a local jeweler and the idea of the ad campaign, where they would unscramble the message over time. While we were on a website looking up anagrams, we looked up our names. One of the options was Cosmo Cricket. We loved the name and originally thought we would use it for a family website. We were team Cosmo Cricket and the kids were little crickets. So, we already owned the website and had a logo for this family website.

What made you make the jump from advertising to owning a scrapbook company?

We were asked by WeRMemory Keepers to design a line (The Comstock Collection). We had three kids at the time and I was pregnant with my fourth. We thought it would be a great way to stay in my career choice as a designer. We did that line and we thought it went really well. At the same time, the advertising market in Utah was changing and Eric was looking for a way to do design work that he had more creative license with. I said we should start our own company. Three months later, that’s what we did. It was very quick, but we’re very spontaneous people.

How is it working with your husband?

For the most part, it’s very good. In the beginning we only had one computer. We would fight over that computer like some couples fight over a remote control. It didn’t matter how bad you had to go to the bathroom, you would not leave the chair because the other person would sit down. When we got two computers, it worked a lot better. On really stressful days, it’s not good to work with your spouse because there’s no one to bring that balance back into your family life. We get along really well. Our chairs are probably less than three feet apart and we are just that close all day long.

What is each of your strengths?

Eric is much more of an illustrator than I am. 90% of all the cute characters and hand-drawn stuff, he does. My forte is pattern design; I do almost all of our paper pattern design and color choices. You might notice I do have my favorite colors. Eric is also really good at typography.

How do you design a line?

Usually I’ll choose the theme and range of the colors and then he’ll start with the illustration work. He’ll start working on the shapes for what you see on the Ready Set Chipboard and email it to me, even though we are three feet apart. Then I’ll take what he’s got and start to design patterned paper. Then we just feed off each other.

Tell me about your favorite of the new lines.

Eric did the pattern I think will be number one in the Material Girl line; the paper is named “Inspiration.” It has the flowers and scissors and threads. It reminds me of the mice in Cinderella when they get out the threads and scissors for her dress. I can just see the mice singing “Hurry, hurry, we got to make the dress for Cinderelly”.

You have four children at home; what do they think about what Mom and Dad do?

Our favorite story to tell is when Eric quit his job as an art director and was working from home. Our daughter was in 2^nd grade and it was career day and they asked what her dad did. She said, “My dad doesn’t have a job, he just stays home and scrapbooks.”

It’s been quite a while now. All our youngest, Jack, knows is having both parents stay at home. They don’t realize what it’s like with the dad or mom who are at work and come home in the evening. A lot of my work is done with Jack sitting on my lap. My older kids have mixed feelings. They don’t like it when we travel, but they like the whole idea of growing up to be an artist. My son is now in the 7^th grade and he interviewed me the other day about my job and one of the questions he asked was, “What advice would you give me in picking a career?” I answered, “I would just pick something you love to do because you have to do it forever.”

I know a lot of scrapbookers, me included, who are sometimes afraid to cut a sheet of pretty paper. What about you?

As we started to come out with more products, I found there were even more options. And then I would get afraid. I have a whole warehouse full of paper and yet I still can’t stand to ruin a sheet. I would be afraid to cut it. All the design work I do is on the computer; if you make a mistake you can go back and fix it. You can’t edit/undo a cut in a piece of paper. So I started to have this fear and anxiety and quit scrapbooking again. Now I come up with an idea, decide how I want it to look and go with it. I think scrapbooking is fun again.

What’s one thing you want us to know about you?

My very favorite part is going out and meeting people. We love what we do and we love seeing what you do with it. We get emails all the time from people saying they don’t want to take our time, but they wanted to show us what they did. That is the most fun part of what we do. I love to see how creative people are; it never gets old for me. There aren’t a lot of spots on a design team so we’ve tried to do a Facebook fan page that features someone almost everyday. On our blog, I read every single comment that comes in. I try to answer people’s questions. I like feeling connected to people who are using our products. I never do the blog in advance; I do it first thing when I start working every morning so I can react to how people are feeling and what is going on.