KINGSTON >> One day, while at a local park, Matthew Kelly was talking to his two children, Jude, 5, and Sophia, 11, about what they wanted to be when they grew up.
As many little boys might do, Kelly’s son looked up and at his dad and said that someday he wanted to work with him at the “paint company.”
The Rosendale resident, who has worked for R&F Handmade Paints in Kingston for 13 years, said he at once thought, “I hope I’m not still working when you’re grown up.”
But, then, explaining to the two that the encaustic and oil stick paints he makes are like “fancy crayons,” he embarked with his children on an imaginary undertaking to create their own “crayon factory.”
VIDEO: Matthew Kelly of R&F Handmade Paints talks about his children’s book, ‘Our Crayon Company.’
“When I was talking it out with my two kids, I said we’d just fix up the garage and maybe we could train the animals to make the paint,” he said.
That imaginary business, which is based on the operation at R&F Handmade Paints, came to life, so to speak, in a children’s book, “Our Crayon Company,” written and illustrated by Kelly.
In the brightly illustrated book, Kelly walks young readers through the “crayon”-making process used at R&F, but with an imaginary twist. At the fictional Kelly crayon factory, the family’s 11 pets perform the manufacturing tasks.
“It worked out almost perfectly so that each step in the process would be taken by one of our animals,” Kelly said.
And, like at R&F Handmade Paints, at the Crayon Company, “some of the employees enjoy hot coffee and doughnuts before getting started.”
Kelly said basing his imaginary company on the company at which he works felt natural, not only because the processes for making the paint sticks and crayons are similar, but because the company feels like family.
Kelly moved to Ulster County from Long Island in 2001 and started working at R&F Handmade Paints in 2002. He said his wife, Lea, also worked at R&F Handmade Paints from 2002 through 2009.
“I’ve just always felt like this place here has been a part of my family and a good reason for any success I’ve had up here in any capacity,” he said, adding that owner Richard Frumess was instrumental in motivating Kelly to write the book.
“There’s a homespun kind of nurturing aspect to the business model here and I think that’s what I was trying to show in the book,” he said.
Kelly said that once he completed the book, he launched a Kickstarter fundraising effort to raise the money to get the book published and, much to his surprise, raised more money than he needed to for a first run of the book, which he had printed at Color Page, a printing company on Ten Broeck Avenue, across the street from R&F Handmade Paints.
The early success of the book – he’s sold 150 copies so far – was more than he imagined, as the book has been sold almost solely through word of mouth.
Kelly said the book sells for $15 and can be ordered by emailing ourcrayoncompany@gmail.com.
