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Quickie addition to last week's monogram post - I just had to share this one last monogram that I find so beautifully appealing courtesy of Nomadic Press:
I'm a huge fan of blind emboss/inkless letterpress. It's so timeless.

Ticket Taker

Artisinal concert posters are old hat, but today, I came across a handful of handmade concert and event tickets that stand alone as works for art. Like these letterpress passes for last fall's Full Moon party at Klickitat Canyon Winery - created by Power and Light Press.

I don't think I'd want to turn this in at the door - wonder if you got to keep your ticket - in tact - as a memento? P&L also created a corresponding poster for the event.

Here's another designer ticket, this time from Smokeproof press out of Boulder, Colorado.

Red and robin's-egg-blue - one of my favorite color combinations, and perfect for holiday festivities.

One more just for fun. Concert ticket? No. It's a Philippine lotto ticket!
Doesn't exactly give off a win-big vibe, but I like these tickets so much on their own, that it's a keeper no matter if you hit the jackpot or not.

Monograms Decoded

Today we're going to take a look at monograms - the good, the bad, the ill conceived. I secretly love the stodgy old feeling of beautifully detailed monogram - engraved on fine paper. It looks so rich. At the moment, I'm coveting this sherbet orange Vera Wang paper from William Arthur:

Love the white ink and the matching liner. Perfect for summer thank you.

But done incorrectly, even the good stuff can look really fuddy duddy (an example below from Crane's):
Monograms started as city and country markings on coins as early as 350 BC and since then have been used as signatures by artists on paintings, sculptures and furniture.


Royal families dig monograms. Months before Swedish Crown Princess Victoria wed Daniel Westling, the royal court unveil the couple's monogram:

Dave and I had our own monogram, created by the fabulous calligrapher Linda Scahil for our wedding in 2008:
The lilies of the valley and the purple ink carried through from our wedding invitation.

Frill critics, take note. Not all monograms need to be weighted down by swashes and swirls. We took this image from Beloved Linens, a blog dedicated to textiles. These early monograms were created in the late 15th century.
For a updated take on the old his and hers monogram, I like this embrace invitation from Modern Reverie.

Or, if you're in the market for calling cards (another favorite of mine), how about these monogrammed numbers from Pink Lily Press.

And while I'm never a huge fan of the single letter monogram, I'm sort of tickled by these one-of-a-kind notes from exlibrishandmade that incorporate vintage fabric.

Ethereal Invitations from Monumental Designs

I wanted to take a moment to recognize the beautiful custom invitations and decor created by Kristy Rice at Monumental Designs, like this bride & groom timeline that greeted guests at the entrance to one wedding (above) and the full bloom placecards and table numbers she created for another lucky couple.

Kristy's work doesn't stop at the reception hall. Kristy's hand painted thank you notes are divine.

Saved the best for last. Check out Kristy's latest designs for a wedding in Yosemite National Park.

Here's how Kristy explains her team's custom design process:

Custom design is actually more of a progression than a process, as each design is completely unique. We begin with your vision, which evolves to create a finished product that is tailored to your personality.

Each item is detailed to include hand-painted details, custom cut sizes, hand-tied bows, and hand-torn edges, just to name a few. Since each piece passes through Kristy’s hands, you can be assured of the highest standard of Quality.

Open Book

Biggest pet peeve with journals is that *most of them* don't lie flat, making writing, particularly in the inner margins, a challenge. But look what we found!

Xylobooks are a Portland, Ore. collaboration between book publishing and design collective Container Corps and furniture maker Jonathan Nussbaum. These books and journals are made from responsibly-harvested hardwood salvaged during furniture production. Nussbaum uses the best Northwest woods: western walnut, maple, juniper, and cherry.
These books are perfect for writing, drawing, designing, and great to take in transit - planes, trains, automobiles - places where it's hard to hold a book down and write.

Inside, Nussbaum uses high-quality recycled paper, and he binds his books with cotton twill tape, and tiny iron nails to create a sturdy, simple, natural journal. Available online at Container Corps.

Jonathan Adler in Print

Question for readers: has anyone had a chance to see/touch Jonathan Adler's paper line? Looks great online, but I wonder what the paper feels like. I'm really into these ric-rac envelopes, though. They carry a serious mailbox wow-factor. May have to purchase to find out for myself.
Looks like this new line launched a few months ago. JA's come a long way from the his line for Barnes and Noble that I stumbled across a while back - YUCK.

Thankfully, Mr. A is reaching back to his brightly-colored roots for this chic line of stationery, office supplies and party goodies - all at really wallet-friendly prices - a box of 10 notecards for under $10. Leaves room in the budget for other JA lovelies, like these squirrel bookends. That is how savings work, right??

Little Russian Babies

I don't know why, but I have a thing for Matryoshka nesting dolls. Maybe it's my Russian ancestral blood? Maybe Great-Great-grandma Savadove spent her days with these little ladies? Who knows.

So how does this Russian doll fetish manifest itself, you ask? Well, I've blogged about them before. And I bought up nearly all the chocolate at the Mamuschka Chocolate in Bariloche Argentina, simply because they had a life-size Matryoshka set outside their door.

Let's look at how these little wooden dolls are transformed by paper. Over at NoteMaker, Australia's premier online source for office/stationery supplies, I found these cute little cut out cards from South Korea:


We like the little peep hole in the envelopes - Mr. Matryoskah's got to breathe, after all.
Etsy is a treasure trove for these creatures, which cane make perfect welcome baby cards.

These thank you tags would make great favor toppers for a baby shower - do you have favors at baby showers? Now I'm treading in unknown waters.....(cute anyway).


Or you can carry your little Russian dolls along with you - see in this lovely hand-crafted cover illustration notebook from frombismo080.



Want to make your own Russian doll goodies? Grab a roll of this Japanese sewing tape from warabimochi and create your own cards.

Pittsburgh Paper People

Oh, Post! I haven't forgotten about you! I've just been a little tied up in Job #1 (and Job #2 for that matter). And unfortunately, the blog, the thing I love most of all - after family and friends - seems to have fallen by the wayside.

I better get too it. It's going to be a busy summer, after all and there will always be excuses.....

Sapling Press (formerly called Toast Letterpress) is a shop out of Pittsburgh - home, sweet home - that we stumbled upon last month at the Stationery Show.
Owned and operated by Lisa Krowinski, Sampling's paper products are made on 100% post-consumer recycled paper made from old clothing. Sampling's designs are modern and simple, a nice change of pace from the more traditional, Victorian style of letterpress we're seeing so much of lately.

A Natural Fit

This morning I was poking around online for a birthday present for a friend. First stop, one of my favorite ceramicists, Whitney Smith, who's been working on her wheel skills since 1994. I love her color palliate and the way is emulates nature: robin's egg blue, cardinal red, buttercup yellow.

Says Whitney on her site:

I am...strongly influenced by Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts movement of the 19th early 20th Century. I like the look and feel of old things and antiques, and my glaze choices have a certain look that reminds people of a different era.

But wait - this is a paper blog. Back to business.

So, yes, the reason I'm telling you about Ms. Smith. Smith links to some her favorite craftsmen on her site, some of whom I'm familiar with (like Laura Zindel), others, like Emma Rose Papery, I am not.

Eszter Rabin started Emma Rose in San Francisco in 2005. Her designs "combine European classicism and modern American simplicity."
Invitations can be letterpressed or flat print. We can see why Whitney and Eszter are buds. They seem to share the same sensibilities about design and color. And since any friend of Whitney's is a virtual friend of ours, we're thrilled to be able to give Emma Rose some attention.

Oddball In

Quick post today - shout out to Oddball Press, a contemporary letterpress shop out of Cleveland. Their work is a little off the wall weird, but we're digging it. Take a peek at how they try to figure themselves through this nifty little diagram.
What attracts us to these Finger Lake paper makers? Is it the drawings on the envelopes? Or the clever non-holiday/birthday cards they've created? We're not sure.....but we're about to order a few and find out.

We got a kick out of this welcome baby card. Does that dog look like our gal Finn?
And this get well card caught our way - so demanding, how could you say no?

How to Say Thanks

Thanks to our readers for alerting us to two great articles this week on letter writing. The first, courtesy of the Alexandra Jacobs in the New York Times, notes a resurgence in handwritten thank you notes.

There’s been a sudden surge of people going all 19th century with these — takin’ a brave stand against cyberculture! — writing their thanks with a fountain pen on heavy monogrammed card stock and placing them in one of those blue metal boxes on the street, to be conveyed in leather satchels by uniformed civil servants to pleased recipients who then slit them open in the late-afternoon light with bronze penknives.In theory, this is very nice.

The key phrase here is "in theory." Jacobs goes on to bemoan thank you notes that feel forced, the "Thank-you-very-much-for-the-gift" variety. We agree. It's hard to argue about the lost art of letter writing when we send these kinds of clunkers on the occasion on which we have to write letters at all. Jacobs continues:

“I hate old-school thank-you notes, the main reason being that they take too long to arrive,” fumed the most gracious hostess I know, a Brooklyn Heights beauty who puts on grand parties several times a year.... “So you spend, like, a week in radio silence,” she continued, “wondering why your dinner guests are so thoughtless and boorish, wondering if they hate you, wondering if they had an awful time — it’s terrible — and then a week after the fact, the charming little note arrives, and you feel silently, genuinely annoyed thinking how smug they’re feeling about themselves.”

photo courtesy of designmom.com

The second, paper play comes to us this week from CNN iReport. As the U.S. Postal Service grapples with the idea of cutting Saturday deliveries to save money, reporter Rachel Rodriguez wrangled up a few people for whom sending letters is still very much a part of their routine.

Samantha Nelson's boyfriend teaches English in South Korea. And since she was still a student at Florida State University when he left, she couldn't go with him. Now it's his monthly letters that make the pair feel connected.

"We have wrestled with the technological failings of Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and so on," says Nelson. "The letters are a way for him to express his thoughts and feelings on something I can touch and feel and smell, since I can't do any of those things while we are apart."

We love when paper gets press - be it positive or negative (or in the case of the Times piece, somewhere in between). If you stumble across them before we do, please, please send them our way. And thanks to readers Joanna, David and Dana for passing these along!