Put a Stamp On It

There was a scavenger hunt at the National Stationery Show (NSS) this year! Legion Paper, NSS, Paper Chronicles, Parse & Parcel, and the Rifle Paper Company sponsored this year's stamp collection called #PutAStampOnIt.

The box to hold all of the stamps was designed and created by Rifle Paper and printed by Legion Paper, who also printed most of the cards in this lovely 2018 card collection.

Ginger P Designs with the Occasion Group created the glitter foil border design below. Like many, I miss stamps with their amounts on them and wish the USPS would find a way to re-incorporate them.

I met Val of Lily & Val and she was so sweet and personable I could have visited with her for hours. I love the gold foil stamp design on this floral image. Simple, yet evocative.

Based in Knoxville, TN, the Smarty Pants Paper Co is all about bright colors, bold graphics and vintage style. Don't you love the lip stamps and wouldn't they be fun to use?

Euni + Co, based in Seattle, (below) started as a calligraphy studio and then expanded into other paper goods

These little unicorns are in a stamped shaped envelope that opens in the back to reveal more information about Halifax Paper Hearts.

This card by Paper Bandit Press was unique with its images and also the red clear overlay that went atop the white card to reveal the hidden images in the card.

Paper Bandit Press makes letter press cards and posters.

The stamp sheet below was created by the Regional Assembly of Text and they were creative enough to include "An Application for Maintaining a Friendship Over a Great Distance" application on the backside. Don't you love it?

They're based in Vancouver and once a month their LETTER WRITING CLUB meets and everyone is welcome to attend and join in - all supplies provided. When I plan a trip to Canada, I will keep this mind for my itinerary.

The Imagination Spot has this adorable snail mail stamp. What adds to this stamp (in addition to whimsical illustration) is the postmark. Kind of wishing there was an option to purchase postcards of some of these super cute cards.

As you may have surmised, Page Stationery is based in Virginia. This stamp card captured the great outdoors with their heavy card stock postage stamp. On the back it says "Let the Adventure Begin".

Hester & Cook, based in Tennessee, offers a wide variety of stationery and gift items. This adorable, sparkly unicorn postage stamp card is emblematic of their style.

Boss Dotty celebrates "strong women through playful illustrations that are laced with humor and a can-do attitude".

The Pinwheel Print Shop specializes in hand lettering and illustration for their fresh, whimsical designs. Owner, Colleen Reid is its Chief Snail Mail Officer.

I met the lovely Colleen, owner of the Colleen Attara Studio, at the show. She was a delight and she shared with me one of her handmade journals (altered book) which was incredibly detailed and inspiring (saving this for a future blog post). Her beautifully crafted card below shows her vision of the world coming together to support each other and work as one. After all, We are all in this together, aren't we?

Fresh Out of Ink is run by husband and wife team, Katy and Albert, who fell in love via snail mail when they were both 14. Sweet, huh?

Up With Paper is not only the original pop-up greeting card company, they're also the world's leading marketer of innovative, three-dimensional greeting cards and stationery products. Their #PutAStampOnIt entry below is a highlighted in rose-gold ink that, sadly, does not show up in the photo.

Sisters, Alice and Doris, love mail and puns so making cards is a natural fit for them. I Loot Paperie is based out of Pasedena, CA. Their design below is the perfect image for snail mail. I love it!

One of my favorite #PutAStampOnIt cards is the one below from Good Juju Ink, who believes that anyone and everyone can change the world one perfectly imperfect illustration at a time.

Inklings Paperie, based in Detroit, was founded by Lindsay Henry who believes in the power of the handwritten note, and is committed to creating products that inspire kindness and bring joy to life's many little celebrations, as perfectly illustrated in the card below.

Finally, we have the Gotamago Collection which features original ink-and-watercolour illustrations designed and printed in Toronto, Canada. I wish my pictures would capture the way the gold foil glitters on the card.

Now the challenge is how to keep and display these postal gems and keepsakes.

Highlights from the National Stationery Show 2018

The 2018 National Stationery Show was a fabulous showcase of so much stationery goodness! Booth after booth offered eye-catching displays and products as well as having super-friendly and passionate people.

 This pictures were from the Sakura of America booth. My favorite is the seahorse stationery!

Who doesn't love beautiful quality lined envelopes?

All in a lovely stationery set.

The images below are from the Lily & Val booth. I fell in love with these prints of store front images. Aren't they gorgeous?

I love them so much I can't pick a favorite.

The only thing missing is a storefront image of a bookstore.

This lovely Keepsake Kitchen Diary from Lily & Val is a combination cookbook, journal and scrapbook. There is so much inside there that it would be best to watch the video on this page of their website.

 This is just a portion of what I saw at the 2018 NSS. More to come in future blogs.

Show Me Your Stationery

Like many of my fellow stationery addicts, I collect stationery wherever I go. Stores, garage sales, letterhead from old jobs, and, of course, hotels.

My favorite is the Forman Implement Company. I only have one sheet of this so I protect it and copy it on nice resume paper when I want to use it (not often).

Next is my assortment of hotel stationery. I collect this and use it frequently. Mostly I stay in the Hilton family of hotels so I tend to have a lot of their stationery. I won't bother showing all that I have as they are pretty much the same, just a different city.

 

The following stationery is from Ireland. We spent just one night in Bantry at the Bantry House & Garden. I was hoping for a castle, but this country manor was as close as got. The view was breathtaking.

Maybe you'd prefer to see a picture of the hotel rather than the nondescript stationery.

Naturally I do have stationery that is not hotel related. Next time I will do a post on that.

Show Me Your Stationery is a weekly feature of the Molly & the Princess blog. If you have stationery you want to share with the world, check out Molly's blog.

If you are inspired to share your stationery (I hope you are), please consider participating in Molly's 'Show Me Your Stationery' by including her badge in your blog post. Click on Molly's badge to be taken to her site where you'll see other participants and their stationery.

Winner Announced for February Stationery Giveaway

The winner for all of the February Stationery basket was number 248.  The holder of that lucky number? Mary Johnson from MN. Mary was notified and now has a package of stationery wonderment en route to her home.

You can see the full list of prizes here. The March giveaway is underway, plus we will have a couple one item giveaways planned for the month of March also thanks to our special sponsors who sent in extra items for the monthly giveaway!

There are two ways you can win any of the monthly stationery giveaways:
1. Be signed up for the free Letters & Journals monthly e-newsletter
2. You are put on the mailing list for information regarding the premiere edition when that information is available (No subscriptions yet- just a heads up on the status of the print edition) Send info here.

Letter Writing Super Hero

Letters are powerful things.  Possibly this is because we don’t hold high expectations for them and so anything they offer is pure bonus.  When you find a handwritten letter in your mailbox, you don’t care about spelling or punctuation or the type of pen or paper used. You are just glad to hold it in your hand, to examine it and know it came directly from the person you care about. What a grand gesture, a noble task, a simple thing to make one's heart go pitter-patter.

Katy, the Non-Consumer Advocate has offered a challenge to any who are willing to send a letter a week in her 52 Weeks, 52 Letters Challenge. I heard about Katy's challenge through the aptly named 'My Stationery Addiction Now Has a Support Group'. So I'm signing up and doing my part to promote letter writing wherever I go. I'm like a letter writing Super Hero, at least in my own mind. Won't you be a Super Hero too? Even if you don't take Katy's challenge, you can still write a letter. Whose heart will you make go pitter-patter?

November Stationery Giveaway Winner

Elizabeth G (who signed up on 11/27/10) is the winner! She wins 2 sets of cards (Haley's Handmades and Archelaus),a Crane journal, an Ecojot notebook, a perpetual calendar (Rock Scissor Paper), Flying Wish Paper and a pen.

Prizes in the December Stationery Giveaway will be announced by Dec 7. Stay tuned. 

There are two ways you can win the monthly stationery giveaway: 
1. You are signed up for the free Letters & Journals monthly e-newsletter
2. You are put on the mailing list for information regarding the premiere edition when that information is available (No subscriptions yet- just a heads up on the status of the print edition) Send info here.

Letters & Journals Magazine Update

The launch of the print version of Letters & Journals is scheduled for 2011. It's been a long time in research and planning and the challenge in 2010 has been to build a following of potential subscribers.

To date we have a list of 2,300 names of possible subscribers/buyers. Our goal is to get 5,000 names. Once we have a list of 5,000 names then we will begin approaching advertisers and following up with the ones who have already expressed interest (thank you!).

If you know some people or groups who would be interested, please encourage them to sign up for the website, the e-newsletter or just let me know to add them to my Magazine Updates Only list. None of the lists are being sold or shared and there is no obligation.

Thanks to the many loyal followers who offer their encouragement and share in the excitement of all the things that Letters & Journals represents; pens, paper, ink, pencils, notebooks, diaries, journals, note cards, stationery, mail art, pen pals, postcards, mail, stamps, letters, ephemera, etc.

Day 1 at the National Stationery Show

Today was the Day 1 of the National Stationery Show. I visited lots of booths and met some wonderful creators, vendors, sellers of all things stationery.

Highlights of the day included meeting Peter Hopkins at Crane Paper. Peter was kind of enough to help me out a couple years ago by answering some questions for me as I started conducting the initial research into starting this magazine. I have followed Peter's blog for a few years and meeting him today was like meeting an old friend. He was very warm and welcoming.

Peter also surprised me by giving me a gift bag filled with boxes of Crane cards and stationery and, boy, did I have fun looking through that. It was all I could do to not open one of the boxes and start writing on a card when I got back to the hotel. But, alas, my husband wanted to go out to dinner, so off we went. Most likely I will be including one of these boxed cards in some contest or drawing in order to spread the stationery joy.

Other booths I visited include Truly Sisters where I met the artist and owner, Mary Torch. This is Mary's first year at NSS and she got started as an artist creating sorority stationery and thank you cards for her daughter who recently joined a sorority. Apparently sororities in the south are big into cards and thank you notes and they needed something more modern and chic than they were finding. So Mary created her own line and has been expanding her choices and selection over this past year.

Eco friendly cards has been a big theme this year. Kelp Designs was one of them and they were giving out twitter pins for those who stopped at their booth and was a twitter follower, or wanted to be. They were very nice and seemed surprised by all the twitter fans they had. Ecosystems and ecojot were also at the show.

Too Little Trees plants a tree for every blank book they sell. They had a wonderful selection of journals and were giving away free journals to all of their booth visitors.

Many of the vendors I met were wholesalers and sell only to stores, of which there were a lot of store owners and buyers at the show. But from the conversations I had with others who have been to previous shows, they fear the traffic is down from the last couple of years as the hard times continue. But it was only the first day, so hopefully Monday and Tuesday will see an increase in traffic walking the show aisles.

I walked about half of the show and will walk the other half tomorrow. There are over 900 booths, which, I believe is down from 1,000 at last year's show and 1,400 from a few years ago. On Tuesday I will go back and see some of the booths that I might have missed- too busy, looking the other way, a missed aisle, etc.
 

National Card and Letter Writing Month (April)

April is National Card and Letter Writing Month! Let the fun begin! Well, actually, I've already begun when I picked up this new stationery last Saturday at a local stationery store called Paper Patisserie. The store is located in a lovely St. Paul neighborhood that also houses Garrison Keillor's Common Good Books and Nina's Coffee Cafe.

April is the perfect time to recognize this time honored tradition because sending a card or letter is like planting a seed - sending forth something in the world from your hands to the hands and heart of another. I'm not sure if anyone who doesn't normally write letters gets inspired by hearing about National Card and Letter Writing Month. Possibly some do.

I also recently got these colorful note cards with matching envelopes from Levenger. Aren't they lovely? Their colors are vibrant definitely spring-like.

 Here are some blogs I've visited that tell what they're doing this month in honor of NCALWM:
Missive Maven
Red Letter Day Zine
Letter Lover
Apron Thrift Girl
Naked Thanks
LLH Designs

How about you? What are you doing?

Letters & Journals Magazine

Letters & Journals magazine will be a quarterly print magazine containing features and departments related to the art and appreciation of letter writing and journal keeping. The magazine will be perfect bound (meaning it has a spine) and have slightly heavier stock paper than the normal monthly magazines. All of the ads in the magazine will be for stores and products related to the niche industry of the pen and paper enthusiast- our core audience.

In order to find the advertisers related to our niche, we need to build a database of names and addresses of potential subscribers. To do this we will be launching www.LettersandJournals.com in May 2010 offering unique and interesting content as well as links to other articles that we find in our internet travels. We will also send out a weekly e-newsletter with engaging and relevant content.

 To give you a taste of some of the morsels that will be featured in the magazine, here are some sample article ideas:

A Stationery Lover's Guide to Paris (NYC, San Fran, London, Paris, you get the picture)
How do you start a Stationery Business? A Look at some people who did
Exotic Postmarks: Postcards from Around the World
Highlights of people's journals (famous and otherwise)
Pen Pal Corner- Who are these people? How do you find one of your own?
Samples of different journals you can keep (nature, travel, art, goals, daily, baby, etc)
Fan Mail- Do Movie Stars/Musicians/Athletes/etc Still Get it? Let's Take a Look
Dead Letter Office- Old, found letters and postcards
The Writing Area- Photos of readers and famous desks and writing areas
Fun with day planners and notebooks- Finding or Creating one of your own
Mindmaps, doodles, to-do lists, other lists

For ideas suggested by other readers, you can read the comments at this post. This is just some of what will be featured on the website and in the magazine.

Lovely Display of Letters

Last week I attended the Winter Convention of the Craft and Hobby Association (CHA) in Anaheim, CA., which is where I saw this lovely display of letters as featured in the booth of 7 Gypsies. The photo doesn't do it justice! But if you really want to experience more of this display, you can view the video as posted by Blue Moon Scrapbooking in this blog post. The video lasts about 7 minutes and doesn't get to this portion of the display until about 4 minutes into the video.

"At 7gypsies we love old world, old architecture, old postcards and old documents,"

says the January 21, 2010 post on the 7gypsies blog that talks about their Vintage Stationery as shown in this photo. Just lovely! I added some more photos to flickr if you want to see them. This blog does not show multiple photos very well (or should I say this blogger is not familiar with how to display more than 1 photo that doesn't look lame on this site).

Stationery Shopping in San Francisco

A city-by-city stationery shopping guide is the sample magazine feature you see to the right. This one features San Francisco where there is a wealth of stationery stores and pen companies. Future editions of Letters & Journals will feature such cities as New York, Paris, Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Minneapolis and Denver.

This magazine feature is still being tweaked and Kathy Forss at DaisyMaeDesign is busy finding more stationery related photos to replace the more generic ones in this layout. Don't you love it? When I first saw this design it took my breath away. I don't think the scanned photo does justice to what should be a 2 page magazine layout (with more pages to follow).

Do you have a lot of stationery stores where you live? Where do you like to shop? What city would you like to see featured in the magazine?

New Stationery

I received this lovely stationery from Julie at We've Got Paper. Julie has a blog and an Etsy shop where she sells her unique selection of stationery.

I love finding and collecting different kinds of stationery. I have a box filled with an assortment of old and new papers that I've accumulated over the years.

This was my first purchase from Julie and she was generous with sending some unexpected extras; cute notepaper, lots of stickers, 3 postcards.

Julie is sponsoring a giveaway of some her product if you visit her site and leave a comment. Here is a link that tells you about the contest. But hurry, the contest ends on Oct. 14, 2009.

Stationery

Part of the desire to start this magazine called Letters & Journals is my love of paper, stationery, cards, notebooks, blank books, ink, journals and so on. I know there are others out there too who love the same things - spending hours in a stationery store, reading blogs of people who design and sell stationery, connecting with others who share this same fascination.

A few weeks ago I visited Paper Source in Minneapolis. A week later I went to Stillwater, MN and visited the newly discovered Pulp Fashion. Oh, what a lovely day that was. This is a picture of some of the treasures I bought at Pulp Fashion.

One of the regular departments I see in the magazine is to highlight stationery store shopping excursions to various cities. Just like the famous travel guides offer their recommendations for things to do in NYC or Paris in 1-day, 2-days or 3-days, the stationery store excursion article would do the same for 1-day or 2-day highlights for the paper enthusiast.

Here is my short list of the Minneapolis/St. Paul stationery store tour in alphabetical order. The complete article would feature highlights for each of the stores, photos and a sense of their personalities and ambiance.

Anchor Paper
Bibelot
Paper Source
Papyrus
Pulp Fashion