April Stationery Giveaway Winner

The winner of the April Stationery Giveaway basket is Gina S from CA. Congratulations, Gina!

Sponsors for the April Giveaway include:

Puro Papel

Papaya!

Rifle Paper Company

Tilia Press

Set Edition

Chronicle Books

Chewy Tulip

Survival by Design

SE Hagarman

Peppertree Press

KOCO NY

Crane Stationery

PiPo Press

Product Superior

Edward Gorey #7

Edward Gorey has a wonderfully comic way of expressing himself as he displays in this illustration with men wearing skirts.

I haven't decided yet who this card should go to. Certainly someone with a fine sense of humor and an appreciation of the more subtle things in life, such as men with mustaches wearing long skirts.

Website Maintenance 4/26/11

The web host for Letters & Journals is planning to do some server maintenance on Tuesday, April 26, 2011, so the site will be inaccessible for most of the morning. This blog is separate and will not be affected.

I'll wait until after the maintenance to schedule the next blog posting. I'm also working on the April e-newsletter, the May Stationery Giveaway, preparation for the National Stationery Show and content ideas for the premiere edition which is scheduled for Dec 2011. Exciting stuff!

Showing Off My Pen & Pencil Box

A friend of ours, Harvey Christiansen, is a talented woodworker. So when I needed a new place to store my favorite pens and pencils I went to Harvey with an old cigar box that was about the size I was looking for and asked if he could make a pen and pencil box.

He made three! In two of the boxes, Harvey had the great idea to include felt inside. Nice! (See Happy Pens below)

He also put on a carved wooden star, some orange felt and a wood frame and then matched the same type of latch that was on the cigar box prototype. I didn't think to take a photo of the latch. Next time.

  

I'm very pleased, as are my pens!

Natonal Stationery Show 2011

I have been busy making plans to attend the National Stationery Show (NSS) in New York May 15-18, 2011. This will be the fourth time I've attended and I'm just as excited as ever.

 I'm already made up the outline of an itinerary with some highlights of events that I know I will be attending. These include:

• Going to the Opening Night Party at Battery Park on Saturday night.
• Attending the Future Conference on Sunday morning where I will get to hear Seth Godin. The theme for this year's conference is 'Put it on Paper: The Importance of Pen and Ink in the Digital Age.'
• Meeting other Twitter friends at the Tweet n’ Greet that NSS is hosting this year. Twitter has been great to meet other show goers 

Last year I met some of the first sponsors to the monthly stationery giveaway at Letters & Journals. They had no idea what kind of return they would get for their investment, yet they took a chance. These include:

Christy at Regreet

Mark at Ecojot

 

 Julie at Flying Wish Paper

April is National Card and Letter Writing Month

If you need a reason to write a letter, then let me remind you that April is National Card and Letter Writing Month. Many of the people who follow this blog are already letter writers and need no outside impetus to propel their actions in this regard. But for those who need to be enticed, consider this...

Start with a nice writing area...

Add fountain pen and bottle of ink...

Some kind or encouraging words...

A colorful stamp or two...

Address and seal the envelope...

Drop off at the post office...

Wait for your return letter...

Because if you send them, you will receive them. That's just how letters work.

Preparations for the 100-mile Garage Sale

There is an annual 100-mile garage sale in southeastern MN that follows Highway 61 from Red Wing to Winona as well as parts of Wisconsin.

 The sales takes place over Mother's Day weekend. Last year my girlfriend, her sister and mother went and had fun loading up the truck, visiting with the friendly small town residents, stopping when they felt like it to eat at local cafes and, when the day was done, they had reserved a hotel room so that they could rest and hit the remaining sales on their way back home the next day.

I thought this sounded like a great way to spend a weekend! So I have made my own hotel reservations with my daughters and we are planning to enjoy the scenery of Lake Pepin and the bald eagles while we wind our way down Hwy 61 stopping at garage sales.

 All of the pictures you see in this post are of items I picked up last year at local garage sales. As you can tell I am more into pencil size boxes, paper, ephemera, pens, stamps and other desk top paraphernalia.

 Here's to good weather and finding lots of books, office supplies and ephemera on our 100 mile odyssey!