Giveaway Changes

We have good news for the regular readers and followers of Letters & Journals! The odds of winning the fabulous monthly stationery giveaway just improved tremendously!

 We're changing the way we select the winner by only allowing active readers to be entered into the drawing. This should improve your odds of winning as entry to the monthly stationery giveaway will now be limited to the number of people who leave comments on the specified giveaway post each month.

Currently there are over 800 people signed up for the drawing and the number increases each month as new people sign up for the e-newsletter. This is great to grow the readership of the e-newsletter, but we're finding that the more readers who opt in for the e-newsletter, the fewer people are actually opening and reading the e-newsletter.

Beginning with the June Stationery Giveaway, you will need to post a comment on the current month's blog post to be eligible for that month's giveaway. We will post the new entry rules within the blog post on the website and also in the e-newsletter. There is also a page on the website with the entry rules.

And, to reward the readers of the e-newsletter, we will have e-newsletter only giveaways as well, just as we sometimes have for L&J Facebook fans.

Pentel Pens and Pencils

What is more fun than trying out new pens? Tying out new pens that you win!

I won this wonderful selection of pens and pencils from Pentel at a contest at Julie's Whatever blog.I will write some of my impressions of them later, but wanted to share them with you now before they went their separate ways (purse, work, bedroom, office, pen pal letter kit, etc.)

In order of appearance from left to right: 
1.  Purple e-Sharp .05 Pencil
2. EnerGel Needletip .05
3. Handy Lines Yellow Highlighter
4. Purple Rolling Writer 0.8
5. Twist Erase PinkPencil .07
6. Blue Hyper G .07
7. Jolt Pencil .07
8. EnerGel Red.07

Book Bandi Giveaway

UPDATE 5/30/11: Robyn and Twisted are the winners of the Book Bandi. Please email me your address and I will send it to you!  My email address is Jackie (at) LettersandJournals (dot) com 

Robin- you won the middle brown Book Bandi and Twisted chose the black bandi on the bottom from the photo below.

The Book Bandi is a bookmark, rubberband and pen holder all in one! The folks at Book Bandi asked if I would try it out and offer up my humble opinion. They also suggested that I might want to have a GIVEAWAY to one lucky reader. (Skip to the end for the GIVEAWAY.)

You can see in the photos above and below what the Book Bandis look like. They come in different sizes and designs that you can specify when you order on their site.

It was helpful to watch the video on their site to see the different ways this product can be used. As I mentioned earlier, you can use it to mark your spot in a book. Or you can use it to hold a book together or to keep ephemera from falling out.

In this notebook size scrapbook that I use, I put on the Book Bandi to keep the book tightly closed while also marking the page I was recently working on.

What is nice about the Book Bandi (besides its multi-functionality) is the way it stays flat inside of your book. The last thing I want in a bulky book is more bulk.

Probably the greatest selling point for me is the pen holder only because there are some books or journals that you want to use a certain pen with and the built-in pen holder always keeps the pen handy.

I was pleased with the design and functionality of the Book Bandi and would definitely use them on my journals as well as books that I read that I like to take notes while I'm reading.

GIVEAWAY DETAILS
One lucky winner will get their choice of the 3 Book Bandi's featured in the top photo in this blog post. Just leave a comment on this blog before midnight Friday, May 27 with your selection. Make sure to include your email so that you can be contacted. I will email the winner this weekend and you'll have 3 days to respond to the email with your mailing info. Of course, you are welcome to leave your mailing info in the comment if you want and I will just mail it to you without having to contact you first.

Be sure to state which one you would choose and if you want to say what you would use it for, that would be fun to see. The winner will be randomly selected.

Edward Gorey Postcards #8-11

I thought it would be so easy to keep up with this postcard project. Alas, that has not been so. I'm going to do a big catch up in this post and list 4 cards that will take me through May 2011.

Postcard #8 has a man in a dressing gown being carried off by a giant rodent. Oh, the things this man comes up with! At the bottom of the card it says 'Pouf'!' but I'm not sure what that means.

 Next, we have a cat in a rowboat. This color illustration says it is from Edward Gorey's 'Category' collection. Aptly named, don't you think?

"They lived in a house covered with roses on the edge of a marsh," says the description on this card from the Deranged Cousins. You can barely see the woman inside who looks as if she is blending in with her surroundings.

I'm not quite as fond of the color illustrations as I am of the black and whites. This one doesn't speak to me at all except that the gentleman's sweater looks like a corn cob.

Now, I shall sit down with one of my favorite pens (currently a Pentel Hyper G .07) and write a brief note on each of these cards so that I may get them in tomorrow's mail and then be caught up with the Edward Gorey Postcard collection at least through May.

Day 3 of the National Stationery Show

 Tuesday was Day 3 at the National Stationery Show. What a fantastic and busy day! Started early at the show and made sure to meet some of the sponsors I had not seen yet. This is my last day at the show since Wed is only half a day and I am heading back to MN.

Here are some of L&J's awesome sponsors I visited today. These are a few of the people who have supported the monthly giveaway this past year and helped to make it such a grand success:
 Christy at Regreet
Stacey at Hard Cards
Anne at Tilia Press

Some of the possible new sponsors who I met include:

Dempsey Press
Snail's Pace
Oblation Papers & Press
Parker Planners

One of my favorite booths is the NCWU Corporation, which is a wholesale company, so you can't purchase items directly from them, but you can get an idea of what's out there and hopefully, find the items that appeal to you somehow, somewhere. (The following 4 images are from this booth.)

Later in the day, I visited the Morgan Library and Museum to see 'The Diary' exhibit (will blog about that moving experience later), met a pen pal who took me to the Strand Bookstore and then out to dinner. As if that wasn't enough, she also sent me off with a box of these chocolates.

Maybe I should have taken the photo before I helped myself to one of the delicious bites of heaven?

Overall, the show was a great success. A lot of people showed interest in being a sponsor and possible advertiser so it will be exciting to see the new offerings in the next year.

The next push is to line up advertisers for the print magazine scheduled for December 2011.

Website Maintenance

Sorry to interrupt the National Stationery Show updates, but I've been informed that they will be doing the second part of the server maintenance and upgrade this week, so I wanted to get this announcement posted right away.
I will post Day 3 of the NSS as soon as the upgrade is completed, which will hopefully be completed this week.
If you should visit the site and not get a response, it will be because the upgrade is in process.

Day 2 at the National Stationery Show

Day 2 at the National Stationery Show was a success! The stormy rainy day in NYC made it a great day to be indoors!

I met some more of the generous people/sponsors who have donated to the L&J monthly giveaway including:
Jennifer at Survival by Design
Peter at Crane Stationery
Chronicle Books has also been a generous sponsor of the giveaway and I saw this cute little package at their booth on Monday.

I also met some people I had seen online (Twitter, Facebook, Blogs) including:
Kseniya of Thomas Printers from Ladies of Letterpress
Kara from Kate Reed Designs
Jen from Knock Knock
Maia at Dandy Lion Press

Stay tuned for more news and pics about day 3. Still having trouble with photo uploads so I will plan to do a bunch when I return home to Mpls and can take my time to get them uploaded to Flickr.