Happy Galentine’s Day, dear readers! (Please tell me you totally got the Leslie Knope reference here.) Aaaaanyway all this romantic hullabaloo has me thinking about a Valentine making kit I had when I was young. It was filled with scraps of (fake) Victorian ephemera, little photos, pieces of lace and doilies and plastic rhinestones with adhesive on the back (way to be authentic, kit-makers).
This little seed has had me pondering ephemera and the ephemeral… after all, that is what I spend my life making these days. Ephemera traditionally refers to printed paper material—things that don’t last. Ephemeral essentially means temporary, but in an age of instant messages, facebook photo albums and email, almost everything stays digital—it’s the printed material that we hold on to and treasure. We only print the truly special photographs, or the important documents we cannot afford to lose in a cluttered inbox. Hand written notes get tucked away into secret hiding spaces to be pulled out when we need to feel a connection perfectly typed words can’t provide.
This is really just a long-winded way of saying now that the ephemera I make might be treasured years into the future, I totally overthink what I’m designing. Is it timeless? Will it feel classic or dated a decade from now? Does that matter? After all, we make Valentines with aesthetics that went extinct more than a century ago, we collect antique dishware and glorify the ‘60s and ‘70s, even though we wouldn’t be caught dead in Technicolor bell bottoms.
And maybe that’s part of the point—to capture a bit of the time period and remind us of what we thought was cool, even thought it’s not any more. (And who knows, if you wait long enough, it probably will be again! See: shoulder pads, neon, bow ties, mustaches…)
And so (here’s the part where I stop rambling and get to the point), with my new collection launching next week, I tried to design for how I’m feeling now, in early 2015, and not worry so much whether I’ll like these designs three years from now. And it feels like it worked. There’s a feeling of exuberance that my stationery hasn’t had up till this point. Letting go has released a sort of joy, which translates to the page, and is a good reminder for life. So while I’m still saving for retirement, I’m also trying to keep my mind in the present and live like life is ephemeral, because it is.
622 press | LETTERPRESS GOODS MADE BY HAND 