Christmas in July

July 27, 2015July 23, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

I haven’t created many cards for the holiday season in recent years. New designs need to be printed months in advance in order to get them to wholesalers by fall and my brain just wasn’t good at coming up with Christmas ideas in the middle of a busy summer.

This year, however, is different. This is the first year where 622 press gets the lion’s share of my attention, which means I’ve spent the last few weeks adding to my holiday card collection! I’ve got them printed, folded, and photographed even—and my winter catalog is going out to wholesalers this week. Please leave a comment if you have a favorite local shop that should stock 622 press goods!

I won’t be listing the cards in my etsy shop for a few months, but if you’re feeling super Type A, get in touch to order yours! Here’s a sneak peek, just in case :)

Studio Update & a Sale!

July 18, 2015July 15, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

One of my favorite stockists got in touch just days after the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling a few weeks back. As we had many times before, she wanted to brainstorm some new card ideas to celebrate the wedding boom she saw in the near future, and I was all too happy to oblige!

I offered several ideas and she added a few of her own and as always, let me run away with the design. Some were simply variations on designs that already existed in the 622 press collection. Others were brand new and allowed me to show off my ever-growing collection of wood and lead type! I’m most excited about the congratulations cards below: I love the way they evoke the old-school letterpress style of shops like Hatch Show Print.

She also needed to restock on a fair number of best-sellers, and the result is my biggest wholesale order to date! I’ve been printing almost every day for weeks, and it feels great to be so busy.

This week is all about folding and packaging her order and photographing new designs to list in my etsy shop. Now I have to find a home for all these new designs! To help me clear some space in my stockroom, I’m offering 25% off purchases of in-stock merchandise through the end of the month! Just enter the code “622BLOGFOLLOWER” at checkout. Enjoy!

Christina & Micheal’s Villa Terrace Wedding

July 13, 2015June 29, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

Christina and Micheal got married at the end of June at Villa Terrace in Milwaukee. I love the design the couple’s brother/brother-in-law came up with: It’s modern while paying homage to their chosen venue and its current function as a decorative arts museum.We had to make a few tweaks to make them more letterpress-friendly, but overall they’re exactly as they envisioned.

I finished these several months ago (I like to keep invites under wraps until after the nuptials unless the couple says it’s ok!), and looking at them again has me excited to start printing next summer’s invitations! Getting married next summer? It’s not to early to get in touch! Visit the wedding stationery section of my etsy shop or get in touch for a custom design!

Postcards Posted

May 15, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

A few weeks ago (I’m going to take an aside here and apologize for beginning what seems like 99% of my blog posts this way. Letterpress is a long process and so by the time I finish the project and photograph it, several weeks or a month or two have always gone by, so it feels strange to pretend like I just did whatever it is I’m writing about. My apologies!)

Anyway, a few weeks ago, a student from the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) emailed to ask for some letterpress goodies to include in his senior show. His thesis was on moveable type and letterpress and he wanted to create a hand-out kit with a variety of examples. He mentioned past projects (business cards, wedding invites) were just fine, but almost all of those are created with a custom printing plate, not vintage type. The main thing I use my type for is greeting cards and coasters, but that would mean giving away several hundred dollars worth of merchandise—which is a big deal to a teeny tiny business like mine!

But I did want to help the guy out and I had been tossing around an idea for postcards for a couple weeks, so I decided that would be the project for him!

You all know I repurpose my practice printing paper over and over again, and then cut it up into tiny paper circles/confetti, 2-inch paper squares, gift tags and garlands. While printing this latest collection, I had a lot of what I refer to as “happy accidents”—designs that overlapped in a really interesting way or somehow worked together in a design, even though I hadn’t planned it.

I had been saving these pieces, not wanting to chop them up into little bits, yet they had too much already printed on them to use for practice sheets. So, I trimmed them up to a standard USPS post card size, used vintage lead type to print “Post card” and a dotted divider down the front, plus added my logo to designate where to place a stamp. Voila! The coolest post cards you’ve ever sent.

I sent most of them off to Ohio, but made a few extra sets and they’re now available in the shop. Pick some up now for quick notes, or they’re great to have on hand for summer vacation or when the kids go off to camp!

Love is Love

May 7, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

Before I moved to Bermuda, I got in touch with all my wholesale clients to see if they wanted to stock up. Not only did this save them on shipping costs for future orders, but it also meant I had less stuff to move.

One of the designs that completely sold out were my “congrats” icons. I had tried reprinting them during one my first press days here, but they’re a fairly temperamental design and things just weren’t working out. Since then I’ve been too busy to get to them!

But a few weeks ago during my printing frenzy for Driftless Studio, I also finally got all three designs on press. They’re available in the shop—hetero couple here, and same-sex couples here and here!