Tag: gift idea

April & May Card Club

~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

As I was putting together May’s Card Club a few weeks ago, I realized with all the new retailers, new projects and birthday fun, I forgot to post April’s edition! So get ready for a double feature, folks.

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April is National Letter Writing month, so I wanted to make sure to include a handful of my letterpress postcards—which are now sold out by the way!—as well as Mother’s Day and graduation cards so my subscribers are stocked up for early May.COTM_516_2428

For May’s bundle, I actually had a special request from a subscriber for more baby cards. So I added my awesome Holy Crap cards to the collection I had planned, and even more cards perfect for new parents will head out the door next month, so stay tuned! Want in on the action? Join the club here!

Pink Starfish Personal Stationery

~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

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A few months ago, a friend got in touch about a birthday present for his wife. She’s a list-maker like me, so he thought it would be cool to create personalized list-sized paper as well as stationery. She adores pink and starfish, so I immediately knew one of the vintage cuts Diane sent to me years ago would be perfect in a custom pink ink! We decided to add her initials in a brighter fuchsia and create two different designs that worked perfectly together.  I love how the set turned out, and so did she!

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Love Poetry Broadsides for Brain Mill Press

~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ 1 Comment

Now that the Etsy shop is closed up, I’m excited to share some of the commissions I’ve been working on! Truth be told, this project has consumed so much brain power over the last few months that I thought I’d already written about the first edition, but it turns out I haven’t, so here goes!

You all remember the limited edition of sweet little blind emboss prints I created for Brain Mill Press earlier this year, right? (If not, guess what? There’s a link right up there ^ ) Brain Mill Press is an independent publishing house in Wisconsin, started just a few years ago by two incredible women. They publish prose and poetry that offers an authentic view on the human experience—especially love. Please don’t let your mind go to tacky romance novels, though, these are incredible works by accomplished and novice writers alike.

Each publication is printed first in a fine art first edition, which comes with a special gift for the first 100 pre-orders. For a series of four poetry chapbooks, that special gift is a broadside designed and printed by yours truly!

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Each print features a commissioned illustration by Ann O’Connell and an excerpt from a poem hand-set in lead type. By some luck or fate, I just happened to have a font of lead type that is very similar to a typeface they were already using on their website! The drawer was fairly well stocked—meaning I have a lot of letters—but the poems were longer than I expected, so I ended up having to print each one in several sections as I ran out of certain characters, which was a bit of a challenge.

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Tanka, Seaborgium and The Presentation are finished and delivered, and I have one more to print in early January! I just love how they’ve turned out so far, I roughed up a digital design before I began each one, but nothing compares to the letterpress printed project: The paper is so luxe, the type has a great bite… they’re lovely. In fact, I’m considering hanging an extra Artist’s Proof (the not-quite-perfect prints that didn’t make it into the edition) of all four in our guest bedroom!

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I will be finished with this project in about a month, so if you’re interested in commissioning something similar, please get in touch!

November Card Club

~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

Well, Halloween has come and gone so it’s officially ok for me to start posting holiday goods! It was all I could do to keep them under wraps this year. As holidays go, Halloween is one of my favorites, but business-wise, there’s just no beating Christmas!

COTM_1115_9657First up, of course, is November’s card club! I got these in the mail last week, so my subscribers should have plenty of time to write family and friends a heartfelt note. I hate Black Friday traffic and the terrible qualities it brings out in my fellow humans, so I that’s the day I usually spend writing cards. What are your holiday card writing traditions?

Need to pick up some holiday cards? Find these designs and more here! Want to join the 622 press Card Club? Join here. A subscription also makes a great gift!