NSS Report: 10 Minutes After the Show

It is so funny how fast this show breaks down. Set up is over the course of two or three days, and it seems as if break down happens in like 5 minutes. The row carpeting is the first to go. Candie and I worked feverishly hard to move all of our furniture and products to the back corner of the booth in fear that the forklifts coming through later would have little care about our stuff (this is generally a good assumption, by the way). I waited with Brad from Maginating for about 3.5 hours for our crate to come back. We packed up, borrowed screws from whoever was around to fix the crate and reseal it, and then for good measure, pallet wrapped it. And then left it all lonely like in the middle of a decimated hall.

Here is the view of our row as we were leaving:

And here is the view of the lower numbered rows from our booth location:

All gone! Isn't it amazing how quickly the show breaks down?

I hope you enjoyed our coverage of the National Stationery Show! It's been quite the ride!

NSS Report: More Friends, Old & New

A wonderful part of the National Stationery Show has been getting to meet all the stationers that I have admired over the years. One such stationer is ilee, whose desk calendar is a constant awe-inspiring piece of ephemera. I had the pleasure of meeting Ja, designer and printer as she was based not too far from our corner:

Shelley of Albertine Press & Angela Ligouri were two rows down in their beautifully blue booth:

And across the way from Shelley and Angela were Joel and Lauren from Old Tom Foolery in a double-wide booth (so jealous of the double wide):

I have a soft spot for people named Joel, and Joel and Lauren were the greatest. I also had lots of fun with Shauna of Hello Lucky and made it a point to venture really far away just to see their booth. Shauna sent me home with all this Hello Lucky swag (well, Joel and Lauren stuck a bunch of their cards in my hands as well before I realized I was trying to LIGHTEN my load, not get free stationery).

Alison from Igloo Letterpress was a joy, and since she's got a Pasadena connection, she can be an honorary member of the Pasadena Letterpress Club:

And I cannot tell you how wonderful my 5 minutes chatting with Nicole from Nic Studio was. Twitter friends turned into real friends is super great. I feel like I have a a great new friend. Love Nic posing with our paper pinwheel:

I hope you enjoyed our trip our new friends through the National Stationery Show. I honestly didn't leave the booth enough, and I have more pictures of all these amazing booths than I've had time to sort through. Next up: NSS break down!

NSS Report: SoCal Letterpress Friends

What is kind of fun about the National Stationery Show is getting to hang out with your stationery colleagues for the better part of a week. We bump into each other a bunch here in southern California, but it was nice to see everyone's work displayed.

First and foremost is Maginating, based in Studio City. Brad of Maginating was so so helpful in actually getting Joie Studio to the National Stationery Show. And he was right across the aisle from us, which was absolutely wonderful:

Annika from DeMilo Designs of South Pasadena was one row over from us with her eco-friendly, fair trade paper and her wonderful letterpress designs:

Joie Studio friends and fellow Pasadena-letterpress printers Ken and Shino from Fugu Fugu Press:

And new friend Theresa from b. t. elements, also based in Pasadena:

Theresa was repping Papermum Press from Arcadia:

I missed taking a picture of Anemone Letterpress at the Ladies of Letterpress booth. What's kind of funny is that people kept stopping by and saying, "Wow, there are so many letterpress printers from Pasadena!" And I was just rolling with it for awhile until I realized that there were only three of us there - Joie Studio, Fugu Fugu, & Anemone. I mean, four if you count DeMilo from South Pasadena, but there were at least as many letterpress printers from Brooklyn there at NSS. Next post will be some of Joie Studio's new friends from other states at NSS.

NSS Report: A Built & Dressed Booth!

Okay, so my report of the National Stationery Show majorly stalled. But I blame my 2 year old son, who came home with the nastiest stomach bug and proceeded to infect the whole household, dog included, with it. But I'm back, barely. And I showed you our NSS booth setup, here it, finally, the booth, all set up.

Before the show, my friend Carl and I adhered all the vinyl decals (not an easy task), and at the show, Candie and I adhered the acrylic logo. GAWD I'm still aflutter about how great Joie Studio's logo looks:

The card wall:

And Candie and me, taken by our good friends at Fugu Fugu Press:

NSS Interlude: It wasn't all work...

New York wasn't all work - Candie and I made time Saturday before the National Stationery Show to go to lunch at the acclaimed 3-Michelin star restaurant Jean Georges. We literally went to Javits in the morning, worked on making the booth pretty, took a cab to lunch, and then walked the mile back to Javits to finish our setup. It was totally worth it. I'll admit to being a closet foodie. I've eaten at my fair share of 1-star and 2-star restaurants, but Jean Georges is my first 3 star restaurant. And their lunch deal was hard to beat - $32 for 2 courses. AMAZING for such a high caliber restaurant. Here's my attempt at food blogging.

The dining room is small, with the focal point being this huge octopus of a light fixture:
We start with the amuse bouche, which was some sort of pasta bite, a canape, and "to finish" carrot water:
The order to eat the amuse bouche was exactly that. Taken out of order, I think the carrot water's lingering flavor would have been weird with the other tastes. And I will tell you - that little morsel of pasta goodness was a real party in my mouth. I could not stop thinking about it the entire meal, and that's saying something.

Candie ordered the tuna ribbons, which were AMAZING. I'm from Hawaii, I've had lots of raw tuna, so the item didn't interest me so much, but this tuna was AMAZING:
I ordered the soft shell crab - yum - the flavors weren't as assertive as the tuna but still really good:
Candie ordered the beef. The meat, she said, was average, but the sauce underneath was mind-blowingly delicious (I can attest, I tried it):
I rarely get the chance to order veal sweetbreads, and since it was on the menu, I had to have it. The sweet chili sauce underneath had just the right amount of heat. I did, however, second guess getting two deep fried items for lunch once the sweetbreads came out. I don't think I thought that one through so much. Whatever. It was delicious delicious delicious:
I have a general aversion to fine dining desserts (except at the Dining Room in Pasadena under Chef Strong - best dessert EVER) where I think it's too high concept and not enough OMG OMG OMG YUM, so we waited for another table to get dessert to see their reaction before deciding. It didn't seem orgasmically good (they were just eating it like...eh...dessert) so we decided to skip it. Besides, thanks to Patina in LA, I have a strong strong preference for those fancy marshamallows at the end:
Lavender macarons (a little too sweet and floral for me) rather reinforced my opinion about not getting dessert. Although the marshmallows at Jean Georges were really high caliber. I am a huge fan of gourmet marshmallows!

Hope you enjoyed our little food trek in NYC!

NSS Report: Booth Setup Day 1

Hey all! So day 1 of booth building is done. We've gone from booth building at home (picture above) to actually building it at Javits (below):
We successfully opened the crate, put up the walls, put down the carpet, build the furniture. Yay! Tomorrow we shall deal with product and Sunday the show begins! Yay! Gonna do some work now. An exhibitor's work is never done until we're done exhibiting!

NYC or Bust!

The crate left early last week, and I'm leaving tomorrow. We're on our way to the National Stationery Show! Yay! Wish us luck! Either Candie or I will report back once we get situated in New York City!

Invitation Crush's Wedding Invitation Lookbook

Open publication

I'm totally crushing on Invitation Crush's brand new first annual wedding invitation lookbook! I posted it here from the ever awesome Issuu for your viewing pleasure. You can spy two Joie Studio invites and three Toast to Joie invitations, which is totally awesome.

Thank you, Kristen, for putting this together!

NSS Preview: NSS Promotional Mailer

So if you follow Joie Studio on Twitter, you'll maybe guess that all us independent letterpress studio tweeps are just a little obsessed about the National Stationery Show. And one of the aspects we have griped about over the last week or two are the NSS promotional mailers. I didn't want to ruin my own reveal to those that received the mailer (sorry, friends in Canada! next year I'll figure out mail merge a little better to include foreign locations!). My mailer consisted of a letterpress piece and a bunch of postcards. I think the letterpress piece is stunning. So here I am sharing. It's based on two different train ticket designs I've done over the last couple years. I kind of wanted to give people a "Joie Studio ticket" to our booth at the National Stationery Show. I hope you like it!

I'll tell you, I wanted the mailer to be a little more extravagant but I'm glad I refrained. The result is simply beautiful letterpress.

If you'll be at the National Stationery Show, please stop by booth #1963 to say hello!

NSS Preview: Toast to Joie Invitations & Favors

As the preparations for the National Stationery Show continue, Michelle from Shop Toast and I decided to participate in the BizBash gift bag. To show how beautifully the favor and invitation go together, we decided to do a invite/favor set for the gift bag. Michelle & Jeremy sent up 100 tiki aloha wood stumps as well as custom printed labels and I paired them with the matching Toast to Joie Tiki Aloha invitation, packed them into individual bags and sent them on their merry way. There's a sweet little macadamia nut cookie inside of Mr. Tiki, so I hope they enjoy! I have to say, the mailing seemed to quadruple in size as soon as I started individually packaging them.

Hope you enjoyed the little sneak peek! Back to work with me! More soon!