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 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!

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!

NSS Preview: Vintage Style Handkerchief Gift Set

This project has been sitting in the studio since last August, and I'm glad it is finally done! Awhile ago, I screenprinted by hand vintage style handkerchiefs with the beautifully romantic line from a classic Marlowe poem, "Come live with me and be my love." The handkerchiefs turned out beautifully. I letterpress printed the poem on a 4" x 6" piece of 100% cotton cardstock to accompany the handkerchief. I think this gift set makes a perfect anniversary gift for a first anniversary (paper) or second anniversary (cotton) especially, as a Valentine's Day gift, or for anyone who loves romantic poetry. It could also be part of an engagement. The possibilities are endless.

Here are some more pictures:

NSS Preview: Paper Pinwheels

Hello pinwheels! This project has been sitting in the studio for months now. I meant to have it for the holiday season and never got around to it. But now that I have die cut the paper, I rather wonder why I waited so long. The paper pinwheels bring such cheer to the studio!

The paper pinwheels are sold as kits of 8 pinwheels, and the kit comes complete with die cut, pre-punched pinwheels, shiny chrome brads, and pre-punched paper straw handles. They are available in 3 color combinations. I'll be bringing out letterpress pinwheels in the future, but for now, I hope these pretty paper pinwheels bring a smile to your face! Here are the different color options:

Option 1: Red/Orange with Red Straw Handle

Option 2: Lavender/Blue with Grey Paper Straw Handle

Option 3: Blue/Chocolate with Blue Paper Straw Handle

If you want a kit before they go on sale to the general public, just email me and I'll get one in the mail for you. They are $15 for a kit of 8.

Less than 2 months before the show...AACK!

Hello beautiful. Chris sent me more booth progress pics - I really love how the color is coming out. On the left is the final color, on the right is primer only. I have to admit, the primer only color is kinda Barbie. And I mean that in a good way. But I digress.

I believe I leave in 6 weeks for the show, and my whole timeline has been shot to hell but that's okay because somehow it always works out. Some progress points besides the walls -

• Booth flooring is here and is fabulous.
• The wedding catalog is designed and ready to go to the printers and the last of my gift products is being produced. The product catalog is awaiting photos of the last of the new gift products to be photographed.
  
• My wedding invitation binders, which are being custom made by my bookbinder friend, is near completion.
• I have the paper and have ordered the plates for my Stationery Show mailer. I've also in my nonexistent spare time compiled a list of about 300 retailers that will be receiving the mailing. If you have a shop in your area that you think might be a good fit for Joie Studio, please let me know!
• I cannot believe I am about to say this but the 2012 calendar is all designed and will be ready for the National Stationery Show.
  
• Booth graphics have been ordered. The guy doing the custom vinyl and acrylic sign work for me has assured me that he will show me how to apply the decals once they are done cutting.
  
• Shipping the crate has been arranged.

It's a lot of moving parts but so long as everything is moving forward, I'm feeling decent about my progress. It's also given me a chance to take a hard look at my process and has changed the way I produce my ready-made greetings line.

But the progress isn't without sacrifice. For those of you who are here on my blog because you are thinking of showing at NSS one day, here are the concessions I've had to make:

• In January, I cut my baby greetings and custom line out for 2011 because there was just too much going on already and I wanted to focus on the designs that I already had. They will be ready for debut in 2012 instead, leaving me more energy to focus on my wedding and greetings line.
  
• In January, my year and a half old baby had to switch from daycare part-time to daycare full-time. In March, he went from normal hours to extended hours at the daycare.
• My house is filthy because I don't have time to clean it.
• I need to bring in a second printer to help me complete all the projects in time for my clients and for the National Stationery Show.
• I have had to outsource die cutting because I don't have the time to set one of my presses up for die cutting right now.
• I was going to letterpress print the cover of each of the catalogs but that's not looking like it's going to happen anymore.
• I haven't slept more than 5 hours on any given night since January.

Progress is good and I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! Yay! More soon.

My, those walls are...uhm...

My friend Chris is building the booth walls for me for the National Stationery Show and he sent me this photo to share the progress he made after he primed the walls. I got excited, though everyone I've shown the pic to has second guessed the color.

"Doesn't it look awfully...magenta?"

It's because I had the paint store tint the primer. Years ago, we painted my kitchen a beautiful brick red. And it took something ridiculous like TEN coats to get the kitchen red and not pink. My good friend always blamed it on the fact that we didn't get tinted primer (Home Depot was certain that we didn't need tinted primer even though every single HGTV show insisted that when painting a dark color you need to start with a tinted primer), and so this time, since I want such a deep color for the booth walls, I insisted (and I had to INSIST) that they tint the primer to help along the painting. I also bought the paint with primer in it, in hopes that that particular formulation will help coverage. Let's hope that helps cut down the number of coats.

Anyhow, in case you are wondering, the walls are hinged wood panels to make it easier to ship. And Chris is easy to work with if you ever want him to build your booth walls for you. This should also make it easy for me to transport them and use them at Unique LA if I want.