Giant Gnome Design

I was recently downtown and came across an unusual sidewalk vendor: Giant Gnome Design. The designer and his girlfriend had a small table set up on Grant St., not far up from the opera singers (who were out singing, full force, on Maiden Lane), selling greeting cards - a welcome respite from all the jewelry, leather cuffs and knitted baby hats. I love that several of the cards feature local spots.

 

Perhaps even more interesting than Giant Gnome's street presence is their Card Gnome venture, set up like a stationary store with shelves to browse through. Though the experience is virtual - you pick a card and write a personal message - they will prep and physically send the card in the mail to your recipient, postage included.

*All photos from Giant Gnome Design's etsy shop

Mother's Day Cards from Rifle Paper Co.

Rifle Paper Co. has the prettiest Mother's Day cards this year. So pretty, in fact, that I can't show the one I'll probably buy for my mom... just in case she reads this.

But here are some other options:

And for the mothers who love to cook... they make pretty cute recipe cards:

These cards are printed by a husband-wife team, Anna and Nathan Bond, based on Anna's hand-painted illustrations. While not letterpress, they are beyond lovely. I rather like the personalized calling cards and notes in their botanical prints.

Guest posting today at Muse Silk Paintings!

Thanks to Angel of Muse Silk Paintings who invited me to post over here today. Less a sneak preview and more #11 on my 10 stylish stationary finds:

are these Gracias Cactus Letterpress note cards from delphine STUDIO. I just love them; they're stylish, but also fun and not too fancy. Just in time for the weekend, right? Thanks for visiting me at Muse Silk Paintings, and have a wonderful Friday, all.

send a card to soldiers overseas.

Regardless of your politics, this is a pretty nice thing to do.

The Xerox Let's Say Thanks Program takes cards designed by children and lets you select and personalize one, which Xerox then prints and sends to a member of the US Armed Forces. The process is very, very easy. All they ask is to enter your first name, city & state, and to select from one of quite a few pre-written messages of thanks.



It's not a Christmas card, and you may lean fervently toward pacifism (as I do), but my brother served in the Navy, and risked his life at times, and I am very thankful for his service and his safety.

falling in love with fifi lapin.

Sfgirlbybay guest blogger anh-minh wrote yesterday about decorating one's house with fashion illustrations, cheaply found second-hand. At the bottom of her post she also included some other illustrations, including this:


If you know me at all, this is pretty much the best fashion illustration I've ever seen. Immediately I followed the links to the Fifi Lapin Shop.

Lapin is French for rabbit. Here at home with me, I have an 11-year-old rabbit named Simon. I think Simon could have a little crush on Fifi and her cute outfits.






Fifi also travels:



Moreover, while you can purchase nice prints of these illustrations and photos, you can also purchase ... yes, greeting/post cards.


As my final aside, I've also had my eye on this rabbit illustration by eekdesign on etsy:


I'm trying to think of what Simon would wear if he wore clothes... I think maybe a cool old-timey hat.

harder than it sounds.

Cards with quotes and inspirational sayings are fairly common. This is one I came across recently that I really liked, at a wonderful little local bookstore called Thidwick Books. I also love the vintage feel to the design.

This card was printed by Found Image Press.

the card society: october

One last post for the month... on the final day of October, my final installment of cards from The Card Society arrived.


I loved getting cards in the mail each month, and have since seen satsuma press offer something similar. But for me, the time to print my own is getting a bit closer, so... time to save my pennies.

happy halloween!

I love this letterpress card by Hello! Lucky, inspired, at least a little, by Dia de los Muertos:


San Francisco's annual procession happens on Monday, November 2, 2009 at 7pm at 24th & Bryant Streets, in the Mission District of San Francisco.

polaroid notes.

Polaroids are experiencing a sort of Renaissance right now, even as the remaining stock of film is pretty expensive. I never had my own Polaroid camera, although my mother managed to score some cameras and film for our wedding:

(photos by our photographer, Pei-Pei Ketron of Penelope's Loom)

We had our guests take pictures of themselves with the cameras and slide them into a guestbook, where they also wrote a note. It was really successful and fun to look through later.

Polaroids remain popular, I think, because they capture the mood or feelings of a moment. The minute details of an image become less important, and certainly less clear. A Polaroid is like a memory; fuzzy but evocative. So, what could be better than the marriage between Polaroid photos and note cards?

Chronicle Books has released a curated set of Polaroid photos as note cards. Here's a little preview of some of my favorites:





Even better, these Polaroid notes by Fieryeyed Photography on Etsy, are images of Italy, which is still my reigning favorite country despite not having been in 10 years. I came across these thanks to Pia Jane Bijkerk's blog.


As much as I love letterpress printing, there are some things a platen press just can't do.

the good folks at volta press.

Laureen Mahler and John Peck are the soon-to-be-married(!) duo behind Volta Press. They have a Vandercook set up in their great studio space in Oakland, where they also work on their literary journal: Beeswax Magazine.

Laureen and I worked on our graduate degrees in writing at California College of the Arts, so it has been fun to keep up with her literary projects, as well as her letterpress venture. They invited me to their studio yesterday and walked me through how to order and use a Boxcar base, how to prep Illustrator files for plate-making, how to order and even set up the plates on the Boxcar base. Since I will only be printing from plates, as opposed to lead type or wood blocks, learning about the process was pretty much, to be dramatic, like being given the Holy Grail. To be less dramatic, they saved me a lot of time and mistakes.

Volta Press has an etsy shop, filled with fun products -- and they do custom work as well.

I am in love with their latest set of cards (all photos by Volta Press):




I might have bought a few... A big thanks to Laureen and John for their time and expertise!

the card society: august

As previously reported, I signed up for a 3-month membership to The Card Society. After signing up, I got a welcome/confirmation email from none other than Mav, one of the ladies behind the blog I like, 3191, which sort of felt, in a small way, like being contacted by a celebrity. I sometimes forget that the bloggers I admire are writing from home, managing their own blogs, etc.


A few days later, on a rainy Saturday after a fantastic (and uncommon) early morning thunder & lightening storm, the first installment of cards arrived, having traveled from Maine to California. The theme: sea life, somewhat appropriate given the wet weather.


The seaweed is actually a photo on a postcard, while the other two are printed by letterpress. It's always interesting for me to see what's printed on the back of a card, how deep the impression is, how detailed the lines are, etc. Plus it was fun to get something in the mail - sort of like sending myself a card!

the card society.

It may be that no one else finds this as interesting or as exciting as I do, but I stumbled across a link to the card society on a blog I love: 3191 miles apart.

Imagine this: like any wine or coffee club, or books or CDs-by-mail, this is a society(!) for those who like letterpress greeting cards. I guess this proves the world and Internet are truly full of anything one can imagine. If you join, you receive two cards a month by mail, and they are unique, limited edition, and exclusively available only to society members. Memberships are available by increments of one, three, six and twelve-months.

Obviously, given this new venture of mine, I have to sign up!

reconnaissance mission:

Reconnaissance missions usually require the gathering of information about an enemy, but my informal and spontaneous little mission was quite the opposite. I set out over lunch yesterday, ostensibly to return something to Radio Shack, and to pick up a birthday card for my husband's younger brother. By the time I returned home, I had 11 new cards, and none for the intended recipient.

But I love discovering new card makers - whether they are new on the block, or just new to me. Everyone has such different, creative ideas and ways in which to view the world.

I especially liked Tomoko Maruyama, who has a fun San Francisco series, and some really great cards for expectant mothers. (And in my life, 'tis the season of baby showers!)



Another favorite (from Park Life) were by Yellow Owl Workshop:



Finally, and last but not least, Hamburgerpanda scores points for their name alone, but also for this:


Actually, none of the cards were printed by letterpress, and the fact that I bought only cards made by local or small/independent artisans was also by chance - they were simply the cards I liked the best.

The highlight of the shopping excursion was talking to a woman at Cherish, and finally having the courage to ask: Where and how do you buy your cards? She was really helpful and encouraging and provided a wealth of information, as a starting point. Plus an invitation to come back with my cards someday down the line!

once upon a time...

There were calling cards and regular correspondences via handwritten letters. Paper was handmade, and people used natural objects: feather, ink, wax.


Letters have a romantic quality, and are undoubtedly personal -- one hand grazing the paper as it writes, another hand opening the letter once it has arrived, the individual shapes of a person's alphabet, and the places where mistakes are still visible. Letters carry the evidence, perhaps, of the journey: water stains, folded corners.

Letter-writing is by no means a lost art, only a more expensive one. Fine recycled papers and eco-savvy inks, rising postage, and most especially, time, can be hard to come by.

Still, isn't it lovely to open the mail and find an envelope that doesn't contain a bill or an advertisement? The greeting card, the notepad, carefully designed gift wrap--they may not be necessary, but aren't they nice and easy on the eye?

This blog is about paper, and about the process of creating letterpress cards, and seeing where it goes. I am a writer by trade, but one creative endeavor seems to beget another, and so I'm trying out a new venture, just for fun, in whatever spare time I can make.

Expect things to change. The logos here are a work-in-progress collaboration with my brother, Andrew, who recently graduated with his art degree from San Jose State University, and who is hard at work on a fledgling silkscreen printing business. The name 'sublime' has a sentimental inspiration from my own college days, but is mainly inspired by a photograph. We're currently at work transforming that photo into a graphic. Plus, I like the idea of something tart and cheeky, and using a nice chartreuse.