Printable Fall Bucket List!

Labor Day is behind us, which means it’s time to bring on ALL THE FALL THINGS! Pumpkins! Apples! Plaid! Now that my kids are back in school, I’m definitely looking forward to sweater weather, colorful leaves, and fall harvest festivals. I teamed up with the super talented ladies of Ampersand Design Studio to create this printable fall bucket list that we can all fill with our favorite fall activities. Let the fall festivities begin!

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

It’s funny to me now, but I used to not be a huge fan of fall! Winter is my least favorite season, and I always felt this impending sense of doom and gloom when fall rolled around. But fall has definitely grown on me over the last few years! Maybe it’s having kids and seeing the joy of changing leaves and Halloween and hay mazes through their eyes? I’m not really sure! But I do definitely love the cool and crisp fall air and zero humidity. More of that, please.

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

I’m absolutely LOVING this colorful design from Ampersand Design Studio – you may be seeing some of these fun shapes on a pumpkin in the not-too-distant future! And how fun is the non-traditional color palette? It’s perfect for the transition from summer into fall. And of course there are plenty of spots to fill with all the things you love doing in the fall, from roasting s’mores to fall foliage nature hikes!

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

I have a whole bunch of activities that I’ve been saving for the cooler weather, from taking our kids to watch airplanes take off and land at a park near the airport to visiting my favorite flower gardens when they’re bursting with fall colors. I can’t wait!!

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Ready to make your fall bucket list? Just download the printable file below and print it at home or at your local copy and print shop. I recommend printing on a bright white card stock so you get all the true colors in the design, ideally 80 lb paper weight or higher so it’s sturdy enough to hang on your wall!

Printable Fall Bucket List / Ampersand Design Studio for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Do you have any favorite fall traditions to suggest? Our fall traditions usually involve colorful leaves and baking, but I’d love to hear how your family celebrates this fabulous season!

Download the printable fall bucket list right here!

p.s. DIY colorful Halloween treat bags and DIY Matisse-inspired pumpkins!

All artwork © 2018 Ampersand Design Studio created exclusively for Oh So Beautiful Paper. All artwork is made available for personal use only. By downloading the patterns you agree to the terms of use.

Photos by Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

Jenna from Paper Wilderness joins us on this installment of Behind the Stationery from Long Beach, California. Her stationery collections bring together lively watercolor illustrations and puns galore, and she makes it work all right out of her living room apartment! She’s here to share how her artwork went from a side hustle to her full-time job and how she maintains that handmade feel in her line. —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

From Jenna: I’ve been drawing and painting ever since I could pick up a pencil and always knew I’d be some kind of artist. In 2010, the question of what exactly I’d be doing was definitely on my mind as I was about to graduate from CSU Long Beach with a BFA in Illustration. I’ve always had a deep appreciation for actually putting a paintbrush to paper, traditional art methods where you really have to commit to every brushstroke, and for me that was watercolor painting specifically. Yet in an increasingly technological society, where a large portion of art is created digitally, I was uncertain if my work would have any place in today’s art world.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

Meanwhile, I’d been hand painting greeting cards for friends and family for years, and usually customized them with their favorite animal and a punny phrase. Everyone loved the cards and I discovered that they’d often get framed. Shortly after I graduated college, I got the opportunity to have a table at a small local art walk. While brainstorming ideas of what to sell at my table, I realized that my greeting cards were always well received and would be the perfect, affordable piece of art to sell. So I drew ten animals wearing party hats, traced each drawing onto cards, and hand painted every one! The cards sold out and I was addicted to the feeling that people actually wanted to buy my art. (Fun fact: a few cards from this first Party Animals series are still in my line to this day!) This little hand-painted side hustle continued for a while where I sold framed paintings, brooches, cards, and anything I wanted to experiment with at the occasional art walk, just as an artist with a hobby and not a business.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

Eventually I realized that my unique watercolor greeting cards were the obvious draw and that I wanted to make an actual business out of it, and Paper Wilderness was born in 2014. Hand painting each card was not a sustainable option anymore (ha!) so after printing in-house for a few years I recently found a couple amazing printers who digitally print our goods now. Having inventory on hand to pull from has been amazing.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

I run the business out of the dining room of my apartment in Long Beach, California and space is a little tight but I make it work. Paper Wilderness revolves around my lifelong love of animals, so every design is animal and nature based. I feel like animals and the natural world are a universal love language, symbols of purity that every human can appreciate and admire. That’s why they’re the perfect subjects for my work and goal of uniting people and encouraging communication and togetherness.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

My cards usually involve some kind of pun too because I will always appreciate a good dad joke. Working from home while my bunny Lou Lou hops around is a constant source of cute inspiration so she’s got me covered on that front. The rest of the inspiration I get is from zoo trips, National Park visits, old illustrated textbooks, animal encyclopedias, and nature shows like Blue Planet. I love featuring obscure animals in my designs! The Notes app on my phone is full of snippets of funny conversations, cool animals to draw, and ideas for future cards.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

All my work begins as a pencil sketch in my favorite mixed media sketchbook. Once I’m happy with the sketch, I ink it with waterproof Micron pens and watercolor paint over that inked illustration. Next I’ll experiment with hand lettering until I find a style that feels right for the card or product I’m designing, and that gets lettered in my sketchbook or piece of tracing paper. Then I scan everything into Photoshop, clean them up a little, lay it out, and it’s ready for production!

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

I just love how every single product exists on an actual piece of paper somewhere in my studio. I think this handmade process lends a certain intimate feeling or emotion to my work, which is definitely what I’m going for. I want my customers to feel like my own friends and family did when I first started, like I made this card just for them.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

Paper Wilderness is a one-woman-show so every day is different. Whatever needs to happen gets tackled one task at a time, whether that’s packing up retail and wholesale orders, painting new illustrations, answering emails, checking inventory, bookkeeping, updating websites, or prepping for craft and trade shows. I just debuted my line at the National Stationery Show back in May and it was amazing! My business has slowly evolved into the hand painted, hand lettered watercolor paper goods studio it is today and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Behind the Stationery: Paper Wilderness

All photos courtesy of Paper Wilderness.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.

September 2018 Wallpapers!

Well hello there! Happy September everyone! Did you have a restful Labor Day weekend? I’m personally wishing it could have been just ONE day longer, but it was still a lovely weekend. Anyway, after our August hiatus, I’m excited to jump back into things with some brand new wallpapers! Oh, and guess what?? Starting this month, we’re introducing iPad wallpaper sizes! I’m admittedly a bit late to the iPad train, but we finally got one before traveling to Iceland and I realized how badly I needed a cute wallpaper for the home screen. So here you go! We’ve got three beautiful designs from Copper Paper Co. and Australian stationer In the Daylight – pick your favorite below, or download a couple options for different devices!

September Rainbow Wallpaper / In The Daylight for Oh So Beautiful Paper

iPhone | iPad | Desktop

September Floral Wallpaper / Copper Paper Co. for Oh So Beautiful Paper

iPhone | iPad | Desktop

September Rose Wallpaper / Copper Paper Co. for Oh So Beautiful Paper

iPhone | iPad | Desktop

For personal use only. All illustrations by In the Daylight and Copper Paper Co. for Oh So Beautiful Paper

p.s. If you’re interested in walking down memory lane a bit, here are the wallpaper designs from September 2017, September 2016, and September 2015!

If you’re a designer or illustrator interested in contributing your own designs to this column, please email your design to hello(at)ohsobeautifulpaper.com with the subject line “desktop downloads” and image files in both desktop and iPhone retina screen sizes. If it’s a good fit I’ll add it to the post for the following month!

Friday Faves + August Hiatus

Tick Tock Press: Cancelling Plans Card

Card by Tick Tock Press

Happy Friday everyone! This has been a whirlwind of a week for my little household. On Monday, we returned from a 6-day trip to Iceland (!!) – I’m planning to edit our photos from the trip and share our recommendations next month, but in the meantime you can check out some highlights on Instagram here. This was also our last week of summer vacation for our two girls. My older daughter starts first grade on Monday, and my younger daughter has her first day of PreK4 on Thursday! (DC offers public preschool beginning at three years old). For the next couple of weeks, I’ll be on my annual summer hiatus to get my girls settled at school and take care of a few odds and ends at home – we’ll be back with fresh new posts after Labor Day!

In the meantime, I’ve been doing a bit of early fall shopping. I’m so ready for sweater weather! I’m loving all the sweaters at Boden this season, particularly this ruffled sweater, this pale pink sweater (and lots of other colors) with contrasting sleeve detail, and this super cute sweatshirt. I’m also loving this cute polka dot skirt and this paperbag skirt (it looks SO good with boots!!)

So excited to be hosting our very first paper flower workshop at Common Room Studio! You can sign up right here!

I want to go to this summer golden hour dinner party!

Statement earrings! Loving these fringey hoops and these tiered tassel earrings from Madewell (on sale for only $17!) and these tortoise shell earrings from J.Crew.

Have you seen the preview of Color Factory in NYC? It looks so great! I can’t wait to see it in person next month – you can get tickets right here!

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

Hey everyone! It’s been a hot summer in many places so I thought it only fitting to pull some inspiring calligraphy work with a true summertime vibe. Here’s a look at the work of Li Ward Calligraphy. I love the mix of her lettering work and watercolor and illustration, and how each wedding suite looks so fitting for the destination. With that, let’s grab a lemonade and check out Li’s beautiful calligraphy! Jen

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

Photo Credit: Cambria Grace Photography

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

On how she got her start, Li shares:

I started calligraphy about 6 years ago, using traditional pens with nibs that you dip into ink. I started doing spot lettering for other stationery designers whose clients requested some hand lettering for their invitations. Two years ago when I began dabbling in watercolors, I decided to go “full service” with invitation design: I would take care of not just lettering, but full design which would include watercolor illustrations, hand lettering, envelope liner design, paper choice, and printing.

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

What inspires Li? She gets inspiration from Jane Austen, scratchy old-fashioned script, Edward Gorey’s irreverent sense of humor, Matisse’s bold color palettes, stained glass designs — just to name a few. “I’m still really new to this and constantly trying new things out,” says Li.

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

“One of my favorite suites is the Catskills wedding suite (Zoe and Sam), which included Save the Dates, folded maps, and illustrated menus,” says Li. “The couple had already commissioned Happy Menocal to design their crest. Happy just happens to be one of my favorite artists, so I was really thrilled when they asked me to design the rest of the suite that would complement Happy’s design. I took inspiration from Edward Gorey’s illustration style and Happy’s of course, threw in block font mixed with cursive, went with a more is better frame of mind. And it’s kind of been the basis of my style going forward. I’m definitely all about bold colors and shapes!”

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

As much as I love Li’s illustration work, I’m also a big fan of this kraft brown wedding suite she designed. The white lettering on kraft brown paper has a modern organic vibe that feels casual, yet cool.

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

Inspiring Calligraphers: Li Ward Calligraphy

Another favorite style? Li loves to do “seamless” designs. “If you were to put two cards side by side, the design from one card would match up with the design on another,” says Li.

Big thanks to Li Ward for sharing a a peek into her world of lettering!

All photos by Li Ward, except where noted

Want to be featured in our calligraphy column? Reach out to us at submissions [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com with the subject line “Calligraphy Feature” for more details!