Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Today’s installment of Behind the Stationery takes us to Michigan with Kristen Drozdowski of Worthwhile Paper! The beginnings of Worthwhile Paper started by happenstance when they had some extra space screen printing a poster. I’m excited for Kristen to share her unique story about how she dreamt of her business name (and it stuck!), details into her screen printing design process, what inspires her art, and her goals for 2018. Take it away, Kristen! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

From Kristen: Starting Worthwhile Paper happened organically for me like a story of cause and effect. I first discovered my passion for making cards and smaller prints almost by accident — by using the extra space on a screen when printing a poster. There were a few inches left in the layout of a poster my husband and I were screen printing so I squeezed some little positive sayings on the side and we cut them into postcards. We took them to one of our first local craft fairs and the little positive cards went over well, but more importantly I found myself connecting with the shoppers more over the positive cards than anything else. It made me feel happy and human to make connections like that, which sparked my idea of making more cards.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Shortly after, I had this dream that I had my own card line and was telling someone in my dream that it was called Worthwhile Paper. I woke up thinking it was such a dorky name, but a little later when I sat down to name my business it just held on. There is this very real idea that sometimes the things that require more thought or work are the most worthwhile things, like climbing a mountain and getting to the top, doing a really long yoga practice to get to the other side of your sense of self, or going through all of the work it takes to screen print cards! It continues to fuel my work. One of my favorite things about Worthwhile Paper is that it is a business that I get to do with my husband. It has been such an adventure for us, a designer and printer love story, and he has been supportive in so many ways along the journey – always encouraging me and helping me feel empowered as a business owner.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Worthwhile Paper is a collection of lively screen printed paper goods for lovers of nature, magic and meaningful design. We are a wife + husband team who love to create beautiful print work to share with others. Everything we make is drawn and lettered by hand and screen printed with earth-friendly papers and inks. Featuring a unique blend of nature and minimalism, our designs carry a goal to truly bring some positivity and love into the world through meaningful connections – whether that is a personal reconnection to nature or a connection between two people.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

My love for the design and print world feels like it was always here, but really took root for me in college. I was always incorporating hand drawn lettering and designs into my work and I learned how to screen print. Finding this path was more of a process of elimination and discovery than anything else – I had so many interests when it came to what I wanted to do with my design background and I tried to explore them all. At one point, I had two part-time jobs (both in the design industry) and on the side I was taking on freelance design jobs, doing calligraphy for wedding invitations, designing gig posters, and exploring more with personal side projects. But as my schedule shifted after becoming a mom I became stressed in keeping up with everything and I slowly and intentionally started dropping away from the types of work I was offering starting from my least favorite, and eventually dedicated myself to pursue Worthwhile passionately and fully.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Last summer I made the exciting jump to move Worthwhile out of our house and into its own separate space. I found this amazing building nestled in between houses hiding behind pine trees and a wooden fence — so, not quite a store front but not totally hidden either. I walked inside this place and immediately felt at home. Sprinkled with windows with natural light pouring in and the perfect shade of warm white paint on the walls, it was practically made for us, and at this point I am still in denial that I actually get to work here. Inside lives my drawing studio, office, our wholesale inventory and shipping area, and a large area in the middle that during non-working hours we call “The Guest Room” – our workshop space.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

We have been hosting a variety of creative workshops here including my own design and lettering workshops as well as other crafty events for beginners like weaving, macrame, and terrariums. We’ve been having open shop events and appointment based shopping hangouts with local customers too, and it has been so fun to be able to have a physical space to bring people together. It excites me! Where we print is not a far trek — just down the road is VGKids, the screen printing shop my husband co-owns. They screen print a variety of wonderful things but their specialty is large scale art posters and tee shirts. We print all of our own things there when a press opens up or on the weekends.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

During the day at the studio I am usually either drawing, finishing designs on my computer, making layouts, attending to emails, bookkeeping, taking styled photos for social media, and making tea (and then forgetting about it until it’s too cold). I have a few super amazing women working for me too, to help with managing our wholesale accounts, updating spread sheets, pulling orders and packaging our items. I am so grateful to have a team, I couldn’t keep up at this point without them.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

I am always thinking of ideas. Sometimes when I start a design, it feels like the end of a process instead of a beginning because the idea may have been living in my head for a whole year or so! If you spied on my phone and went through the notes app, you would find hundreds of one line ideas or phrases that pop into my head that I jot down there. (I’m guilty as ever for using my phone instead of a notebook, don’t send the paper police). Once I’ve reached the point where I want to start bringing some ideas to life, I will start with small, very fast thumbnail sketches. This allows me to get the ideas of how I want a design layout to be quickly without judgement about details.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Then, I work up toward a more finalized design in pencil, using a light tablet to trace over and make revised copies until I get to an original that I draw either with black ink or a combination of black and colored gouache paint. Sometimes if I am working with multiple colors I like to make separate layers because that is how my screen printing brain works, and then I scan everything in, make the final layouts and choose ink colors via the Photoshop Pantone matching system, which is how we determine our screen printing inks.

My design process is usually a very fun and fulfilling challenge. Lately, bringing a collection together has become more slow and organic rather than strategic. For the collection of art prints that will come out soon for spring, I started by simply sitting down and drawing what I liked and wanted to explore. After I had a substantial amount of work, I laid it all out in front of me and chose what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to make out of it. To start, I usually draw from multiple points of inspiration. This ranges from inspiration from nature to deep inspiration that stems from feelings, or sometimes it’s more obvious inspiration from my existing work (maybe I tried something once and want to expand upon it, or there is a certain color palette I want to use more, or a theme/direction I want to pursue further). All in all, the inspiration that I find the most meaningful are my day to day interactions and emotions.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Phrases in my cards may have started as something I said out loud, wrote in a note once to someone, or something I wrote in my journal. It is really important to me that my approach as an artist who makes material things for sale isn’t centered around what I think will make me the most money or based on the most popular on-trend thing. When I am designing, I want it to feel real, so I always ask myself things like, “Who in my life would I send this card to right now? Where in my house would I hang this print? What would I use this notebook for?”. If the answer is nothing or nobody, than I scrap the idea. If I don’t want to use it, how can I assume anyone else will? It’s an easy game of “do I like this or do I not?”.

If I am being honest, the fact that anything I make resonates with anyone and makes them smile or feel happy truly feels like a gift. Sometimes I can’t believe that this is what I get to do for a living, and I am excited to continue growing and learning.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

The business end of this is fun and all, but I live for the times I am able to turn away from my computer and phone and just zone into the creative abyss in my plant-filled studio where engaging with technology is not allowed (unless you count my light tablet for tracing). I almost never even have a light on because the window light is my best friend. One of my struggles is wishing I had more time to just make art for art’s sake and explore creativity. It is so hard to break away from the mindset of making art that gets turned into a product. I have this deep desire to just make to simply make, to explore and use making as a way to learn things about myself and dig deep, but part of me feels this fear of not even knowing how to anymore.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

I know that even if I lived in a cave in the middle of nowhere I would find a way to make something and share it with someone. Maybe the desire to share is just something we have as humans, and it’s not all that bad. Nevertheless, I am really feeling a nudge to create more space for exploration and fun in the new year. I’ve been getting back into painting and I just installed a mini screen printing setup in the corner of my drawing studio. (Since we print in larger quantities of our products right now with legitimate professional equipment, I haven’t printed something by myself in years). In 2018, I’m looking forward to getting messy, and reuniting myself with the roots of my love for screen printing, and of course continuing to find inspiration for my card and print designs.

Behind the Stationery: Worthwhile Paper

Photos by Heather Nash Photography.

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

Pastel Mudcloth Inspired Wedding Invitations

Looking for some fun and modern wedding invitation inspiration with a twist? We’re loving these pastel mudcloth inspired wedding invitations from Taryn of Twinkle & Toast! Taryn mixed bohemian mudcloth inspired patterns with a non-traditional color palette of lavender, mauve, and dusty rose. Crisp white address stickers on colorful envelopes in shades of pink add a fun and modern touch to this modern bohemian beauty!

Pastel Mudcloth Inspired Wedding Invitations by Twinkle & Toast

From Taryn: Katie and Dylan were planning a summer wedding with around 300 guests. The bride loved feminine colors of lavender and blush and our brilliant event designer, Aly of Luna Wild Design, wanted to put an unexpected twist on this color concept. For the purples and pinks we went with dusty rose, mauve, and lavender. This color palette was fused with something modern and bohemian: bold black on bone hues, with funky mudcloth touches everywhere.

Pastel Mudcloth Inspired Wedding Invitations by Twinkle & Toast

The main invitation was letterpress printed in deep black ink on a 130# toothy lavender paper stock. The accompanying inserts were printed on a smooth ivory paper to give a little bit of softness. We incorporated custom hand drawn mudcloth details on the main invitation, RSVP card, and envelopes. To make things extra bold, all design and text was done in black ink and we created custom spot calligraphy combined with a clean sans serif font.

Pastel Mudcloth Inspired Wedding Invitations by Twinkle & Toast

There were two different dusty rose shades used for the envelopes: a darker mauve pink for the main envelope, and a lighter rosy hue for the RSVP envelope. To do something a little different, we created address label wraps for the main envelopes. This was black ink printed on an ivory smooth adhesive paper, custom cut to size. The front side displayed guest addresses, centered to the bottom right, and wrapped around with the return address. These were both a clean, modern accent and a very cost-effective solution for sending out close to 300 invitations!

Pastel Mudcloth Inspired Wedding Invitations by Twinkle & Toast

Overall their suite really captured the essence of their feminine, youthful, bold, modern, bohemian August wedding day. The varying shades of dusty rose were such a hit this year, and the refreshing bold mudcloth spin gave it something new and exciting!

Pastel Mudcloth Inspired Wedding Invitations by Twinkle & Toast

Thanks Taryn!

Invitation Design: Twinkle & Toast
Event Design: Luna Wild Design
Florals: Catalina Neal 
Ring Box: The Mrs. Box
Styling Surface: Simply Rooted Surfaces
Postage: Little Postage House

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Jenna Joseph

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations

These beautiful wedding invitations combine two major trends for 2018: Pantone’s 2018 Color of the Year (Ultraviolet!) and a beautiful vellum overlay! Victoria of Design House of Moira created these vibrant purple watercolor floral and calligraphy wedding invitations with intricate floral illustrations on handmade paper. And that gorgeous hand painted envelope liner! Such a fun way to bring rich color to a wonderful winter wedding.

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

From Victoria: The bride was torn between two different design paths: a simple suite with monochromatic lettering and artwork and something more moody to reflect the winter wedding…so we did both! She wanted to keep the invitation formal, elegant, and subtle while still incorporating some of the darker tones that reminded her so much of winter.

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

Created on Arpa paper, a Spanish handmade paper with gorgeous, soft deckling on the edges for a natural and organic look, we designed the main pieces of the suite with modern calligraphy, simple type, and line botanical artwork. To bring in the moody feeling, we created watercolor artwork in deep plums and burgundies as well as a contemporary landscape tree painting reflective of the bride and groom’s hometown and the views from the bride’s parents home, where the wedding was held. We incorporated the darker tones into the vellum overlay, envelope liners, and custom postage.

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

The save the dates were a tri-fold design, slipped into a small envelope lined with the berry artwork and bound with a thin band of vellum printed in the floral pattern. The ceremony program design, a personal favorite of mine, consists of a vellum cover and is on a smaller scale at 3×5 inches. The booklet was stitched along the spine in pale blush thread.

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

The entire suite was mailed with custom postage featuring two different artwork styles: one with the darker plum tones and one featuring the line botanicals used throughout the printed pieces. Each of the three envelopes in the suite featured different envelope liners: the save the date opened to the plum artwork, the reply card to the line botanical art and the main invitation featured the landscape painting in dark purple and plum hues.

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

All of the line and watercolor artwork and modern calligraphy was created by hand for this suite by Design House of Moira.

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations by Design House of Moira

Thanks Victoria!

Design & Calligraphy: Design House of Moira
Arpa paper: Orange Art

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Design House of Moira

Ten Awesome Valentine’s Day Cards!

Valentine’s Day is less than a month away, and love is in the air! Now for me, Valentine’s Day isn’t necessarily about being involved in a romantic relationship; it’s about telling all the people that matter in your life that you love them – from spouses and significant others to family members and dear friends. And if you can bring a smile to their faces by sending them a special card on Valentine’s Day, all the better! Here are a few favorite (and mostly non-sappy) Valentine’s Day cards for sharing the love!

Valentine's Day Card Round Up!

From top right:

1. Lovely letterpress printed card with a sweet and simple message from Dahlia Press

2. A very dapper lion from Rifle Paper Co. – my 3 year-old is obsessed with lions and would love this card!

3. This sarcastic candy heart card from Ash & Chess is the perfect card to give to your BFF

4. Beautiful hand drawn moons and stars in shiny hologram foil from Hello!Lucky

5. Goodness, if I love you even before I’ve had my coffee in the morning, then I must REALLY love you – from Pinwheel Print Shop.

6. Give this card from In the Daylight to the person that you love more than anything in the world! 

7. A modern black and white design with a sweet message in gold foil text from Ramona & Ruth

8. The sweetest rainbow card from Printerette Press! I also really love these letter writing sheets with “My Love” in gold foil – perfect for leaving little love notes around the house!

9. Telling someone they’re better than pizza is pretty much the highest compliment, yes? Give this Ashkahn card to your boyfriend, husband, or best friend!

10. Is there anything cuter than hand painted hearts? Love this colorful heart design from Lana’s Shop!

 

p.s. Last year’s Valentine’s Day card round ups: Valentines Day Cards for Friends and Romantic Valentines Day Cards

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations

The invitations from Rachel Kim of Fourteen-Forty include all the goodies: hand calligraphy, a wax seal, gorgeous vintage stamps, and spot illustrations. The classic and clean neutral palette with pops of blush and gold is the perfect choice for these Italian destination wedding invitations. Clean, classic, and executed to perfection!

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

From Rachel: Cayla and Brian celebrated the end of summer with their friends and family by planning a destination wedding in Ravello, Italy just above the Amalfi Coast. Ocean views and traditional Italian architecture made this wedding one of the most beautiful weddings we’ve ever seen!

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Cayla and Brian wanted to keep a neutral palette with touches of blush and gold here and there. After their very first meeting us, it was clear that their invitations would include all of our favorites: hand calligraphy, a wax seal, and vintage stamps. In keeping with the elegance of their venue, we went with a double thick letterpress invitation complete with gold edge painting for a little something special. To top it off, we designed a beautiful monogram using their first initials and tied all the pieces together with a blush ribbon. We like to think that any type of wrap whether it’s made of vellum, string or a bellyband makes guests feel like they’re unwrapping a present!

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

For their main envelope, we sourced a variety of travel inspired vintage stamps in shades of pink, red and burgundy. In addition to charcoal ink calligraphy, we sealed every invitation in our classic gold wax. As much as we love all the other colors we offer, you can’t go wrong with a gold seal!

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Day-of pieces like menus, programs, napkins, matches and welcome notes are opportunities to have a little more fun, especially for a more classic wedding. We always recommend a map and events card to our clients getting married abroad. They’re a great way to get your guests excited about the trip ahead! Cayla and Brian fell in love with our accordions and so we designed two different maps; one that gave guests a general idea of where Ravello is and another that combined the weekend events, transportation details, and hotel options.

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations by Fourteen Forty

Thanks Rachel!

Design: Fourteen-Forty
Planning: Exclusive Italy Weddings
Calligraphy: Papersoul

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Greg Finck