2018 Gift Guide: Gift Ideas for Creatives

We’re kicking off our first official gift guide of the season with some gift ideas for creatives! I did things a bit differently this year and asked for input through Instagram stories – and you guys all had some really great suggestions! We’ve got a little bit of everything below, from books and art supplies to my favorite styling resources. So whether you’re searching for gift ideas for your creative friends or planning to send this gift guide to your well-meaning family and friends, hopefully you’ll find the perfect holiday gift below!

2018 Gift Guide for Creatives / Oh So Beautiful Paper

1 – 4 Styling Supplies: So many of you said you’d love to receive styling supplies and equipment as a gift! My favorite styling boards and backdrops come from One Stone West (I especially love their canvas backdrops) and Woodville Workshop. I also love using small ceramic dishes from Suite One Studio and The Object Enthusiast in photos to hold small things like cute paper clips, wax seals, and vintage postage stamps. Finally, a good telescoping tripod and light diffusers are essential pieces of equipment for taking beautiful photos. Plume Calligraphy and Angela Liguori offer some beautiful styling pieces, including vintage ink wells and glassine envelopes – you can also browse eBay for vintage ink wells! This handmade ceramic watercolor palette is both a beautiful piece of equipment and would look gorgeous in photos!

5 – A desk calendar is a wonderful gift idea! I love this simple black and white calendar from Our Heiday, but you can find even more calendars right here!

6 and 8 – Apple Pencil and Procreate Brushes: I heard from a number of calligraphers and illustrators out there with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil on their holiday wish list! But if you’re lucky enough to already have those powerful tools in your arsenal, Isidore Augustine just released a brand new set of Procreate brushes just for calligraphers

7 – Scissors: Every creative person needs a beautiful set of scissors, and Angela Liguori makes the most beautiful scissors on the planet! These Fiskars scissors are my go-to for everyday crafting.

9 – Gift Cards! I know gift cards can seem like a lame gift idea, but they have the potential to be a really personal and thoughtful gift if done well! A few gift card ideas: an Airbnb Gift Card to help your favorite creative go on a solo weekend creative retreat, a gift certificate for a manicure at a local nail salon (especially for calligraphers and stationers), And for someone just starting out might really appreciate a gift certificate to a high-end supplier like Artisaire (wax seals) or Pressed Paper (handmade paper), or even to Blick Art Supplies or a local art supply store.

10 – Artist Supplies and Equipment: So many options! Choose from shiny crafting machines like the Minc Foil Applicator or Silhouette Cameo (I have both and LOVE them!), invest in a heavy duty paper trimmer, or keep things simple with paint, paper, and pens. It’s the perfect chance to try something new, like this Artist Pad Collection from Legion Paper with twelve 9×12 drawing and watercolor pads, this Coptic pen set, or this watercolor set from Sakura of America. Oh, and don’t forget a nice bag to carry things with! I’ve had my eye on this Madewell leather tote and this Everlane tote

11 – Books and Magazines: So many great book ideas for artists! Check out the shopping widget below for a few of my favorite suggestions, including The Designer’s Dictionary of Color and The Gift of Calligraphy. A subscription to a cool magazine like Uppercase is also a great gift idea!

12 – Classes and Workshops: Online classes and in-person workshops are a fantastic way to develop creative skills and find new inspiration. Look around for in person workshops in your area, including letterpress printing, screen printing, calligraphy, watercolor painting, paper marbling, weaving, macramé, etc. If in-person classes aren’t an option, look for online classes you can gift – or gift a Skillshare membership! I love the online weaving and natural dyeing classes from Rachel at Smile and Wave, and Simply Jessica Marie offers a range of online watercolor and brush lettering classes.

13 – This amazing Wood Drawing Board and Portable Easel would be such a lovely gift for a painter or illustrator!

14 – This adorable enamel pin by Cami Monet would be a perfect stocking stuffer for your favorite artist!

Quick Pick: And Here We Are

We’re about to jump head first into calendar and holiday card round ups, but first – some really cute greeting cards from And Here We Are! I love the way Meghan uses color in her greeting card designs – from ombré and letterpress overprinting to black and white illustrations with a pop of color – and the way she expresses emotion in her designs. I need like five each of the UGH and fingers crossed cards below to send for a whole range of situations, and the little baby hand is my go-to card for new mamas. Take a look!

Quick Pick: And Here We Are

Fingers Crossed

Literally the Best Feeling

Heart You

Woah Mama

Ugh

Hearts and Hands

To Have and To Hold

You Are Magic

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

 

Lots more from And Here We Are right here! And if you’re looking for more card round ups, you can find all of our past card round ups here!

Thirteen Beautiful 2019 Calendars

I’ve had calendars on the brain the last couple of weeks, so I thought we’d start the week with a round up of thirteen beautiful 2019 calendars! We’ve got everything from food puns and an animal swimsuit calendar (!!) to delicate floral illustrations and colorful abstract shapes. In many ways, this round up is a reflection of some of the major design trends we’ve seen over this past year. Oh, and I feel like stationers finally heard everyone begging for more space to write appointments on their calendars, since there are more appointment calendars this year than ever before – let’s take a look!

Thirteen Beautiful 2019 Calendars

1. Love, love, LOVE the colors in this abstract shapes wall calendar from Worthwhile Paper. You can even order it with the wood frame kit!

2. Loving the delicate illustrations on this botanical calendar from Esther Clark Co.

3. A colorful monthly wall calendar from Katharine Watson featuring a different gouache painting inspired by her traditional block print work and stationery designs

4. Loving the simplicity of the floral line drawings in this year’s calendar from Our Heiday – and plenty of space for notes and appointments!

5. Each year, Dear Hancock produces the cutest calendar featuring illustrations of their signature bunny. This year, bunny is arranging flowers! So cute.

6. Add an extra dose of positivity to your day with this Positivity wall calendar from Fox & Fallow! Rose gold foil on alternating pink and black pages. They also have a more traditional floral appointment calendar!

7. Rifle Paper Co. is always a safe bet for beautiful calendars. I’m particularly fond of this garden party floral appointment calendar.

8. I cannot resist a birth month floral calendar, and this beauty from Juliet Meeks is no exception! Each month features a unique floral pattern hand painted by Juliet and representative of that month’s birth flower.

9. If you prefer your calendar to double as wall art, look no further than this XL calendar from One Canoe Two! They also have a beautiful appointment calendar and illustrated desk calendar.

10. Food puns from ilootpaperie! I mean, can you think of a more perfect calendar to hang in your kitchen?? I think not.

11. This animal swimsuit calendar from Paper Wilderness CRACKS ME UP. Each month features a different watercolor illustration with an animal wearing a swimsuit, from a bikini-wearing shark to a bear hanging out in a swan pool float. Ha!

12. This big write-in calendar from Wild Ink Press makes my mom heart so happy. Two months at a glance, with plenty of space for notes, chore charts, special events, and more! Available in black (just use a white gel pen or paint marker) or kraft paper. 

13. A beautiful desk calendar from Page Stationery x Atticus – each month features one of his poems in a different lettering style!

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

Our next installment of Behind the Stationery takes us to Cleveland, Ohio to chat with Lora of Free Period Press. Bringing a different perspective to the stationery business, Lora works with different designers to make her creative ideas come to life while running the business and fulfillment side of things in her spare time. Here to share about how she ideates and works with designers, here’s Lora! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

From Lora: Hi there! I’m Lora, the founder of Free Period Press, based in beautiful Cleveland, Ohio. We make nice paper things for a thoughtful and creative life, and I’m honored to share our story on Oh So Beautiful Paper today! The name “Free Period Press” comes from the free periods you get when you’re in school — those times when you can choose whatever you’d like to do. We want to create more space for adulthood free periods — and make them as fulfilling as possible.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

I started Free Period Press a few years after graduating college, when I realized that I had a bunch of creative product ideas that I wanted to see in the world. I’m not a designer, so instead of going back to school for design, I asked my artist-friends to collaborate with me in the creation of Free Period Press’s product line. It’s been so fun to see how my buddies take my initial ideas to the next level, making them better than I could have ever imagined. Katie Daugherty is my most frequent collaborator and has illustrated our Self Care Zine, stickers, and postcards for writing elected officials.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

Our first product was one of the first coloring books for adults. Adult coloring books may sound like a cliche now, but at the time it felt like a major innovation! Since then, we’ve evolved into making products that are more self-improvement focused. I love thinking about the aspects that make up a fulfilling life (nature, relationships, play…) and creating products that help you make those a priority. I’m constantly getting inspiration from authors like Gretchen Rubin, Cal Newport, and Adam Grant.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

For example, in Gretchen Rubin’s Better than Before, she talks about the power of tracking habits, which was a major inspiration for our Habit Calendar. And since I pride myself in being a master list-maker, I turned the way I prioritize my own to-do list into our Schedule Magic notebook and notepad.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

Our most recent product is Come Over All the Time: A Creative Guest Book, which is all about capturing everyday moments with the people you love.

My favorite part of the creative process is that initial moment of inspiration when a new idea strikes. I keep track of new product ideas in a pocket notebook that I take everywhere. I don’t just write down my idea, I also note where I was and what I was doing when I thought of it. I’m a creativity dork like that – I try to see patterns in where I am when I have these moments of inspiration. In case you’re curious, most of my ideas come when I’m in the shower, washing dishes, listening to a podcast or audiobook, or in that right-before-I-wake-up dream state. I even keep a notepad next to my bed for those middle-of-the-night ideas that I don’t want to lose (most of those don’t make ANY sense in the morning!).

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

I often let my new product ideas marinate for year or more before I act on them. I pay attention to what ideas I can’t stop thinking about, but I also give myself room to see the idea from different perspectives and let it evolve. At the end of every year, I go through and rank these ideas on a bunch of factors: how much energy I have around the idea, profit margin estimates, ease-of-execution, and informal feedback from friends and followers.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

This process helps me identify the products I want to develop the following year. By this point, I usually have an idea of the designer that would be the best fit for each product, so I’ll approach them and ask if they want to collaborate. Once we’re on the same page, I like to outline every little task that will go into bringing the product into the world. This makes the process seem a little less daunting and gives us a clear game plan of where to start. Then we just start chipping away! I try to spread out our product releases so that we’re releasing something new every quarter, but inevitably there’s a mad dash to get things released before the holidays.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

We partner with a few different printers in Cleveland depending on the complexity of the project. When looking for a manufacturing partner, we have to find someone that has the capabilities we need (binding, finishes, etc.) but we try to stick with smaller companies where we can have a face-to-face contact. We’re lucky enough to have Jakprints in Cleveland, and have developed a great relationship with their team. We still use a couple of mom-and-pop printers for smaller projects like postcards and marketing materials.

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

Free Period is still my side hustle at this point. While there are days that I daydream about taking Free Period full-time, I love the freedom that my full-time job gives me – it allows me to experiment in ways that would be harder to do if I were relying on it to pay my bills.

Of course, this also means I’m living that side-hustle life, squeezing Free Period tasks into every spare second of the day. I’m a morning person, so I prefer getting up early to email stockists, fill orders, and work on new products. Having a home-office makes that much easier, especially now that my wife and I moved into a house and are no longer being suffocated by inventory in our one-bedroom apartment!

Behind the Stationery: Free Period Press

Since the time I have to work on Free Period is limited, I really have to stay focused on my goals and prioritize my to-do list. It’s a constant juggle between growing wholesale, branding directly to consumers, and developing new products. When looking at the tasks on my list, I find it helpful to think about which tasks could have the biggest potential to move the needle towards my goals.

That’s Free Period in a nutshell! Thanks so much for taking the time to learn about our labor of love. You can find us at freeperiodpress.com and on Instagram at @freeperiodpress – please come say hi!

Photos courtesy of Hilary Bovay Photography.

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

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.