This weekend we’re hosting another Stationery Saturday at our Loring Park studio. If you haven’t made it to one of these personalized-stationery-while-you-wait events, this is a great one to start with! For this mid-summer Stationery Saturday we’ve designed refreshing little folded note cards. Simple, modern icons are pre-printed on bright white 3.5-by-5-inch folded cards. We’re offering four options: teal duck, tangerine owl, honey bee, and lavender fleur – you can choose your favorite, or a combination of multiple designs. We’ll use 10-point-Clarendon type to set the name or phrase of your choice (up to 20 characters/spaces), and letterpress-print the cards in cool gray ink. You can watch while we make the magic happen on our printing press, or spend some time shopping in the shop or strolling in Loring Park while we take care of your order. The cost? Just $29 for 10 cards. We think these petite notes are ideal for August correspondence: “A note from the lake…” “You host a mean cook-out.” “Looking forward to our trip to the State Fair.” Splurge on yourself, or get some as a sweet treat for the paper hound in your life. As always, we’ll have coffee and homemade cookies too. Check out our Stationery Saturday page for all the deets. And we hope you’ll help us spread the word – you can invite all the stationery hoarders you know using the event listing on the Lunalux Facebook page. Click on the images below for larger views of this weekend’s designs.

Two new books include spotlights on Lunalux. Our little shoppe is featured in the second edition of eat.shop twin cities, a guide to the best local shops and restaurants in Minneapolis and St. Paul. You’ll also find a few photos of our work in Impressive: Printmaking, Letterpress & Graphic Design, an overview of contemporary design in letterpress and screen printing. Lunalux was included in the original edition of eat.shop twin cities (published in 2007), and we are honored to have made the cut the second time around. Once again, the editorial staff did a top-notch job selecting the most interesting Minnesota-grown shops and eateries. The design of the book, the artistic photos of all the businesses, and even the quality of the paper it’s printed on, all help make this the most irresistible local guide, great for natives and newcomers alike. The book is available in the Lunalux studio store, along with eat.shop guides for many other major U.S. cities.
Impressive is more of a coffee table book, bursting with letterpress- and screen-printed eye candy. Designers from all over the world are included in the tome, with a focus on Europe and North America. The styles vary from crusty wood-type posters to polished business collateral to dreamy arty prints. The 200+ pages of images are studded with interviews with innovative printers (including Ben Levitz of Minneapolis’ own Studio On Fire). We particularly love the text-based posters of Douglas Wilson, and everything from Mike Burton (“The Cranky Pressman”). One of our thank-you cards is featured on page 15, while page 98 is devoted to a series of wood-type ice cream signs we printed for Izzy’s Ice Cream in St. Paul. We’re not carrying this book in our shoppe, but you should be able to find it at a giant bookstore near you.
Click on the images below for larger views of Lunalux pages in these books.

Helen & Erik live on the east coast, but they discovered Lunalux while visiting Erik’s family in Minneapolis. Erik gets credit for designing their wedding invitation suite, including the fantastic tree illustration. I suggested a few minor edits to the text and the layout, but my main contribution was calligraphy on the invitations and envelopes. The hand-written names are letterpress-printed along with the rest of the invitation text; I wrote the bride and groom’s names over and over again, until each curve was just right, then scanned the best versions and dropped them into the layout like a graphic. The full set – wedding invitation, rehearsal dinner invitation & response card – was letterpress-printed in black ink on pearl white 100% cotton Lettra 110# cover, with matching invitation and response envelopes. When all the work of printing and trimming was finished, I set to the hefty task of hand-addressing the envelopes too, so the mailing address matches the text on the invitations themselves.
I have worked at my penmanship for many years, so it’s a great honor for me to share it with my clients. I have addressed a few wedding invitations in my time, and have occasionally incorporated my handwriting into greeting card designs, but this is the first time that my lettering has been letterpress-printed on an invitation. And it was such a thrill to see the finished product! Since this project was completed a few months ago, I have taken on a few other exciting hand-lettering projects – I look forward to featuring them here in our blog in the coming weeks.
Curious about our letterpress-printed wedding stationery? Click here to read more about our design and printing services. You might also enjoy browsing through our blog archives, where we’ve featured many of our favorite wedding projects.
