eat.shop twin cities, a new city guide highlighting locally owned shops and restaurants, includes two pages about Lunalux. This well-designed, photo-heavy folio features independent businesses that are unique to the Minneapolis/St. Paul area (no mention of enclosed shopping malls, pro sports teams, or other pedestrian attractions). Heavenly Soles, Cooks of Crocus Hill, Robot Love and Via’s Vintage are among the other unique boutiques listed, while the dining half steers hungry readers towards institutions like Sebastian Joe’s, Al’s Breakfast and Bryant Lake Bowl. There are many nooks in eat.shop that I’ve never heard of too, so both out-of-towners and Minnesota-for-lifers (like me) would do good to keep this compact book in their glove box.

It’s quite an honor to be included in such a list of local gems, but it gets better. Lunalux merits a mention on author Anna Blessing’s list of the twenty best things about the Twin Cities (”Lunalux letterpress postcards” - see page 4). You’re telling me that the very best this town offers includes the jucy lucy at Matt’s Bar, cinnamon buns from Isle’s Bun & Coffee, and… the postcards we mail to you every month?!?! Three cheers, please! Finally, someone else understands!

eat.shop twin cities is available at Lunalux for $14.95. This is the latest in a series of eat.shop city guides published by Cabazon Books – guides have been published for at least a dozen other cities, including Brooklyn, Portland, Paris and Vancouver.

Gardenside is one of our oldest clients. Many years ago, we created graceful business cards for owners Claudia & Monica, with an ornate “G” letterpress-printed on super-soft watercolor paper (Monica says that it feels like a bunny tail). Since then we’ve reprinted those cards many times, and helped with other projects like t-shirt designs, newspaper ads, and other letterpress-printed paper goods. Always with their signature “G”.

Most recently, Claudia & Monica asked us to work with them on a series of postcards to promote their business, much like the letterpress-printed postcards we send every month or two to the shoppers on our mailing list. Pictured above is the third card we created for Gardenside. Much like the postcards we use to promote the Lunalux store, Gardenside’s postcards feature a compelling quotation and graphic on one side, with information about their business on the reverse.

It’s a great pleasure and privilege to work with such established clients who understand and appreciate what we do, and are so pleased with how we serve them that they come back again and again. Claudia & Monica have reported that the postcards have been an effective promotional tool for them, so hopefully we’ll continue to work with them for years to come!

With all the time you’re spending this summer relaxing on a park bench, a beach blanket, or your front porch, you probably need someplace to jot down all the fascinating, brilliant and important thoughts passing through your mind. Consider some of the new options available at Lunalux, like this from Rhodia (click on the image for a larger picture). The specs: 9×11.5 inches, with a spiral binding on the left edge; 80 lined pages, perforated for neat removal, divided into four sections by the color bars printed on the edge of the sheets. It’s formatted like a traditional notebook, but with the Rhodia name on the cover and a French pedigree, it’s sure to be a little fancier than the Meads you remember from junior high.

For fans of trendier design, and of Japanenglish, we offer these Belfort notebooks from Apica. The simple graphics and small size (6×8 inches) make these sweet and portable. Like all Apica notebooks, it’s made in Japan (in a good way – it’s a Japanese product) and the cover makes this awkwardly worded promise: “Most advanced quality gives best writing features & gives satisfaction to you.” Can you ask for a better notebook experience?

We also have a couple stylish Midori notebooks in stock, with great graphics printed on the covers. For a visual on those, you’ll have to visit the shop!

07/25/2007 note: The US distributer of Rhodia notepads recently launched a new website, RhodiaDrive.com, to promote the brand. Today’s top story: this blog post!

Lunalux products will be featured in a silent auction this Friday night, July 20, to raise money for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The Fridley VFW is hosting Bands & Beers for Boobs, organized by a group of ladies whose lives have been effected by this dreadful disease. Two bands will be playing live for your entertainment pleasure: Moonrunners and The KGB Band.

A $10 cover gets you in the door, and gets your name in the hat for a raffle for some high-ticket items such as Timberwolves tickets and Lynx tickets. The silent auction will include dozens of items (some expensive, some inexpensive), from letterpress-printed scratch pads to gift certificates for spa services to one-of-a-kind hand-crafted furniture pieces. All proceeds from the raffle and the silent auction will be donated to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest grassroots network of breast cancer survivors and activists fighting to save lives, empower people, ensure quality care for all and energize science to find the cures.

I’m a regular at the Red Cross, making frequent donations at the Twin Cities Area Chapter in downtown Minneapolis for the past few years. Yesterday I proudly hit a new milestone: two gallons! As I sat in the canteen drinking my grape juice and refueling with Nutter Butters and Cheez-Its, I received a new gold-tone pin, which I’m wearing today.

A Red Cross website calculates that my 16 donated pints may have helped save as many as 48 lives. I can’t think of many other ways to have such a positive, real impact on the lives of others. Plus I get bling out of the deal!

Some people are astonished that I can bear the needles involved in blood donation. I do not enjoy the process, but I tolerate it because it’s important to do this good deed. I can’t afford many financial donations to causes that are dear to me, and I’m too busy running my business and playing roller derby with MNRG to give much time. So donating blood is the way I have found to give of myself. Wearing my pin and bragging about it might be bad juju; it’s probably more dignified and selfless to do good works quietly. But I hope that by talking about my commitment to donating blood, I can inspire others to high-tail it to the nearest blood donation center and give something from yourself. Also, anyone who wants to race me to the ten-gallon point, drop me a line.