Only 362 days until Christmas 2008! Start getting ready now, with a visit to Lunalux – we have lots of lovely holiday cards on sale, 50% off. You’ll find boxed and individual designs by Snow & Graham, NuVue, Seraph, Paper Ink Studio, and others. Our Christmas wrapping paper is on sale too. Are you still in need of 2008 a calendars or datebooks? We still have a few Moleskine diaries, Who-Mi planners and Snow & Graham wall calendars. Our store will be closed New Years Day (Tuesday Jan. 1), then we’ll resume our normal hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11a.m. to 6p.m.

When you see Minnesota Monthly’s January 2008 issue on the news stand, flip to page 34 for a little Lunalux mention – our JANUARY folded card is pictured in a photo montage of stylish stationery products (you’ll also see a few Snow & Graham notecards that we’re selling). The magazine also includes interesting features about the appointment-only fountain pen store Ink, and another stationery shop, Letterbox.

The January card, designed and letterpress-printed here at Lunalux, is available in our studio store for $3.00. It’s also part of the Habitual Correspondant - Months of the Year assortment, which includes one petite notecard for each month, to encourage your writing habit.

DesignSponge.com, the popular online tastemaker for design geeks across the country, recently published a Twin Cities design guide (penned by a writer for Midwest Home, which ran a story about Lunalux not too long ago). It’s an interesting roundup of some of the finer independent retail shops in Minneapolis and St. Paul. A big thank-you to Alyssa Ford for including a mention of Lunalux in this high-profile site – we saw a nice bump in traffic on our website in the days following the guide’s publication. And thankyou also to Chris (I think I know exactly who this past customer is, but I’m not totally sure) who posted kind words about Lunalux in the comments section. I do really want to be included the DesignSponge.com’s letterpress guide, and have submitted information, but haven’t been able to get the busy blogger’s attention.

Back in March, I helped photographer Stephanie Colgan with new letterhead, business cards and mailing labels. After working with another designer on graphic elements of the package, including a type treatment for her business name and a few funky geometric patterns, Stephanie came to Lunalux to have everything put together. We refined the color palette and type choices, and developed layouts for the finished printed pieces. Both she and I were thrilled with the results: asymmetrical, fresh and clean, letterpress-printed on high-quality papers from Strathmore and Cranes.

More recently, Stephanie asked me to work with her on the design for her new website. She loved the way I worked with type and compositions on her business stationery, and wanted me to bring a similar feel to her online portfolio. Though I warned her that I’m by no means a “website designer”, we spent a couple mornings at my computer playing with the same elements that we’d used on her business stationery, creating page layouts that her website developer could translate into live internet pages. I was nervous about whether the developer would be able to work with the Illustrator files we created, but the page is now live, and it turned out pretty cool! See for yourself at colganphotography.com

I was pleased to see that my skills as a graphic designer enabled me to help a client with such a project. The web developer incorporated elements that I would not have imagined or been able to achieve, like the “motion” of the logo as the pages load, and the blurry effect on the type as you roll your cursor over the navigation in the lower left corner. It was exciting to work outside of my comfort zone and in a totally different medium.

December is a great time to visit Lunalux. Our store is well-stocked with uncommon gifts for everyone on your “Nice” list, ranging from $6.00 letterpress-printed book plates to $24 screen-printed notecard sets to $42 leather business card cases to $80 fountain pens. If you can’t decide, consider a Lunalux gift certificate, available in any denomination. You’ll also find holiday cards, date-books and calendars, sweet stocking stuffers, and unique letterpress-printed items that are available exclusively at our studio store, such as scratch pads, postcards, and cigar-box notes.

Now through December 22, the Lunalux studio store is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. We will be closed Sunday December 23 through Wednesday December 26.