Ages ago, someone made a list of traditional presents for wedding anniversaries. We all know that 40th wedding anniversaries are honored with silver stuff, and for the 50th we give gold. But would you ever think that tradition dictates a gift of bronze or appliances for the eighth anniversary? As stationers, we at Lunalux are particularly glad that the first anniversary is acknowledged with gifts of paper.

So when David Hale came into our store and asked me to work on personal stationery for his wife as a gift for their first anniversary, I was both happy to help and impressed that he was honoring the tradition of giving paper to his wife Meghan on their first wedding anniversary. I hand-wrote an elegant note explaining that we were at her service to create custom stationery to her liking, and David gave that card to her on their anniversary. During subsequent meetings with Meghan, we considered many different motifs, fonts and color combinations. Ultimately we decided on a design that honors her Irish heritage: a shamrock pressed, without any ink, deep into thick white paper (we sometimes refer to this as “blind embossing” even though it’s really not), with her name printed in gold ink. We also printed the same shamrock on bright green A7 envelopes. In the end, Meghan was thrilled with her personal stationery, and we give David a gold star for his thoughtfulness!

With most wedding invitation suppliers, “customization” means that the bride and groom can select from pre-designed templates, and adjust details such as typeface and ink color. But here at Lunalux, we often start from scratch, creating truly unique wedding stationery for our clients.

Case in point: Dana and David. They wanted a rooster and a chicken on their wedding invitation. Do you think William Arthur or Claudia Calhoun offers such quirky motifs? Not so much! And frankly, we’d never used such a pastoral image on a wedding invitation either. But that’s the fun thing about Lunalux – we’re flexible, and we work really hard to meet our clients’ uncommon wants and needs. After browsing through a few clip-art books featuring farm animals and other weird stuff, Dana & David found the perfect pair of fowl. We letterpress-printed the birds in chocolate brown, and the text in bright turquoise, on 130# bright white bristol cover. Not formal and traditional, but lovely and fancy and just what they wanted.

When Stephanie Rasley started her venture as a professional organizer, she wanted eye-catching business cards to promote her new business, Make Room. From the very start, her number-one desire was to have cards printed on colored stock, to make them stand out in the crowd. She loved the stationery we’d create for Stephanie Colgan, so we worked with geometric pattern that recalled open boxes. We letterpress-printed the graphic with transparent ink on periwinkle felt-finish cover, creating a tone-on-tone effect, and printed her vitals in rich black ink over it. We also supplied the graphic to her web developer, so her website matches the cards.

Please meet Katie, the newest Lunalux intern! Katie is a senior at Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and she comes to Lunalux with much experience in illustration and stationery design. Though she’s only been here a few days, we’re already learned some fun stuff about her. To wit: she’s a twin, a vegetarian, and an avid bicyclist. So far we’ve kept her busy packaging various products for wholesale orders, but she’s chomping at the bit for some hands-on action, so hopefully she’ll get her first lesson on the Vandercook very soon.

Most of the time, we’re straining to make ends meet around here. But occasionally, when we’re feeling a little flush, we’re able to do design and letterpress work at a discounted rate, to help a worthy person or cause. Two such projects passed through our studio this past fall.

Markus Wuollet is a young man who worked as a server at Cafe Lurcat (one of the three restaurants on our block). At the age of 24, he was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer, and has been battling the disease for over a year. He planned a party in November to celebrate with his friends and family (and a fundraiser, to help cover his scary medical bills) and asked us to create inexpensive invitations. Though I didn’t know Markus personally, I was very touched by his story, which made me think of Lunalux founder Tim Gartmen, who lost his life to cancer at a very young age. So I was happy to help Markus on his quest to cram lots of goodness into his days. One of his friends developed a nice graphic logo, which we incorporated into a contemporary design. The invitations were letterpress-printed in chocolate and red inks on florescent white Lettra cotton cover, and paired with bright red envelopes.

We also created invitations in October for the opening reception of an art show, Dispelling Fear through Creativity. Documentary photographer Michael J. Allen spearheaded this multi-media exhibit, which shed light on the complicated issue of homelessness. With an artists’ budget, he asked us to design and print invitations for this special event. In the next breath, he also invited me to contribute original artwork to the exhibit. I said yes to both requests. Because the the show included panhandlers’ cardboard signs, we used chipboard to reference that raw material. The simple text for the invitation was letterpress-printed in red and black on 3.875×9.25 buckslip cards, and paired with red envelopes.

Which brings us to the question of… “Jenni, what did you contribute to the art exhibit?” Well, here’s a picture – me with the wood-type poster that I printed on our Vandercook proof press, inspired by a sign created by William, a homeless man who used to work on Nicollet. You can read more about this art project at Michael Allen’s website.