The weekend after Thanksgiving, we all know what that means: time to start shopping for Christmas presents! Skip the malls and the big box stores, and head to your favorite local card and gift shop. Saturday November 29 we’re hosting Stationery Saturday again. The offering this time around is very cool. We’ll print the name or word of your choice on a 4×9 noetecard that’s been pre-printed with a collage of mismatched vintage woodtype (click on the image to the left for a larger view – we already printed a set of cards for our friend Renate in Switzerland). So come on in, enjoy a cup of coffee, and get a quick tutorial on letterpress printing. $29 gets you a set of 10 personalized letterpress-printed notecards, with matching envelopes. We think it’s the steal of the 2008 holiday shopping season.

Visit the Stationery Saturday page for full details on this event. For you plan-ahead types, mark this on your calendar: there’s one more Stationery Saturday on our schedule this year. December 20, our friends from eat.shop guides will be co-hosting, so we’ll be offering custom letterpress-prinetd stationery AND the full line of eat.shop city guides, AND champagne AND cookies. Stationery and books and champagne and cookies? I’m pretty sure that’s everything we need, ever.

If you attended opening night of Guthrie Theater’s “Shadowlands” production earlier this month, you received a commemorative bookmark as you left the building. Guess who made those charming little treats? Lunalux! We were approached by the theater with a proposal that was right up our alley: please take a quote by C.S. Lewis (the main character of the play) and make a beautiful bookmark (cuz he’s an author, get it?). We create postcards in this same vein on a regular basis for our store mailing list, so we enjoyed applying the same aesthetic to a project for another business.

Wise words from the author of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” were paired with an old illustration of a wooden wardrobe, and letterpress-printed in blue-green ink on pearl white cotton paper. We imagine the bookmarks look equally lovely peeking out of a paperback or tacked to a memo board. The Guthrie folks were so pleased with the design, they even had us print some bookmarks without the opening date, to be sold in the theater’s gift shop – so even if you missed the freebie, the bookmark can still be yours! Check with the gift shop for availability, of course.

We recently created this unique wedding invitation for Nicole and Zeb, a sweet couple with a nutty sense of humor. At our initial meeting, the betrothed were interested in two different concepts: intricate scroll/vine illustrations, or a squirrel in a tree. After reviewing our initial round of invitation mock-ups, the squirrel was the clear winner. It’s so much fun when clients come to us with original ideas, and we get to bring those ideas to life. I’m very pleased with how these invitations turned out – the quirky motif, cool color scheme, and chunky typesetting are all fresh elements for us, and it’s always a treat to do something new!

We developed the squirrel-in-the-tree graphic using a few different pieces of clip art, and paired the image with sturdy, interesting fonts. The invitation, RSVP postcard, information/directions card, and thank-you flat were all letterpress-printed in gray and navy ink on florescent white 100% cotton Lettra cover, and paired with pale gray envelopes.

Like all of our wedding invitations, Nicole & Zeb’s suite was custom-designed just for them. We specialize in working closely with couples to develop wedding stationery that reflects their personality and the mood of the event, be it whimsical and fun or romantic and old-fashioned. Click here to read more about our wedding invitation services, or check out our blog archive to read about other invitations we’re created.

I’ve been spending a bit of time on FaceBook and LinkedIn lately, partly because they’re fun diversions but mostly because I hope these popular social networking sites will provide additional exposure (and then… business) for Lunalux. I was reluctant to delve in, as I know it’s easy to waste a lot of time on these sites. But the forward-thinking part of me suspects that online social networking sites provide unique opportunities for me to connect with people. So, we’re gonna see how it goes! If you use either of these websites, I would love to connect with you there!

Click here to view my LinkedIn profile – I am particularly interested in connecting with people who have come to Lunalux for design and print work. Please invite me to join your network, and if you’re up to it, write me a recommendation! If you’re on FaceBook, I hope you will become a fan of Lunalux – I plan to post photos and notes there that are a little more informal and personal than what you read here on the Lunalux blog.

Earlier this year, we created a few cards for our wholesale line that were based on a postcard we mailed out to our store mailing list – an ornate flourish paired with simple greetings (we wrote about these cards back in April, click here to view that blog post). We liked these cards so much, we decided to create a couple new versions for the holiday season. Click on the picture at the left for a larger view. The Christmas card features a rich red graphic and gold greeting, letterpress-printed on natural white wove-finish card stock; the Peace card has the flourish printed in silver ink, with the words in navy blue, all letterpress-printed on bright white wove-finish cards. These holiday greetings measure 4.25×5.5 inches and are paired with standard A2-sized envelopes. They’re available now in the Lunalux studio store – individual cards are $4.00 each, and boxes of 8 are $16.00. What a beautiful way to send holiday cheer!