We’re busy bees in Lunalux land, and we could use some additional collaborators. Do you like to get your hands dirty? Are you creative and in love with paper? Are you curious about how small arts-oriented businesses work behind the scenes? Do you want to add a new experience to your resume? Well then maybe you should spend a few months helping out around our Loring Park studio, and we’ll teach you a thing or two! To this end, we’re accepting internship applications. Unpaid interns are asked to commit to a regular schedule of 10-15 hours per week for at least 2 months. We’ll put you to work on a wide variety of tasks around our shoppe, teach you how to operate our hand-fed proof press, and help you develop and produce a few projects of your own design, too. Have we piqued your interest? Use our contact form to send us a brief note, and we’ll get back to you with a more detailed description of the position. You can also explore our blog archive to read about some of the other interns we’ve worked with over the last few years. We love and miss them all!

We’re thrilled to see two cards from our shop included in the Survival Kit feature in Metro Magazine. When they sent an intern over earlier this fall to pick up a few cards for a photo shoot, we weren’t sure how they’d be used. But if you pick up the November issue of the magazine, you’ll find us on page 72, just inside the back cover. Our “You’re Pretty” card, letterpress-printed here in our Minneapolis studio, is pictured along with a clever birthday card from the Chicago letterpress studio a. favorite design. We’re down in the corner, between the McDonald’s chicken sandwich and a bottle of wine. That’s right, folks: modest red wine, a humble fast-food sandwich, and letterpress-printed greeting cards are KEY to your cultural satisfaction this month! You can view this feature online at the Metro Magazine website. If you need a “You’re Pretty” card but can’t make it to Loring Park, you can order this card (and many of our other designs) through our new online shop at Felt & Wire. It’s just a click away. And check out our blog archives to read about other media mentions we’ve garnered.

We’re busy readying the studio for this weekend’s Stationery Saturday printing extravaganza! For the October 16 edition of Stationery Saturday, we’re offering flat notecards letterpress-printed with fall-toned stripes. These decorative lines, from our collection of vintage lead borders, create a space that’s just begging to be filled in; so we’ll personalize cards with the initials, name or phrase of your choice, using Bernhard Modern 10-point lead type & chocolate brown ink. The 5×7-inch cards are printed on heavy natural white cover stock, and can be paired with matching or contrasting envelopes. As always, we’ll have complimentary refreshments and a store full of fun merchandise for you to explore. Also as always, the cost is just $29. For more nitty gritty details, and the schedule of additional Stationery Saturday dates, please visit the Stationery Saturday page.

This time around we welcome visitors from two special events in town: the Mid America Print Council Conference (printing-related events are scheduled all over town this weekend, you can learn more about the conference at their website mapc2010.umn.edu/) and Rain Taxi’s annual Book Festival down the street at Minneapolis Community and Technical College (more details about the book festivival can be found at raintaxi.com/bookfest). With these folks in buzzing about the Twin Cities, we are looking forward to a fun and bustling day at Lunalux. We hope you’ll be part of the hustle and the bustle.

If you’re interested in these cards, but you can’t make it to the studio this weekend, we’re now offering on-line ordering. You can reserve your set of personalized notecards via the Lunalux shop at Felt & Wire. Visit feltandwireshop.com/seller/lunalux/ to place your order, and we’ll ship the cards to you next week. Also, don’t forget to help us spread the word by inviting your friends with the Stationery Saturday event listing we created on the Lunalux Facebook page!

Mohawk Papers unveiled the Feedback Loop collection of notebooks this week – limited-edition notebooks created by designer/printers from across the country. Mohawk donated the paper (printers’ choice from Mohawk’s new line, LOOP), the printers donated their work, and 100% of the proceeds from notebook sales go to School: by Design, a youth mentoring program developed by Design Ignites Change and the Designers Accord. We were honored to be invited to participate in this innovative program, but it was a little scary too. Mohawk gave just basic guidelines regarding the size of the notebooks, but the design could be anything we wanted. It’s fun to have a little creative freedom, but also intimidating when you know that your work will be on display with sky’s-the-limit output of two dozen other unidentified but presumably very skilled craftsmen. What is everyone else doing? How will mine compare? Are my ideas awesome or lame? Mohawk is promoting the program all month on the Felt & Wire blog – and we’re thrilled that our notebook is featured there today. Click here to read a mini-interview, and view a video of our press in action. Now that it’s all out in the open, it’s fascinating to look at what everyone else has created. I love our design, but I wish I’d upped the ante in the binding department. My favorites (other than ours, of course, which you can buy here for just $15), are the ruler-covered notebook by Cleanwash Letterpress; the exposed-stitch composition from Igloo Letterpress; and MK Printers‘ book covered with a montage of olde-timey lettering. If anyone’s looking for an over-the-top present, consider ordering a library of all 20 notebooks. That’s $300 to a good cause, and a library of amazing designs! Photos below courtesy of feltandwiershop.com

We’ve just unveiled the designs for our September Stationery Saturday event, and we need to personalize some of each to use as samples. What should we print on these samples? You decide! Enter our contest for your chance to win one of four sets of personal stationery. Winners will receive 15 buckslip flats, imprinted in red ink with the name or phrase of their choice (one line of text below the image, up to 30 characters and spaces), featuring one of four designs: Minnesota silhouette, three stars, Minneapolis stamp or St. Paul stamp. The hefty natural white felt-finish notes will be paired with blank #10 envelopes.

To enter the contest, visit www.lunalux.com/saturday to read about Stationery Saturday and review the four design choices for September; then tell us about your favorite by writing on the Lunalux Facebook wall. Your post must mention a) which of the four buckslip designs you like best, b) what you want printed on the card, and c) how you will use them. We’ll pick four winners, one for each design, and post the results at facebook.com/lunalux

Entries must be live on our wall by Thursday, August 26, 2010 at 3:00p.m. CST. You can post an entry for more than one design. The winners’ personalized cards will be used to promote Stationery Saturday – we’ll put pictures of them on the web, and display them in our Minneapolis shop. We’ll ship the cards to you (or to a friend, if it’s a gift) after the September 11 event.