Stationery Saturday on December 3 will feature two different projects. Personalized photo cards will be running on the Heidelberg Windmill, while the Vandercook cranks out Americana buckslips. Whichever you choose, you’ll go home with a unique set of cards, printed just for you. First up: Holiday Photo Cards! We’ve created three different designs, pre-printed with a seasonal greeting and a decorative border. Choose from the cherry red Merry Christmas, aqua Happy New Year, or lime green December Whatever. All cards measure 5×7 inches, are letterpress-printed on shimmery bright white card stock, and have room for a horizontal photo. The press will be inked up with jet-black ink, and we’ll print your family name or other brief phrase along the bottom. All you have to do is slap a snapshot on there when you get home, are they’re ready for the USPS. And to answer your question, we recommend a glue stick. The photo cards include matching white envelopes, but you can upgrade to even fancier lined envelopes for an additional $1 per piece. These are gonna knock the socks off everyone on your mailing list!

We’re also revisiting one of our favorite Stationery Saturday projects from this past year: Americana Buckslips! We created this suite of four designs over the summer, but we think they look pretty good this time of year too. You choose your favorite motif: patriotic bunting, arm & hammer, stars & stripes, or time flies. The name or phrase of your choice will be printed in black ink using 24-point Huxley Vertical, a slender & elegant font, on the hand-cranked proof press. You can even try operating the press yourself if you like! Cards measure approximately 4 by 9 inches, and will be paired with your choice of parchment-style open-end envelopes. We’ll tie a letterpress-printed tag to the package using lovely baker’s twine, and the set is ready for gifting (or hoarding).

While we try to change things up a bit each time we host a new Stationery Saturday event, some things remain the same. The presses run all day, from 11a.m. to 6p.m. We’ll have homemade baked goods and fresh coffee to nourish the body, and lots of good cheer to nourish the soul! Quantities are limited, and guests are served on a first-come-first-served basis. Cost is $29 for a set of 10 cards with plain envelopes (additional cards with the same imprint are available for $2.00 each). Visit our Stationery Saturday page for more details. We’ve even created an event listing on the Lunalux facebook page, if you’d like to R.S.V.P. and/or invite your pals to come along. Give us a jingle at 612-373-0526 if you have any questions.

Many changes afoot at the Lunalux studio. John, our beloved printer who ran the Heidelberg here for nearly 10 years, has left the studio to invest more time in his own card line (you may have seen it in our shoppe – Dude and Chick). This left studio owner Jenni in need of a new wing-man. And we’re thrilled to announce that position is being filled by a familiar face, former intern Morgan. Morgan rocked the Vandercook for a year or so after graduating from MCAD and before pursuing an advanced degree. But grad school wasn’t her cup of tea, and it just so happened that we had a position to fill right when she wanted to move back to the cities. We’re thrilled to have her on the payroll now, helping around the studio with all manners of tasks, chores, projects and jobs: typesetting for Stationery Saturday, processing orders, cleaning up Jenni’s messes, and getting to know our excellent customers. Since she came back a few weeks ago, she’s already had her first lesson on the Golding jobber. Here she is scoring  Lunalux greeting cards on our hand-fed job press. If she keeps going at this rate, pretty soon she’ll be running the joint! Next time you visit, be sure to give her a high five and welcome her back to the Lunalux team. Watch for more personal news soon – we have at least one intern joining the rank this fall too.

This weekend’s Pride festival in Loring Park will bring thousands of folks to our neck of the woods. We invite everyone to stop by our studio for a little printing project, to raise money to combat the Minnesota Marriage Amendment on the ballot in November 2012. Our Vandercook proof press will be set up with bold wood type and a rainbow of ink; visitors can try their hand at printing or pick up a ready-to-go print. We’re asking $10 for each poster – we’ll keep $2 per poster to cover our costs, and donate $8 from each poster to Minnesotans United for All Families, the campaign that is working to defeat the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage in our state. We try to steer clear of politics in our work most of the time, but we’re so sickened by this proposal, and we’ve been struggling to think of ways to raise awareness and help prevent this yucky amendment from going into effect. We’re envisioning these posters hanging in windows across the Metro, and brandished at rallies for months to come. We’ll be open Saturday from 11a.m. to 6p.m., and are looking forward to printing with all the festival-goers.

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 looking forward to participating in MN Made, a great showcase of Minnesota’s creativity at the Walker Art Center on April 9. The museum is hosting discussion panels with local creatives (such as “How to quit your day job and do what you love”), workshops led by Minnesota crafters (try your hand at Crop Art at noon in the art lab!) and a market featuring hand-made goods of all sorts. Lunalux owner Jenni Undis will lead a collage card making workshop at 2:00p.m. – we’ll supply security envelopes, used postage stamps from around the world, and letterpress-printed greetings for participants to use in their own hand-made greeting cards (examples shown below – can’t wait to see what everyone else comes up with!). You can also find us in the Artist Mart, selling some fine letterpress-printed paper goods 11a.m.-5p.m. Read more about the event  on the Walker Art Center web page, or visit the event listing on facebook.com to RSVP and spread the word to all your virtual pals.