Lunalux letterpress stationery » greeting card

Mother’s Day Cards! Get your Mother’s Day cards!

Jenni — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:11:48 +0000

Is there a mom, gramma or baby momma in your life that deserves a little recognition? Tell her how great she is with a sweet Mother’s Day card. We think this year’s selection of cards is the best yet. You’ll find cards from Dude and Chick, a. favorite designs, Hello Lucky, Dee & Lala, Lunalux, and more. Mother’s Day is Sunday May 9, so there’s still time for you to swing by and pick up a card or three. As these photos show, we also have some swell gifts that we think your moms will love. All the cards and gifts shown are available in the Lunalux studio store – click here for store hours and directions. Top photo: wood-type card from Cheap Crap Card Company, plus Japanese Washi tape and wax paper stationery from Tinted Mint. Bottom left photo: name game buckslip card from a. favrorite designs, plus Emilie Sloan cherry blossom make-up case and Lunalux scratch pad. Bottom right photo: floral card from Dee & Lala, plus fabric-covered thumbtacks and magnets from Girl of All Work.

You need Valentines? We got Valentines!

Jenni — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 23:05:40 +0000

Valentine’s Day is fast approaching (this Sunday, February 14 – tick tock!). So get thee to a paperie (such as Lunalux) between now and Sunday to pick up a card or two for your nearest and dearest. Our favorite lovey-dovey cards this year are from a. favorite design, a little Chicago-based company. We’ve been eying their clever creations for quite some time, but finally pulled the trigger and placed an order when we saw all the great new love-themed cards they released just in time for Valentine’s Day. Shown here are the ones we like the best. Most are letterpress-printed, and very well printed at that. Except for the “you’re f@!%ing amazing” cards, which are individually created on an antique typewriter (we love the juxtaposition of the slightly cruddy letters with the fancy cotton deckle-edge stock) and accompanied by envelopes lined with pages from the phone book. Lunalux, Dude and Chick, Wiley Valentine, F.G. & Co. and Binth are also represented in our V-Day display. We also have packs of vintage-reproduction Valentines (the corny kind you might have passed out in grade school) and stationery sets letterpress-printed in pinks and reds, if you plan to spread the love en masse.

The Lunalux studio store is open Tuesday through Saturday from 11a.m.-6p.m., for your Valentine-shopping pleasure. Visit our store page for details and directions. We hope to see you soon!

I spy Lunalux in a Target catalog

Jenni — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:10:08 +0000

A Target catalog arrived in my mailbox recently. I have a love/hate thing for this mega-store. It’s a great source for cheap stuff, and as a Minnesotan I’m mildly proud of the local corporation’s endless expansion. But as the owner of a small, independent business, I think of Target as the Big Bad Retail Wolf, guiltlessly trying to devour everything in sight, including me. So imagine my surprise/delight/horror when I discovered a Lunalux card being used as a prop in Target’s holiday catalog! On page 45 there’s a handsome wooden charging station, its bottom drawer open just enough to expose a secret stash of stationery. See the red and white card peeking out? That’s a limited-edition Lunalux holiday card. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the picture in this blog post, from when we made the cards two years ago. We don’t get paid for this sort of thing, or even get credit anywhere in the catalog. But it’s the kind of exposure that would make my mom believe that I am Very Successful, and for that I am grateful.

(drum roll please) Introducing Morgan!

Jenni — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:19:43 +0000

We’re happy to introduce Morgan, the newest Lunalux intern. Morgan is a recent MCAD graduate, and has a wealth of experience in print-making and paper-making (she’s been interning for a while at Cave Paper). She’s a real gal about town, perhaps you’ve seen her waiting tables down the block at Joe’s Garage, or working the coat check at First Avenue. She’s been helping out around here for a couple of months, and we are thrilled to have her on board. She has a great attitude and we appreciate her cheerful, creative energy. You can see pictures of some of her previous artwork on her blog (which she doesn’t update very often, but nobody’s perfect). Until now, we’ve kept Morgan busy with the basics like packing orders and assembling products for the shop. But yesterday we finally set her loose in the type department, and she created a couple of great cards that we’re now selling in the Lunalux studio store. Both cards shown below were printed on our Vandercook proof press, using a combination of wood and lead type. So funny! We look forward to seeing more additions to her series.

New letterpress designers

Jenni — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:10:18 +0000

In our never-ending quest to fill our card wall with the best of the best greeting cards, we’ve added three new letterpress-printed lines to the Lunalux shop. We’re perhaps most excited about the cards from Dude and Chick, both because we love their products and because the Dude and the Chick in question have close ties to the studio (John Gurtin has been manning the presses at Lunalux for forever, and Katie Wilson was an intern here last year). The cards boast exceptional printing and witty, sometimes irreverent style. Katie’s illustrations are light-hearted and joyful, and John’s dude perspective means that many of their creations appeal to the oft-overlooked male card buyers. All Dude and Chick cards feature very original two-color designs, rounded corners, and colorful A2 envelopes. Shown here are two of our faves; you can view the complete collection on their website at dudeandchick.com.

Looking at the snacks-come-to-life on cards from Maginating Letterpress & Design, it’s no surprise that the man behind these cards is a former animation designer. Maginating’s compositions range from the super-simple good egg, to the gleeful parade of smiling sushi printed in FIVE COLORS (for those of you who have never run a letterpress – trust me, that’s a LOT of colors). This batch of newbies is rounded out by Dee & Lala. These cards are printed on 100% cotton card stock, with a very deep impression. We’re particularly fond of the retro owls and the sea of umbrellas. To see more of these line, visit deeandlala.com and maginating.com. All the cards shown here are available in the Lunalux retail store – you’ll find hours and directions on our store page.

Download our new catalog

Jenni — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:41:30 +0000

After creating a couple of wedding invitations featuring this squirrelly image, we decided to use it on birthday and thank-you cards (printed on our favorite paper: 88# natural white Strathmore bristol cover). And so our line expands again, a little at a time. More importantly, we’re thrilled to release a refreshed catalog for our wholesale line! This 16-pager includes photographs of all greeting cards, call-me cards and stationery sets that we’re currently offering (including over 2 dozen new greeting cards released in 2009). Wholesalers old and new are encouraged to visit the catalog page to download the the catalog (split into three big PDF files) and the wholesale price list and take a look at our current lineup; we think you’ll be impressed! Though sales have been sluggish for us (and, uh, everyone else in the world?), we’ve noticed that stores who are ordering from us are also re-ordering, on a pretty regular basis! If you’re just a fan of our products (rather than a buyer for a store), you are also welcome to download our catalog. As always, we encourage shoppers to check with their local card and gift shops, we love to send business to the stores who have been supporting us for years. But if you can’t find Lunalux cards in a store near you, we’re happy to sell you some paper goodies. Just use this contact form to e-mail us a request for our retail order form.

Dads and Grads

Jenni — Sat, 30 May 2009 20:24:47 +0000

June brings to mind two big holidays: Father’s Day and graduation season. So if you’re looking to honor the dad or the grad in your life with a little hand-written love, Lunalux has just the cards for you. Our studio store is stocked with a great selection of designs from some of our favorite card lines, including Hello Lucky, La Familia Green, Cribnotes, Spark, and Egg Press. On the grad side, we’re most pleased to introduce the newest addition to our wholesale line. Everyone’s favorite heavy metal hand gesture is paired with the triumphant declaration: “School’s out for summer! School’s out forever!” Letterpress-printed with black and purple inks on bright-white wove-finish Strathmore cover, paired with a purple envelope. This card rocks! But if you prefer a more sentimental approach to such milestones, this Kierkegaard card might be more your speed. We first printed this a few years ago as a New Year mailing to our loyal customers, but we’ve since come to love it as an encouraging bit of wisdom to someone who’s facing big life decisions (hello, graduates!). It’s letterpress-printed in black, cornflower blue and mermaid green on hefty suede-like ecru card stock. For the father figures in your life, we also have a handsome assortment of cards to consider. Our faves are pictures below: the newest Fathers Day card from Lunalux featuring a vintage border, and the #1 Dad mug design from Cribnotes up in Canada (needle nose pliers not included). All these cards and more are available now at the Lunalux studio store – visit our store page for hours, directions, etc.

Spark added to card collection

Jenni — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 18:03:05 +0000

We recently received our first shipments of greeting cards from a couple of newish letterpress stationers: Spark and Old Tom Foolery. We’re particularly excited to have Spark’s Henry cards in the house, featuring adorable wiener dog illustrations. Henry wishes you happy birthday! Girl Henry marries Boy Henry! Henry has a cone on his head and a bandaid on his butt! All super cute. They’re perfectly printed (and we mean that – we’re pretty picky) on lush cotton card stock. Even the envelopes are yummy; custom letterpress-printed and converted A2s feature more Henry goodness, including a doggy pattern flooding the flap, and a nice frame on the front for addressing.

Spark’s Bittersweet Ink series is also a welcome addition to the Lunalux card wall. These petite cards boast snarky greetings framed by graphic borders. With gothic lettering printed in the blackest of black ink on heavily textured stock (Gilbert’s Esse cover?) they look a little gritty and old-timey. But the modern compositions, cheeky sentiments and candy-colored 4bar envelopes (Neenah’s Eames furniture-finish) make for fresh, funny, cards. And we love the unusual detail that the landscape-oriented cards open on the short edge, rather than the more common top edge. It’s clear that the folks at Spark pay attention to the little details.

Old Tom Foolery’s work is similarly unsentimental. These footnote-inspired cards feature traditional greetings (“Happy Birthday!” “To the Bride and Groom”) with a little asterisk kick in the pants. Our favorite reads “Mazel Tov.* (*that’s Hebrew for Hell Yeah!)” They’re letterpress-printed on toothy cotton cover, and paired with envelopes to compliment the ink color. These and the Bittersweet Ink cards are happy companions to the Lunalux Irreverant series (Holy Shit! Congratu-fucking-lations! – click here for pictures and more info). All these cards are avialable now for your purchasing pleasure in the Lunalux studio store.

Design + Print: Strathmore postcard

Jenni — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 13:47:34 +0000

Lunalux has been an avid contributer to Strathmore’s quarterly design contest since it started a couple of years ago. In fact we have written here about some of the honors we’ve received in the competition. So we were thrilled to be invited to design and print this quarter’s call-for-entry postcards. The composition had to focus on the paper company’s recently redesigned thistle logo, which we used as a repetative pattern. The card was letterpress-printed in aqua and cool gray ink on Strathmore’s 130# bright white wove-finish cover bristol, one of our go-to stocks for wedding invitations and personal stationery (we love this paper’s subtle texture). We printed 2,500 postcards – a substantial run by Lunalux standards. You can read more about our postcard production process by visiting Strathmore’s very interesting new blog, feltandwire.com.

Along with the postcard, we were asked to create thankyou notes to be distributed as prizes for creatives who enter said design contest. Because we’ve been using Strathmore papers for many of our wholesale products for years, we already had several cards on hand that would have been suitable. But we decided to make something new for the occasion. Well, new-ish. This design is a modification of a card that we printed last December, first as a postcard for our store mailing list (that’s the burgundy card shown in the Lunalux story on feltandwire.com), then as a folded notecard that we mailed to clients as a Happy New Year greeting. We loved the folded card so much, we added it to our wholesale line – and we plan to do the same with this new variation. Like the Strathmore postcard, this folded note was letterpress-printed in aqua and cool gray, on bright white wove-finish cover (we used the 88# cover for this one, though). Locals can purchase these lovelies at the Lunalux studio store, and we look forward to selling them to letter writers across the counrty when we debut our new online store later this spring.

I’ll have to say I love you in a card

Jenni — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 00:20:37 +0000

Visit Lunalux to pick up a Valentine’s Day card or two! We’ve got a stunning selection this year, including playful screen-printed cards from La Familia Green, F.G & Co.’s Victorian-inspired romantic tokens, minimalist letterpress cards from Page, and more. Lunalux has a few new love-ly cards in the mix as well, including the new chickenboy “I love you this much” card. And, for those with a darker outlook on this holiday, there’s the classic “Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day.” Our studio store is open Tuesdays through Saturdays 11a.m. to 6p.m., please stop in!