25-75% off select stuff in the store!

We need to make room for some fresh new merchandise in the Lunalux studio store, so lots of stuff is on sale – 25-75% off original prices! You’ll find calendars; Moleskine notebooks & datebooks; letterpress-printed and screen-printed greeting cards; boxed notecards; and other little goodies. To promote the sale, we sent out these postcards to our mailing list. The cards are letterpress-printed in three colors on 110# natural white Strathmore bristol cover. We rarely print anything with more than two ink colors, so we’re thrilled to show off this little beauty. We love the quote from Henry David Thoreau, and the dreamy color scheme. As always, we printed a few extras of the postcard, which are for sale in our shop for $2.50 each. If you live in Minnesota and you’d like to be added to our snail mail list, just use this contact form to send us your address and we’ll make sure you get our mailings in the future. Our spring sale runs through Saturday April 17. Visit the studio store page for directions and store hours.

Our three-color Thoreau postcards are available for purchase in our Minneapolis studio for $2.50 each, or you can purchase 5-packs online through our Felt & Wire shop. We also recently printed this design on a folded card, with bright red and green inks – this is also available both in our studio and through our online store.

Lunalux at MCBA’s Book Arts Festival

We hope to see you at the Book Arts Festival this Saturday at Minnesota Center for Book Arts. MCBA will be brimming with local artisans (including Lunalux) selling bookish wares: letterpress-printed cards, hand-made papers and journals, fine art prints, limited edition artist books, and other beautiful hand-crafted paper-related treasures. Some exhibitors will be demonstrating their crafts, and there will be hands-on activities for the kids too. This is the 8th year for this event, and every year it’s an absolute pleasure to participate. I would be there even if it weren’t my job! It’s also a good opportunity to check out MCBA’s facilities – explore the space, poke around the shop, linger in the gallery, and pick up a class schedule.

Design + Print: gladiolus wedding invitations

We started working with Kate and Nick late last year, when they ordered a bunch Lunalux quote postcards to use as their save-the-date announcements. They got in touch with us again a few months later, excited to work on custom-designed invitations for their Big Day. With little direction aside from “We like glads,” we developed a few different concepts for the New York couple to consider. The winning design features a bunch of gladiolus in full bloom, exploding from the base of the invitation. The vibrant violet and green inks, letterpress-printed in natural white wove-finish card stock, are ideal for a summery wedding. The full set also included RSVP postcards and matching thank-you cards. Click on the photo above for a larger view.

The postcard they used for their save-the-dates featured a quote by poet James Tate. This design was originally created as a Valentine’s Day promotional postcard back in 2006, but all these years later, we still adore the lovey text unexpectedly paired with an image of an old rooster weather vain. The ruby red and cyan blue inks really pop off the bright white card stock. It’s gratifying to know that it was re-purposed as a wedding mailer, and think it was upstaged only by the invitations that followed!

Click here to read more about our graphic design and printing services. Or browse our blog archives to see other recent wedding stationery projects.

Design + Print: Strathmore postcard

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.

Clearance!

We’re having a sale at the Lunalux studio store, and you don’t want to miss this one. Select greeting cards, boxed notes, stationery sets, journals, holiday cards, datebooks and gifts are marked down as much as 90% off original prices. Plus, if you spend $25 or more, you’ll receive a grab-bag of Lunalux treats (a $20 value) for FREE. We recently announced this sale to our postcard mailing list with a great Theodore Roosevelt mailer. It’s letterpress-printed in transparent white and opaque white inks on hefty blue card stock. We like how the opaque ink create a pale milky blue, while the transparent ink results in a darker shade of the paper color (click on the image to the left for a larger view). Of the nearly 30 quote postcards we’ve sent to our store mailing list over the past seven years, this is one of our favorites! Sale prices and the free-gift-with-purchase deal run through March 7. If you’re a Minnesota resident who wants to be added to our postcard mailing list, send us an email with your mailing address.