Dads and Grads

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.

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.

Cheers to the New Year

This is one of my favorite cards we ever created here at Lunalux. It’s a few years old, but it’s still really close to my heart. I wrote that text, don’t steal it, OK? Happy New Year! See you in 2009.

Design + Print: letterpress bookmarks for the Guthrie

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.

Design + Print: plant this wedding invitation

When Kitty asked us to work on her wedding stationery, I was of course thrilled. As an employee of the studio, I wanted her to have her dream invitations. With plans to tie the knot in a rustic outdoor setting in the Rocky Mountains, she wanted to use rough, natural materials. This was a great opportunity for us to try out the plantable paper from our friends at Porridge Papers in Lincoln, Nebraska. This textured handmade sheet is made with wildflower seeds, so if you plant the paper, the pulp biodegrades and flowers grow. Magical! It was an interesting paper to work with. Because it’s hand-made, the thickness of the paper varies a bit from sheet to sheet. We’re used to printing on commercial papers that are much more predictable, so it was a bit of a challenge. But the paper is so soft, it really shows off the textural quality of letterpress printing.

Because she’s so creative, Kitty really drove this project. She had a very clear vision of what she wanted (and Microsoft Word documents to prove it), I just made it happen. The invite is a small folded card with a leaf and a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote on the cover, and simple text inside. It’s all letterpress-printed in red and brown inks, and paired with 100% recycled brown bag envelopes. As I type this, she’s at the groom’s dinner in Breckenridge with her family and friends, and hopefully they’re all complimenting her on her beautiful, unique invitations.

To read about other wedding invitations we’ve created recently, check out our blog archives.

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