hello again

Who knew a birthday party for a five year old could take SO much out of me?! Well, I do now. I love the moment this photo captured. FIVE YEARS OLD and with CUPCAKES! Not just any old cupcakes, friends. SCOOBY DOO cupcakes. Hell yeah. I really stepped it up this year – Scooby Doo cupcake liners, nasty Scooby Doo cupcake toppers (I actually really don't know what they were), buttermilk cake and chocolate ganache. For the adults at the party: buttermilk layer cake with raspberry filling and chocolate ganache.

This is Liam one year ago, on his fourth birthday, rocking some amazing hair. And the photos below clearly show the sass of being five – and how it gets harder and harder to get a 'nice' photo.

See? He wore himself out making those faces at me.

More letterpress related posts soon enough ... Liam actually has a cold now and it's been a bit of a hectic week.

lovely things

Even though I'm already married, it's clear I've been looking around at a lot of wedding related places these days because of my wedding line! Take a peek at these lovelies:

I love the floral headbands over at ban.do! I don't even think you need to be getting married to wear one of these beauties. Right?


I wish there had been J Crew wedding dresses when I got married. I do love the one above, so simple and stunning, although I should mention that it's quite a bit more than I paid for the dress I did wear (and loved).

Thank you so, so much for all the blog love this week: Brooklyn Bride, Unruly Things, Oh So Beautiful Paper, Simple + Pretty, Paper Crave, Style Me Pretty, Cup of Jo and Snippet + Ink. I hope I didn't miss anyone; I appreciate each and every post about the new wedding line!! Plus a big thanks again to Max for mentioning the shoot on his blog – and for doing such a beautiful job.

sunshine

The weather here has been perfect. After I got the wedding line site live on Saturday afternoon, I did just what I said I would: rested. I helped Liam have a lemonade stand on Sunday – we didn't have many customers, but we drank all the lemonade and ate all the cookies ourselves. And then we had a picnic with our next door neighbor, followed by another one in the back yard yesterday.


It's Liam's fifth birthday on Thursday. He is learning to spell and read. These are the words he wrote all by himself last night, with a whole lot of uncontrollable laughter. Oh, funny boy.

hip hip hooray!

Friends: it's true, the wedding line is done and the wedding line site is live as of this afternoon! I'm so excited. I hope you love it. I am incredibly fortunate to have had the ultra-talented photographer, Max Wanger, shoot the new wedding line for me as part of an exchange. {I'll be printing his save the dates and invitations!} Take a look at his stunning photography on the new website – plus a few sneak peeks right here. Thanks, Max: you're the best.

Satsuma Press Wedding Line

I fancy good, simple design that is pleasing to the eye and mind;
refreshing color and lush paper; plenty of open space and quiet, graceful beauty.

I believe in fine craftsmanship.
I believe that finding joy in the work you do is essential.
I believe that letterpress printing is a thing of beauty.

The Satsuma Press Wedding Line is a collection of designs that are modern yet enduring,
inspired by vintage botanical drawings, organic shapes and jewel-toned hues.

I've been working on this for many months now, so I'm over the moon to have the new wedding line site live as of this afternoon. A million thanks to my web programmer, Jonathan Howard, for putting up with my many {many!!} emails these last few days – and for ticking things off the last minute list with such efficiency and grace. {Want to check out a super-cool website Jonathan also did? Go here – amazing website, amazing furniture!}

There will be more details to come, more about the process of designing and printing samples for a wedding line ... and more, too, about the new, fine-tuned Satsuma Press Calling Cards – available right here, plus on the {somewhat} updated main site .. and the new online shop via Big Cartel. But for now, a much needed rest. I have a cold to get over and a FIFTH birthday to celebrate with a certain little boy.

{Does this post look a little funny? I think it might – with the fonts changing size throughout? But, well, I'm signing off anyway and getting that rest. I'll fix it tomorrow or the next day! Lovely weekend wishes to you all.}

business card line

I get quite a few requests for business and calling cards, but I've never known quite how to handle these. It's tough because I charge a flat rate for identity packages – that is, jobs where I design and illustrate a logo specific to a business or brand. I don't think I overcharge for this; I think I'm right in line with other designers ...

I've often thought that to use my own artwork for business cards – other than my own – seems like it might, in the end, not be such a good thing. What I mean to say is that I have this idea – maybe it's a ridiculous one – that I should keep my illustrations somewhat proprietary for use in my stationery and wedding line. But, in the meantime, I think I miss out on quite a few jobs – and so, for a long while now, I've been trying to figure out how I can make it work for me and for these potential clients. I have thought about running some sort of super special, but still the lines blur between what is a bespoke job and staying true to my own work ...


So: I think I may have a solution. Above are six designs, some new and some old – and that I'd like to offer as the new Satsuma Press business card line ... As if I didn't have enough on my plate with the upcoming launch of the wedding line! But anyway: I'll just put it out there to see what folks think. Do you like the six designs? My idea is to offer these six: customizable with different ink colors and fonts, available in one or two colors with up to three small lines of type, in sets of 100, standard business card size only {that's 3.5" x 2"}, rounded corners available for extra charge, on Crane's 100% Cotton Lettra. Simple, lovely, the end.

Oh, yes, I suppose to really get your thoughts I'd need to tell you the pricing. Of course, affordable is relative – but how does 100 cards would be $115 in one color, $155 in two colors with a three week turnaround sound? I'm still thinking this through, though, so this is not official yet. But I am really excited by this idea and I hope you are, too!

P.S. Someone just posted a comment, but he or she deleted it already – but in response ... The person wrote that s/he didn't think this idea was all that effective, essentially, because then people working for different organizations would have the same 'logo.' Hmm. I guess I hadn't thought of it in this way – though it doesn't seem like most of the people who contact me wondering if they can use one of my designs are too concerned with that. But I don't know - what do you think? Other letterpress studios, such as Moontree, offer this, only I guess they call theirs social cards rather than business cards. Thoughts again?

almost five!

I was going through some old photos of Liam yesterday and found these gems. These were all taken in January 2005, right before we went to England to get Liam's Snappie (power chair). Liam is just 20 months old in these and in a week and a half he'll be turning five!




These make me laugh every time I see them. I was trying to get a nice thank you photo, but I think these are so much better.

This little video was taken during the early summer after we got back from England. Liam had just turned two!

april resolution

This past weekend we had the most perfect weather here – 70 degrees and sunny. We went to the park with some new friends and it was so much fun to be in the sunshine together. Working for myself, it is really, really easy to end up working all the time – and sometimes it's necessary to work extra long days, but not always. Definitely not always.

I know, it's already April and that means that a full third of the year has already gone by and I'm just getting around to resolutions. It's not really that I'm late for New Year's resolutions, because I've never really gone for those anyway. But here is one resolution that I think I should really stick with: do more fun things with Liam!! Get outside with him when the sun in shining! {Did you know that Liam is turning FIVE two weeks from today?!}

There are other resolutions, too, but I can't spend time on them right now – mostly because one of them has to do with staying more focused on work during work hours {which I would so love to be from, say, 9 to 5}.

Early next week? The Wedding Line website goes live ... Fingers crossed to get it all done {by breaking the above mentioned resolution and working over the weekend!}

wedding line portfolio

At long last (for me, at least): a more in depth sneak peek of the Satsuma Press Wedding Line! These are very quick shots of pages from the actual portfolio. I chose to use KOLO Newport Albums, 11x14 format, with ocean-blue book cloth covers. These are relatively affordable, modular albums which worked perfectly for my needs ... I printed the details for each sample with my ink jet printer – and I like that I'll be able to switch out pages as needed. I love the 'ocean' blue color which complements the colors I offer in the Wedding Line so beautifully.

Birds of a Feather : Shown in Peacock and Ochre

Maidenfern : Shown in Peacock and Leaf

Ginkgo : Shown in Tangerine and Cocoa

Narcissus : Shown in Sunshine and Slate

Poppies : Shown in Ochre and Slate

Posies : Shown in Spring and Silver Sage

Not shown yet: Allium, Dogwood, Eucalyptus, Peony and Vinca. I don't want to give everything away just now ... the website will be up so soon!

hello spring!

Hello spring! Today feels like a real spring day and I am no longer in a funk. I still have many. many little things to check off the neverending list, but I'm so grateful for a warm sunny day to recharge my spirits. To spread the good cheer with you, I am having a spring special in my Etsy shop – buy two sets of stationery and receive a third one for free. The fine print on that – regularly priced stationery, please, with the third one of equal or lesser value. Just include a note in your order to let me know which design you'd like as your third set.

And also, I just put a whole lot of things on sale in the shop so be sure to look around. My thought is to clear out some older work to make room for new things – and to prepare for my move to Big Cartel soon. Don't bookmark that quite yet, though, because I'm going to switch everything – shop and blog – to be linked to the main site at www.satsumapress.com ...

In just a minute, but in a separate post ... some sneak peeks of the Satsuma Press Wedding Line portfolio!!

in a funk

Friends, I've been in a funk the past few days. Maybe it's just that I ran out of contact lenses – not that this was a surprise ... I'm always reluctant to go fork out the money for the new eye exam, so I've been wearing my glasses lately which make me feel like I'm in a perpetual fog. But today I went and got a trial pair of lenses – and have brand new contacts coming soon.

So I think the funk has more to do with the wedding line. Don't get me wrong: I am really pleased with it all. I think it's sort of like when you're packing to move ... You know how you start out with all the big stuff and, once that's put away, you're left with all the knick knacks? All the little things that you really want (or do you?), but you're not quite sure how to wrap them all up? That's where I am now with the wedding line. I have a few designs to reprint so they're perfect – that's not a surprise, I guess. And I have to finish up the color sheet. And I have to assemble all the portfolios. I did one the other day, or most of one, and it takes about two hours to put together. I really, really like it. And I have to finish up the wedding line website which is dependent on new photos – more on that soon because it's really exciting and I've been dying to tell you about it. But not quite yet. Soon, I promise.

This isn't meant to be a rant. Things are looking really lovely for the line. And I'm 99% sure I'm switching from Etsy to Big Cartel soon. I want to do it at the same time I launch the new wedding website ... I like how much cleaner the layout is for Big Cartel and I think it'll complement my aesthetic better.

Here is the other thing ... the more I learn about how the 'wedding industry' works, the less I'm sure I'm want to {or even can} go along. Placing a book in a shop, which is what I thought I wanted on a small scale, means that you get a certain amount of cash upfront for the book itself ... but then your line is wholesaling at a 50/50 split. I get that having my book out there is more exposure and, hopefully, more orders that I wouldn't otherwise be receiving ... but I keep coming back to that 50/50 split. That's rough. Because I'm just a one person studio – I do everything by myself and that means I need to limit the number of jobs I take on at any given time. Or else I end up working 60+ hours a week – and that's no good for me or my family. So I've been thinking about alternatives ... maybe trying to reach out to other small businesses in the 'industry' to see if we can promote each other, skipping the middle man, so to speak. Thoughts?