Our Life in Stationery - August Recap

As I'm writing this, I'm not even sure how we got here.  How in the world is August over and how can we be talking about the end of summer?  It always goes by way too fast for me, though for Sam, her twin boys are back to school and she is beyond ecstatic. And how quick did that fall weather sneak in? Before we know it we're going to be picking pumpkins and stocking up on Halloween candy. Even though we may be behind in the stationery world, we are furiously working on holiday cards.  It's all coming people!

August is always a bit of a slow month in the stationery biz.  It always feels like the calm before the storm of the holiday season.  Yes I'm skipping pumpkin spice season and going right to the holidays!  But have you had a Pumpkin Spice Latté yet?  Too soon? Anyway, it's a great time for Stationery Store Day which was started by Kristina of Calliope Paperie in Massachusetts back in 2022.  She wanted to celebrate our independent stationery stores, encouraging people to visit and shop in what is typically a slower month, and she made it happen!  Not just in the U.S., but around the world. She even collaborates with an artist each year to create cool Stationery Store Day merch, like totes, notebooks, washi tape and stickers.  You can check out her collaboration with Suzy Ultman here. It's been really cool to watch this idea take hold and see stores participating all over in their own way and we have made it a point to visit The Paper Herald in Baltimore each year for stationery shopping in our little corner of the world.  This year was our first year to actually participate in the day.

Ashleigh, the owner of the Paper Herald reached out in July to see if we wanted to take part in Stationery Store Day and maybe do a demonstration or teach something.  With the craziness we had going on in July between summer travel and Faire Summer Market we didn't think we could make it happen.  We wanted to be able to prepare and basically we knew we didn't have the time to get our shit together.  Let's face it.  Ashleigh assured us this was no pressure and if we wanted we could just do a quick and casual pop up.  Well that we figured we could handle and obviously we wanted to be part of this special day.  We are paper people after all. 

When we arrived at the Paper Herald, Ashleigh had set up a display table where Confident Canvas (our new friend) was presenting journaling to a seated group of ten people or so and streaming on Instagram Live.  We realized we needed to think on the fly and figure out what we were going to talk about because this was going to be more than a casual pop up. Before you knew it we were doing our first Instagram Live! And we're here to tell you we survived and actually had fun chitty chatting about how we got started in the stationery world, our inspirational Grandmom, and how we create our designs for cards, prints and stickers on the iPad. We may have even inspired someone to buy an iPad or give drawing in Procreate a try. However we can't possibly go back and watch it for fear we will die of embarrassment.

What are we excited for in September?  Well Sam is all about her boys being back in school and we're not sure how they are in first grade already.  How did that happen? They have stated fall baseball and I can't wait to catch a game.  I miss the days of my son playing baseball!

We have two events coming up in September so we hope you will join us.  On September 13th we will be popping up with our stationery goodies at Brightside Boutique in Fells Point.  And on September 16th come out and join us for Ladies Night at Ace Hardware in Federal Hill. Never thought I would say I would be attending Ladies Night at a hardware store but if you haven't been to Ace in Fed Hill, it is a cool hardware store so we are excited for that! We would love to meet you at these events.

You can find us in a few Moore stores this month and we love that.  We collaborated with Hartford Prints! on two new Hello from Connecticut cards so check them out if you are in the Constitution State. For Philly and University of Delaware fans, check us out at Rooted in New London Township, PA.

And what were your faves of the month you ask? Your top spot for cards was a tie with our new Connecticut cards making a strong debut! Thanks for following our stationery biz and hope to see you at an event in September!