week ten - 2025

Last week we hosted our first Letter Writing Meet Up of 2025. It was a much more intimate group than usual but we still upheld our mission to encouraged long distance warm fuzzies through snail mail. Thanks to all who stopped in and shared the magic of snail mail with us. Our next meet up is Thursday, April 3rd.

I spent some time planning my projects for Chicago Stationery Fest. I spent an afternoon researching orange cover stock. French Paper is our preferred paper. However, their orange papers have more yellow in them than I wanted. I was trying ot get as close to the official CSF colors as possible. I discovered Colormates Pumpkin in 111#. It's gorgeous and I love it. I also did a set up of fixtures just to test the space and flow. Vendors are obligated to stick to a 6' tabletop only. No floor racks, No hanging signage, just a tabletop. If you've seen me at shows, you know this is a challenge for me. But I've enlisted the help of a fellow stationer, Honeypress, so I'm hopeful, it looked pretty good even without product in place. Speaking of CSF... Remember a couple weeks ago when I told you single day tickets went on sale February 26th, get 'em quick, they'll sell out? Yeah. They sold out. It's a bummer, I know. But I'm guessing it'll be even bigger and better next year! Keep an eye out and be sure to follow Chicago Stationery Fest. If I remember correctly, they started selling VIP tickets in the fall and weekend passes in December for their March event. 

I also made time to print a new card last week too. Based on the sales from this past weekend, I think it'll be a hit. Wholesale has slowed down so I'm making time to design a little, which is a welcomed change of pace. Stay tuned for more newbies to come. After CSF I'll be adding them all to our website & Faire page. Until them you can find them in our storefront.

I ended the week with Lincoln Square Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce's event International Women's Day Market. It was so lovely. I mean, look at my booth! I felt very glamorous. Artifact Events is always stunning, add 50+ Women Owned Businesses to it and it sparkles! We gained some new customers and saw some familiar faces too. One of the benefits of doing shows is getting some time with fellow maker friends. I got to chat with my pals Michelle Starbuck Designs, Six Point Pet, Midwest Nice and Caitlin Yarbo Paper Art throughout the weekend.

My most favorite purchase of the weekend were tarot sugar cookies from Top Notch Bake Shop. They were displayed back facing, so you pick whichever you want blindly, like you would a tarot card. Each cookie had a mini reading attached. So clever! and delicious too. 

An even bigger bonus of in person events are trades with fellow makers. I almost always offer a trade when I recognize a vendor shopping. Caitlin needed a birthday card and when she said "oh, I like a lot of these" I immediately mentioned I'm open to a trade. I'm so glad I did, I've been admiring her work for over a year. I traded for this gorgeous original Caitlin Yarbro Paper Art collage.

If you missed the event, you can visit the IWDM webpage to see all the amazing vendors.

Random Randomness...
-Freaks + Skeeks (my skeeball team) won by forfeit, so we played an exhibition game with the No. 1 team, which was a lot of fun. And we won! Too bad it didn't count.

-I started listening to Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler. It's fascinating and I love the narrator, Lynne Thigpen. I can only listen to a couple chapters at a time, it's intense and a little too realistic nowadays despite being written in 1993.

-I painted our lil' sitting room an emerald green and we love it, you can see a peek of it in the above pic.

That covers it! Thanks for following along.