Filling in the Blanks for the Holidays

A few days ago(scroll down a bit) we discussed the growing trend toward fill-in invitations, especially for the holidays. I found a few more - two with elegant engraved details and one with a whimsical foil treatment. Imagine, engraved invitations at boxed stationery prices. They should be in market soon:

A New Crane Celebrity A-Lister

Some time ago, I introduced you to some of Crane's A-List customers. No, not that list. I'm not going to play that silly "look which celebrity buys my stationery" game.

The quest for American independence is another matter, as well as a source of great pride for Crane. These guys were just regular folks in 18th-century America; customers of Crane's Liberty Paper Mill. Today, they are icons of American history.

One of those customers, who is far from iconic but deserves a much higher historical profile, is Colonel Thomas Conant. Here is one of his accounts with the Liberty Paper Mill:

No surprise, the ledger entry gives us no clue as to his place in history. But the account of "Paul Revere's Ride" by David Hackett Fischer, (Oxford University Press, 1994) certainly does:

Paul Revere recalled:

"I agreed with a Colonel Conant and some other gentlemen, that if the British went out by water, we would shew two lanthorns in the North Church steeple, and if by land, one, as a signal...."

What more can you say?

Christmas in June? Hot Holiday Picks

You probably didn't hear that horn beep just now. It was the UPS guy delivering the pages for my Crane holiday albums. Which is quite a coincidence, since I was just sitting down to write about some items that I think will be hot for the holidays. We covered quite a few of the engraved holiday cards during the run-up to the National Stationery Show last month, so we'll move to another category - parties.

Even though it's early days, you're likely starting to encounter news stories or conversations about having to make "adjustments" for the upcoming holiday season. It's certainly understandable, and I will undoubtedly be making my own set of "adjustments," but I refuse to go down without a fight. I'm going to squeeze in every last ounce of style I can.

So let's start with dinner on Christmas Eve. This is the biggest gig of the year for the Hopkins household. Cocktails, lots of appetizers, table for 13, big hunk of beef, Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. There's a story about cocktails and the big hunk of beef, but I'll save that for another time......

Everybody knows that we're getting together on Christmas Eve, but this year, I'm sending out engraved invitations. Engraved fill-in invitations create the perfect atmosphere, and the cost? About $10.


Everybody pretty much knows what we're having for dinner. You don't want to mess with tradition too much, but this year I'm putting beveled and foil-gilded menu cards on each plate. Printed on my little inkjet. The cost? About $15.



We pretty much sit in the same places after all these years, but there's always a little jostling for position, so this year, I'm putting beveled and foil-gilded place cards at every setting. The cost? About $10.



So, let's recap.....For less than $2 per person (no, I'm not charging them) these three additions to our traditional holiday meal will create a huge and lasting impression that pales in comparison to the price. I can find ways to save that $35 between now and then.

A Sad State of Affairs on Father's Day

Yes, I am biased. But this article made me very sad. There's just something wrong, something disrespectful - especially with Father's Day just around the corner - when children demand that their parents communicate on their terms.

Dear Dad: I'm much too busy and much too self-absorbed to sit down and write you a note. So, I'm sending an e-mail to this company who I pay $10 a month to print this e-mail, put it an envelope, stick on a stamp and mail it to you.

I can't write my Dad a note; we lost him quite a few years ago. I so wish I could write him a note on this Father's Day. A note written in my own terrible handwriting, that I fold and put into an envelope that I address in my own terrible handwriting, that I stick a stamp on and that I drive to the Post Office.

The Delicacy and Intensity of My Calling Cards

By Sarah Schwartz
Editor
Stationery Trends Magazine

One of the things I love about stationery is that it is intimate yet relatively inexpensive. What is more personal, after all, than what stationery conveys: our thoughts and sentiments, the details of our milestone events and the parties with which we celebrate them, not to mention our very handwriting? Printed and hand-written missives — the physical kind, not e-mails or IMs or texts — travel from hand to hand to be cherished and admired, usually across space and often, across time. What else is out there you can say that about?

I’ve had the pleasure of covering the stationery market as a trade editor for over a decade now, and I’ve always greatly enjoyed the perks of the job. Practically speaking, that means my office is crammed with journals, notecards, photo albums, greeting cards, notepads and what have you. I keep what I can’t live without, and share the rest with friends, family, charities and my daughter’s pre-school.

Topping my list of “what I can’t live without” are my calling cards from Crane’s. They are a Kate Spade design, edged in first a thick, then a thin pink line, with my name, e-mail, and cell letterpressed in brown at center. Made of thick cotton paper, they are much tougher than their delicacy suggests: I have carefully smoothed out wrinkled ones left in an evening bag on more than one occasion.

I love everything about them: their diminutive dimensions, the way they look stacked in my card holder and, most of all, that they represent me in paper form. A calling card is really a little piece of the owner’s identity, shared with a select few. They travel with me, to be bestowed upon acquaintances and friends — very favored acquaintances and friends, I might add.

Because, crazy as it sounds, there are actually four types of cards tucked in my card case: my business cards, declaring me editor of Stationery Trends; my mommy cards, meaning they have my daughter’s first and last names, with my first name and contact info beneath, to be given to the parents of her friends for potential playdates; and enclosure cards, which just have my name printed on one side with plenty of space for whatever I want to write on back.

All are meaningful and quite precious to me in their own ways, and the last two always garner a rather surprised compliment, but it is the Crane’s I like to give out most. I might add, too, that I love stumbling across situations they fit into, when I find just that right person to whom I really want to give one. And I must admit, there is always a long pause while the lucky recipient takes it in; for though they’re small, they’re also rather intense.

So while in some ways the ever-diminishing pile of cards in the sturdy, leaf-green box they came in makes me sad, I like to think about where the others went, if they were pocketed, then tucked in an address book perhaps, or saved in a box with other people’s cards. Even if they never call or e-mail me, I do hope they save them.