Christmas decorations

I'm the person who walks into a store in October and becomes almost overwhelmed by my irritation with the number of Christmas decorations already in the stores. And yet, here I am today, decorating my house for a photo shoot I'm planning for my Christmas items. Crazy! And what's worse is that I'm waaaay behind on doing this. Ack.

The past few days have been spent in a major crafting frenzy as I decorate packages in (what I hope is) unique and creative ways using the wrapping papers and other items in the shop.

I hope to show people how to stretch their dollars this year by using regular old tissue and wrapping paper in fun and unexpected ways. I'm pretty delighted with some of the things we've come up with, and I can't wait to show them to you!

In the meantime, here's how things are starting to look.
Stage 1. Pinecone garland:
Stage 2. Berry garland addition:
Now it's back to work on the setup!

Paper and Present 1-year anniversary GIVEAWAY

**The giveaway is now closed. Thanks to everyone who participated!**

Sorry I am a day late in posting the Paper and Present one-year anniversary giveaway. But better late than never, right? :)

To enter to win, just take a look around the shop and then post a comment here letting me know what your favorite item is. If there is something that you wish I had in the shop but it isn't available, let me know and I might just add it in the future.

If you want extra chances to win, mention the giveaway and provide a link to this post on twitter, facebook, your own blog, or any other means of social media, and then post a comment here letting me know you did it. Each time you mention the giveaway, you get another entry (mention on twitter, facebook, and your blog, and you can get three separate entries).

So what's in it for you?

There will be one GRAND PRIZE winner, and that person will get FIFTY BUCKS in store credit to spend any way they want in the shop. And that's $50 in stuff; I'll pay the shipping! Yeah, baby!

And here's where it gets fun. For every ten entries in the giveaway, I'll pick one additional person at random to receive $10 worth of items of their choosing. In other words, if there are 23 entries, I'll pick two winners to get $10 store credit. If there are 55 entries, I'll pick five winners to get $10 store credit in addition to the grand prize winner. So feel free to spread the word and increase your chances of winning.

This giveaway will be open through this Sunday night, May 27, at 11:59 pm EST. I'll announce the winner(s) on Monday morning.

Good luck!

The critter cards are back! November giveaway

I'm sliding in just under the wire with November's giveaway! The new and improved critter cards are finally back! I have four sets -- woodland, farmyard, African, and Australian/New Zealand -- with four different animals/colors in each set of 12.

The winner of this giveaway will get their choice of one 12-pack set of any critter collection. To enter, check out the shop to see all four collections and then post a comment here letting me know what critter set you'd like to win! Open to international entries. Deadline for entries is midnight EST November 30.

And while you're in the shop, feel free to take advantage of the 25% discount good now through November 28. Use code THNKS25.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I'll see you back here next week!

August and September giveaway winners

Before I announce the winners of the August and September giveaways, can I just say how awesome my weekend was? The weather here was PERFECT. It was the ultimate early fall kind of day. Sunny, clear skies, perfect temperature, just the hint of a breeze. You get the idea. The husband hung out with Lachlan in the shade of the plum trees much of the weekend (you should see my little maniac go after the plums. He's like a leach!), which allowed me the free time to work in the studio to continue to set up the new press to print using all of my antique type.

It was very productive and very satisfying to see equipment more than 100 years old still working so perfectly. :) I printed several samples of fonts in a blind deboss (no ink) and a chocolate brown on Saturday, and yesterday I printed more samples in red. I even got started on some ideas I have for the holidays, which I'll show you later this week. But here's a sneak peak of one of the things I have plans for (using a cut I got with my newest press, which I think was made sometime probably in the 30s or 40s, if not earlier).

Now, on to the winners. The random generator picked number 2 and number 12: Holly Rene' and Gail McCormick (Hey, cool! I used to be a McCormick before I got married!). Congratulations! I'll be contacting you to see what animals you'd like in your set.

So are you one of the ones who entered but didn't win? NO PROBLEM. I love the kind of giveaway where everyone wins something, don't you? Have you ever heard that people love to see their name in lights? Well, I think people also love to see their name in type!

As I mentioned above, I spent the weekend printing samples. One of the things I'll be offering in my shop (soon, very soon!) is personalized cards using all of my antique type. To post a listing for sale, I have to have some samples, and to have some samples, I need some names. That's where you come in!!

Everyone who entered will get a small set (probably 3 cards) of personalized cards in one or possibly two different styles and colors. I already printed some names, but I'm still working on others and I'll be printing two more colors and several more styles of cards hopefully this week.

If you'd like to receive some cards, please send me an email (melissa [at] paperinkpress [dot] com) and let me know how to spell your first name and what your initials are. Also let me know your address so that I can send the cards to you when they're done. I can't guarantee anyone that they'll receive a certain style, because some fonts are missing particular letters. Everyone who responds will get at least one set of cards, and if I can I'll do two different sets for everyone. I need to keep the samples for awhile so I can photograph them, but my goal is to be ready to ship them to you by mid-October.

Hope you all have a great week! :D

August and September letterpress giveaways

Whoops. The other day I woke up and realized it had somehow gotten to be September already. Then just a day or two after that, I realized I didn't do a giveaway in August. So much for my promise to do monthly giveaways!

So in an effort to get caught up around here, I'm going to pick two winners for this giveaway -- one for August and one for September. That means you all have two chances to win. YAY!

Up for grabs are some of my animal note cards that have sadly gone onto the chopping block. These little cards are great, but I just can't keep up with the production of so many animals and colors anymore now that the little man is on the verge of walking! Each winner will receive four sets (3 cards per set) of their choice of animals (subject to availability). If you want four packages of bears, you'll get 'em. If you want one package of bunnies, two packages of elephants, and a package of scottie dogs, you'll get 'em. They make great notecards for yourself or a good present "just because," and they make great stucking stuffers!

As I mentioned, each person can enter up to two times. Entries will be accepted through 10pm EST Sunday September 18. I'll announce the winners on Monday the 19th.

Here are a few examples of the animals available. You can go here to see the complete selection of cards to choose from.











Good luck!

June giveaway: Birth announcements!

This month's giveaway is a doozy! I've teamed up with Kristen from Paper Crave and I'm offering a set of 50 birth announcements and coordinating stationery with return address envelope printing to one lucky Paper Crave reader. WOOHOO!



If you win, you can keep it for yourself or give it to a friend (think what a nice baby shower gift this would be!), and the offer is good for up to a year. The giveaway runs through midnight eastern on June 28, 2011, so be sure to visit Paper Crave and enter to win before then. Note that you'll need to comment over at the Paper Crave site--not here--to be considered for the giveaway.

Good luck!

Here comes the sun: winners (yes, winners!)

Well. My mother just called and informed me that I was a slacker for not posting the winner of the giveaway today, like I said I would.



It's the husband's fault. He's off today, which threw off my ability to know what day it is. (That happens when you work from home and have a baby!) Without further delay, the winner is comment number 5! Congratulations to Billie! Please send your mailing address to me (melissa at paperinkpress dot com) and I'll get the set of cards in the mail to you.

And because I feel bad for keeping ya'll hanging, I'll also send one of these cards to everyone else who entered! Yay! Don't you love giveaways where everyone's a winner? I definitely do. If you entered the giveaway, please send me your mailing address and I'll send a card to you. Please send me your address even if I've sent you something before. I don't keep the addresses, and even if I did I probably couldn't find them on my computer anytime soon! :)    

Have a happy (and sunny!) week!

Here comes the sun: A giveaway

It's raining. Again. It's been raining a lot lately. I had intended to do this post last Friday, but it was raining so much our internet was down for most of the day.

I'm ready for some sun! And in case you are, too, here's this month's giveaway: a set of five cards letterpress printed with this cheery hot pink sun with matching pink envelopes. He makes me think of warm days spent lounging by a pool with a fruity drink (with an umbrella in it!). Sigh.





To enter, just comment on this post by 6pm EST this Friday, May 27. I'll announce the winner next Monday. Good luck!

Blossoms

Happy Friday, everyone. It's starting to really feel like spring around here. The apricots and sweet cherries are almost done blooming, but from above the valley probably looks like a patchwork quilt of white and pink from the pear and peach blossoms! Earlier in the week we checked on the cherry blossoms over at the husband's uncle's orchard. Along the way he snapped a few photos of the orchards.





And now for the winner of the giveaway. The random number generator picked number 2, Holly Rene! Holly, please send your mailing address to me at melissa (at) paperinkpress (dot) com and I'll get your cards and stamps on their way to you!

Thanks to everyone else who entered. I forgot how much fun giveaways are, so I plan to do at least one a month for the rest of the year. Long live snail mail! :D

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Giveaway: Hello and Thanks

Not very long ago I saw a quote that said, "Never get tired of doing little things for others. Sometimes those little things occupy the biggest parts of their hearts." And it got me thinking about how, in this age of email, facebook and twitter, something as simple as receiving a hand-written letter in the mail can really brighten someone's day. And that got me thinking about how, even though I have the ability to make my own letterpress stationery, I rarely actually used it other than to thank someone for a gift. I decided I needed to change that!

So I created this little set of cards for me and added some to the shop: two cards that say "thanks" (because you never know when you need to have a thank you card handy) and three cards that simply say "hello".

I've printed them in dark blue and turquoise and also in two shades of purple.








And I'm going to make it a point in the coming weeks and months to start sending little hand-written notes to the people in my life just to say hi and hopefully brighten their day.

To hopefully brighten your day, I'm offering a free set of the purple hello and thanks cards to one of you folks out in blogland! To make sure you have no excuse for sending them, I'll even include the stamps!! Just post a comment here before next Thursday (April 14) at noon EST, and I'll announce the winner on Friday, the 15th. And if you decide to use one of them to send a little note to the IRS, well, that's your choice! :)

Gift tags are almost on their way!

So I guess I should have checked my supply of bubble-wrap mailing envelopes before I opened my big mouth and announced that the gift tags would be mailed today...

I did, however, manage to make nice little packets of holiday gift tags for everyone who responded to my Cyber Monday deal.



And you will be happy to know that I also uncovered lots of extra multi-purpose gift tags. A huge stash of them, in fact. So everyone will be getting some of these, too! They are mostly sunflowers in various colors, but you'll also get a couple of my favorite little bird.



I'm on my way out the door right now to get some more envelopes, and the tags will be in the mail tomorrow!

By the way, I think a few people commented on the blog post but did NOT send me a separate email with your address. If you didn't send me an email (melissa [at] paperinkpress [dot] com) with your mailing address but you would like to get a set of gift tags, please send me an email today or tomorrow.  :)

Happy Cyber Monday!

In honor of Cyber Monday, we're offering our own good deal here: FREE letterpress goodies!

Remember this photo of my disaster of a house?



Well, the only reason I could get away with a house like that is because the husband was out of town for two weeks. He got home before I could finish clearing out the nest, so I had to dump everything back into our guestroom. Now I'm slowly trying to go through everything and clean and organize without destroying the rest of the house. That's easier said than done!

I'm making fairly good progress, finishing up one project at a time. I recently uncovered a bag full of gift tags I made before Christmas last year. I've used up or given away to family as many of these as I can this year, but I still have a lot left and I just want them to go away to a good home now!





So here's the best Cyber Monday deal you'll probably find today. If you'll send your mailing address to me at melissa (at) paperinkpress (dot) com by this Saturday, December 4, I'll send you an assortment of gift tags for FREE! The exact number of tags you'll get will depend on how many people want them, but I'll be sure to include a good assortment of each. I'll send them out on Monday, December 6.

Letterpress giveaway winner

Congratulations to Linda of More Fun Less Laundry (an idea I can totally get behind!), who was the winner of two 12-card sets of letterpress printed critter cards! I'll be contacting Linda momentarily about her choice of cards.

Thanks to everyone who entered. I just love giveaways, so stay tuned for more giveaways before the holidays!

Happy Monday to you all. I'll probably be spending most of my day continuing to organize and set up my studio space. Over the weekend, the husband and I made tremendous progress cleaning up the entire workshop! There's much left to do, but we made a huge dent in the chaos that had overtaken the building. I'll also be playing with my nifty new toy, which is partly an early birthday present for me (and partly because I've been hounding him forever about the need for a nicer camera to document the life and times of Goober). It's so much fancier than my dorky old point-and-click that I don't even know where to begin with it!



Weeeee!!!

100!

So I'm a little late posting about that really amazing thing that I hinted at last Friday... I was in Wyoming for a few days to visit the husband's family and I was too busy admiring the deer bouncing around along the river at their ranch (and making sure I didn't get eaten by a bear) to get a blog post put together. More about Wyoming tomorrow.

First I wanted to tell you about something that just really made my day. Last Friday afternoon I had sale number 100 in my etsy shop! I think that alone is pretty exciting, but for me it's even more special because I've been so busy with remodeling the house and work and life that I really haven't put any effort into promoting the shop in any way. But somehow people are finding my stuff, and then they actually like it and buy it!

So I want to celebrate, which of course means I'm going to have a little giveaway! Weee!

One person will be randomly chosen to receive two 12-card sets of my letterpress animal cards--one for you and one for a friend of yours (or, if you're like me, both of them for you!).

To enter, just visit the shop and then come back to this message and in the comment section let me know which animal(s) you want. I have lots of animals to choose from, including farm animals, woodland creatures, African animals, animals from the South Pacific, and various breeds of dogs. I'll also be highlighting some of the animals here.

All comments must be received by next Friday, October 22, at noon EST. I'll pick a winner at random and announce that person on Monday the 25th.

To get things started, here's a little preview of some of my other farm animals: the donkey, rooster, sheep, and goat (you can also see the cow and sheep in last Friday's post):

Sitting in the sun (plus an awesome giveaway!)

"Work from home" has never been so good. Yesterday I sat in this chair outside--in the sun, on my new patio--and did a little bit of work. And I say "a little bit" because I kept finding myself drifting off into a little nap. Now that's what I'm talkin' about.



Sadie enjoyed the time, too. She now firmly believes that a nap on a sun-warmed patio is much better than rolling around in the dirt. Unless the dirt has something stinky and needs to be rolled in so as to transfer the stinky smell to the point between her shoulders, but I digress.



So the little chair is nice and all, but it's a lightweight chair we bought for camping. It's not really practical for everyday use. Once we have the patio stained and finished, I'll be moving our patio table and chairs back here. And then do you know what the space could really use? Why, it could use a gorgeous patio umbrella (in camel, thanks) and four gorgeous outdoor pillows (in armona flamingo stripe, thanks). And golly, it just so happens that Linda at Lime in the Coconut is hosting a giveaway of a gorgeous sun patio umbrella and four gorgeous outdoor pillows from, you guess it, a joint called Cushions and Umbrellas. Can you believe it? What an awesome giveaway!!! Go here to read the details and find out how to enter.

Week 8 of the Great Letterpress Giveaway

I mentioned yesterday that I have a special announcement for you. I've really enjoyed the last 7 weeks of letterpress giveaways, and I'm sad that some of you have loyally entered but haven't won anything!

I want to thank everyone for participating, so if you entered an earlier giveaway but you haven't won anything, send me an email (see email on sidebar at right) and let me know what your top two favorite giveaway items were and a mailing address, and I'll do my best to send you a set of 3 of one of your choices if I have them in stock. I love contests where everyone wins, don't you?

Please send me your choice and a mailing address by the end of this week, Friday December 18, and I'll do my best to send them to you first thing next week. They probably won't arrive in time for Christmas, but at least you can start the new year with some letterpress love!

Happy Tuesday to you all.

Thank you card choices

For the winners of the week 7 giveaway of a set of 12 thank you cards, here are your choices from top to bottom: guava, rhubarb pie, mandarin, pansy, aegean, and caribbean. The guava and rhubarb pie are on pearl white paper, and the other colors are on bright white paper.

As far as font choices go, guava, rhubarb, mandarin and aegean are available in both fonts. Pansy and caribbean are only available in the font shown (formal script).

In addition to the set of thank you cards for the gifts you'll recieve, the winners will also get a set of 8 red reindeer and 8 silver ball gift tags for the gifts you'll give. Yay!

Winners of the week 7 letterpress giveaway

I've been so busy catching up on my shopping that I almost forgot to post the winners of the week 7 giveaway!

Last week's winners are comments 10, 11, and 2, from Becky, Kerry, and Natalie. I'll be contacting Becky and Natalie about their prize. Kerry, I don't see a way to contact you, so please send me an email so I can get your mailing info.

The winners will have their choice of font (casual or formal script) and their choice of colors: mandarin, papaya, guava, caribbean, aegean, pansy, rhubarb pie, or fire engine red. I forgot to take a picture of the cards showing the different colors, so I'll post that tomorrow. And because I'm running so far behind today, I'll also wait until tomorrow to post my special announcement. Stay tuned!

Week 7 of the Great Letterpress Giveaway

Happy Monday to you all!

I'll get straight to the point: I bet that everyone can probably use some thank you notes for all the nice goodies you'll (hopefully) be scoring during this gift-giving season!

So, the first item for this week's giveaway is a set of 12 letterpress printed thank you cards. The cards are flat (not folded) and you'll have your choice of the casual script font (shown on top) or the formal script font (shown on bottom) in your choice of colors. Feel free to combine styles and colors however your little heart desires.

Later this week I'll post some photos of all the available colors, and I'll also post some photos of the bonus item that will be included with the thank you cards. :)

The good news is that I'll pick THREE winners at random. The bad news is that I'll be out of town this Friday and Saturday, so I'll announce the winners on Monday, December 14. But this means that you'll have until Monday, December 14, at noon EST to enter.

One entry per person this time. Good luck!

Winners of Weeks 5 and 6 of the Great Letterpress Giveaway

So sorry I didn't get this posted last night as promised.

Without further delay, the two winners are Laurel with comment #9 and Shane Rocket with comment #26. Congratulations! I'll be contacting you to find out which critter cards you want. :)

Have a great weekend! I'll be spending the whole time printing, printing, printing, with just a small break in there somewhere to run out and get a Christmas tree.