Happy New Years!

From Henry and all of us: We wish you a very happy and joyous 2011!

We will be closed on Friday, December 31st for the Holiday.

Retailer Profile: Sweet Paper

Sweet Paper
La Jolla, CA

Owners: Julie O'Brien and Theresa Anderson
Length in business: Store opened September 18th!

Why did you choose to carry the new Spark albums? We first saw you at NSS (the National Stationery Show) with the goal in mind of finding which albums we wanted to carry in the store. When we saw yours, the designs were unique, fun, fresh and different.
Favorite Spark design: Amelie, Adam and Diedre

Social Media
Website: www.sweet-paper.com
Twitter: sweet_paper
Facebook: Sweet Paper

Other thoughts about the new albums? We like how easy they are to work from, the many options and ease of customizing. The design book is laid out great. Our customers can see what they might get and this gives them a level of comfort. Now that we have worked with you, the great customer service is also awesome to work with.
Average client: Not too traditional, modern and fun
Strengths as a retailer/store? The store is unique for this area of town. We have strong customer service. We really try to get the orders exactly how our client would like them. We also carry a lot of fun products. Our favorite: visit our nook to look at the albums!

The sisters of Spark are fans of the sisters of Sweet Paper! Julie and Theresa offer a unique collection of ready to wear stationery and gifts. Their bridal lounge to preview their custom stationery products is a cozy, adorable nook, providing clients with the ideal spot to plan for an upcoming event. We are happy to have them representing Spark custom products and wish them a successful new year!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Spark will be closed on December 24th for the Holiday. Here is hoping everyone has a wonderful three day weekend! Stay warm, eat lots, and enjoy each others company.

Top 10 Wedding Invitation of 2010!

Brides.com has selected our Claire- "Top Secret" suite as one of their Best Wedding Suites of 2010! This suite is fun, quirky, and can be used not only for a creative wedding invitation, but for a spy themed birthday party, or for any party with a secret in mind.
See all the top invitation winners of 2010 here. Contact Spark for any additional information regarding Claire!

Vintage Maps: International locations

Last week I shared with you the list of the maps we currently have for domestic locations. This week, I thought I would share the list of the international locations we have available for your stationery needs. Maps letterpress so well and provide a lot of fun details with the vintage appearance they create for the piece.

Use maps on your passport covers or interior pages, cover the pocketfold with our vintage maps, or come up with a brand new way to use maps that will create the look and feel of your stationery you are hoping for.


Below is the list of our international locations Spark has used in the last year:

• Anguilla
• Brazil
• British West Indies
• Caribbean (can focus on a certain island if preferred)
• Central America - Honduras/Cuba
• Colombia
• Egypt
• Italy
• Jamaica
• Mexico (as shown in Lily)
• Puerto Rico

Again, please just ask us (spark@letterpresslove.com) to see if we can find a map of your wedding location!

Celebrating the Holidays in Germany

Frohe Weihnachten! Happy Holidays!

We've lived in Germany now for over three months, and so far December has been full of fun experiences for our family. Our boys are doing well in German school, picking up the language much more quickly than we are. They have gone to the theater and sledding with their classmates, and spent a week making crafts for Christmas. They came home with bird feeders, ornaments, candle holders, masks and homemade cookies (see below). German public schools teach religion to all school children, so these past few weeks, our boys also took part in lighting an Advent candle wreath and each day one student had the chance to open a door on the classroom Advent calendar.

Advent calendars are sold here in all shapes and sizes, available at just about every store. Since our family celebrates Christmas, we purchased unique advent calendars for our boys. We are sure this is not something they would find at home...Alex's calendar is the ever so popular Playmobil.

We have enjoyed the Christmas markets here, as it is an opportunity to get out of doors in the cold and snow, visit the festively decorated wooden huts, selling mulled wine, bratwurst and crafts of all variety. Mostly, it is a great place to hang out with family and friends. The pictures above and below were taken in market here in Marburg. We arrived for the lighting up of the city, which was really beautiful.

A few weeks ago we took a trip to Munich. See the pictures below of their Christmas markets in the town center. I've also included a picture of my husband and me enjoying a good German beer at a local brew house. Cheers!




It is an amazing experience for our family to be here. It isn't always easy, but we have settled into life here as best we can. We are much healthier thanks to all of the walking we do on a daily basis. I know our boys are gaining a sense of independence as they are able to do things they wouldn't normally have the chance to do. And thanks to our very tiny apartment, we are all getting to know each other very well - like it or not!

Happy Holidays from our family to yours! Best wishes for a Happy New Year!

Retailer Profile- Seaside Papery

Seaside Papery
Coronado, CA

Owner: Jori Jackman
Length in Business: almost 7 years

Why did you choose to carry the new Spark albums?: Such great designs at great price points. Those were the two factors we were looking for in a new album- you guys had it.
Favorite design from the albums: I just love all the diecut business cards. Not many vendors offer that.

Social Media
website: www.seasidepapery.com
Facebook: Seaside Papery

Other thoughts about the new albums: We have had a great response from clients. We are excited for the future, excited to offer something new and exciting. It was so great to come across you guys.
Average client: Higher end yet looking for amazing value, lately more on the traditional side.
Strengths as a retailer/store: The custom side of stationery - we have a great team here, those who have worked a long time in stationery and have the knowledge of custom work for each type of event. We work one-on-one as opposed to ordering online, we enjoy working directly with our clients. We also offer all pieces for the big day, from favors to gifts for party members. Brides come in for their stationery and end up shopping as well!

We are so pleased to have Seaside Papery as a Spark retailer. They are such a creative, fun group to work with. Take a look at the "in the shop" page on their website and you'll see what a creative team they truly are. The products they sell provide their clients with many fun and stylish options to choose from whether they are looking for a gift or personal stationery. Pay them a visit and tell them Spark sent you!

Vintage Maps- Domestic maps for your stationery

When our custom albums went out last year, we instantly got asked questions about the vintage maps used in the Lily and Amelie suites and if there were other locations. Why YES there are! Below is a list of the maps within the USA Spark has printed in the past year. Feel free to email us at spark@letterpresslove.com to see if we can get the location for your event or wedding.

Maps within the USA:

• Atlanta, GA
• Boston, MA
• California (whole state)
• Chicago, IL
• Florida
• Hawaii
• New York, New York (like in Amelie)
• Philadelphia, PA
• Rhode Island
• Texas
• USA map
• Washington, DC

Check back next week for our International Map collection!

Letterpressed Postcards

Letterpress postcards have increased in popularity recently, so we wanted to share some of our postcards as well as some inspiration for you as we head into Wedding Season 2011. Postcards are a great way to send a save the date, thank you, reply card, and even a rehearsal dinner invite, all while saving a bit of money on envelopes.

Postcard help from our retailer: Luxe Expressions (Atlanta, GA)

Spark Inspiration Ideas for Postcards:

- Be creative! Set the tone of your event: fun and whimsical or modern and sophisticated.
- Introduce your theme/colors of your event: bright and bold or romantic pastels that will show off your wedding colors.
- 2ply papers (thicker paper) are a way to make an even bolder statement.
- Yes, we letterpress photos! This is such a personal way to introduce the happy couple or entice your guests with your wedding destination.
- Use a map as a design element. This is so popular right now. We have many locations (blog coming soon) to choose from already, or ask us to create one for your location.
- Don't forget your website! A postcard allows you to highlight important details, allowing your guests to access more information about your wedding website.

This great postcard came from our retailer Gus and Ruby Letterpress (Portsmouth, NH)

The Spark Lookbook

After having designed all of the 550+ pieces in our 2010 custom albums, I (Valerie today) was a bit tired of design projects to be honest. I work on so many different kinds of projects here at Spark and for a while I avoided designing anything if I could help it. Then it came time to start thinking about what marketing efforts I wanted to do to help support our custom line in 2011. Once I came up with the idea of doing our own Spark Lookbook for prospective clients, I was back in the game!
When I think about our retailers and their appointments with prospective clients I wanted to create something that would give a couple the warm fuzzies about Spark. We don't get to meet 99% of our clients so I wanted to create a piece that would help us to make more of a personal connection to our clients. The lookbook features the artwork from almost all of our wedding/event design suites as well as some practical information about the stationery design process.

The entire book is letterpress printed on leftover paper from other jobs which is why the pages vary in color and type. I was so excited to be able to put this paper - that would otherwise been simply recycled - to good use. Look for these at your retailer nearest you in January!

We hope you will love these little books as much as we do. We can't wait for you to have one!

Reduce, Reuse, ReSPARKle! - Notepads

When we cut our text weight paper for liners, etc we started noticing the extra strips of paper that weren't really big enough to use for another project. So as the piles started getting bigger, the phrase "reduce, reuse, recycle" came to mind. Why not create something beautiful out of our extra paper? Introducing the Spark Notepad: Using a combination of our soft white, bright white, and cream paper for a majority of the notepad, with some wild fun colored pages in the middle.

Our retailers will be receiving some of these notepads for their shops in January, so be on the lookout the next time the retailer wants to write a note down for you! As we get more notepads made, we may just get to throw one in your next order!

Spark's 2011 Calendars! Accordion style

I'll let our lead pressman Jim do most of the talking for this project, as he is the one responsible for using our "small" cylinder press to do this fun inking technique - split fountain.

We've been working on a number of Spark promotional pieces lately and have wanted to make sure each stands along to a certain extent. Whether it is the printing technique, design or materials, it is fun to give each piece it's own spin.

For the calendar, we knew early on that we would be doing a split fountain which not-so-simply has one color on one end of the ink fountain and another color on the other end. They subtly overlap somewhere in the middle giving us a gorgeous gradient of sorts.

Our retailers will be receiving our calendars early January 2011, so go take a look! The calendar features all of the patterns featured in our design book with a wash of blue to green inks across the calendar. Happy early New Year everyone!

Technical info from Jim:
For this job we first laid out several different pairs of colors which could produce a nice blend. Once chosen, the ink was loaded into the fountain with a hard rubber divider block in the middle. It is possible to do as many colors as you wish as long as you have enough dividers, within reason of course!

This method can be used to print two or more separate colors in one pass if the two design elements are far enough apart to avoid mixing of the colors, which can also be minimized by setting the sideways roller oscillation to zero (if possible.) For our purposes we cranked the oscillation to its maximum.

The Heidelberg cylinder allows infinite setting, where the windmill has a fixed setting, unless you rig a way to disconnect the arm driving the oscillation. Probably too much work to bother in most cases. For other presses (with which I'm less familiar) it depends on their particular roller/rider configuration. Note that this only works on fountains with a linear arrangement; with an ink disk you'd need to ink the rollers manually with two ink knives, and/or disable the rotation of the disk.

Initially I was concerned that the oscillation of the rollers would increasingly contaminate the two sides of the fountain with the adjoining color. It turned out that as long as the fountain roller has more ink on it than the ductor roller (at a given point of contact,) it transfers in one direction only, from the roller with more ink to the one with less ink. As the job ran I actually found myself wishing for more oscillation, but it worked fine to add color occasionally with the ink knife onto the rollers to make the gradient even smoother. Since the distributor and form rollers were less heavily inked than the fountain roller, it was possible to add blue ink to the green side without it working up into the fountain.

Printing with a split fountain will always make the results more "one of a kind" than usual, but in this case it turned out to be surprisingly controllable with some cautious setup. Even if the results are a bit surprising, some experimentation can produce some very nice results.

Back to Joy- There you have it! The New Year is one month away! Enjoy the rest of your holiday season!