Holidays 2012: Concord Handmade

We're excited to be participating in our first seasonal pop-up shop of the year: Concord Handmade.

From their website:

Concord Handmade is a seasonal pop up shop located in downtown Concord, NH.  It will be open November 1, 2011-January 5, 2012.  Concord Handmade is a venue for indie arts and crafts.  Our shop will feature juried handmade goods from artist all over the country, but with a strong focus on New England-based artists.  The shop will be located at 1 S. Main Street, in the heart of downtown Concord.  It is operated by Alison Murphy, the artist behind drawnonward designs.  Having been an independent jewelry and accessories maker since 2005, Alison chose to open a store this holiday season that supports the community of which she is a part.

So if you're looking for some holiday cards, calendars, or general gifting goodness, shop local and stop by Concord Handmade!

Nahcotta Gallery

This gallery display of small art in Nahcotta is exactly what I dream of for my own home, where instead I tend to create Leaning Towers of Art:

Maybe I just need a longer wall.

Gus & Ruby Letterpress

Over the holiday weekend we went up to Portsmouth, NH for a family celebration (meeting a new baby!). While there we were excited to finally visit Gus & Ruby Letterpress. Their location on the main drag is perfectly located in the heart of boutiques and fabulous shops.

Inside is just as wonderful with exposed brick walls and painted tin ceiling. Their displays are simple, bright and eye-catching.

I love the painted chandelier in their custom invitation nook, which has albums from some of the greatest design houses in the country (in case anyone is looking beyond Albertine for their invitations).

 

Sadie and Gus made friends while I walked around admiring the shop.

Their shop is a wonderfully curated, warm and inviting space that is exactly what I imagine for my own retail space one day (at the front of a studio storefront, of course - one can dream). We have a special relationship with Sam and Whitney, the owners of the shop, as they took a letterpress workshop with us a few years back. I was so excited to see them again at the Stationery Show the next year when they told me they were opening their own store and of course they'd be carrying some Albertine Press goodies. We are so excited to be part of the store from before the beginning!

Read some of their great finds (yes, us included) at this year's NSS on their blog.

New store spotlight: Pookstyle

We've added a bevy of new stores to our list of stockists after this past gift show (so exciting!). One of our very first orders went out to Pookstyle in Chatham, NY.

The store is run by Kaarin (Pook) Lemstrom-Sheedy, who in her past life has set up museum shops from the Whitney to Mass MoCA. We're very excited to have our work newly featured in what must be an impeccably curated shop.

Thanks, Kaarin and Pookstyle!

Lion in the Sun

Check out our journals in the window at one of our favorite Brooklyn stores, Lion in the Sun.

Image courtesy of Lion in the Sun.

The Sitting Room

We're pleased to give a little glimpse into one of our newest retailers, The Sitting Room. At the end of the summer this design boutique and interior design shop moved to a new location in downtown Excelsior, Minnesota.

They have a wonderful assortment of furniture, lighting, decoration and gift items with a soft spot for vintage pieces.

All photos by Jill Greer

All the best to Rita and her team in their new digs!

Trunk Show at Michelle Willey

We're so excited to be heading down to Boston's art-central South End for Open Studios weekend. You can find us at modern living boutique Michelle Willey on Union Park Street.

We can't truck the Vandercook over, but we will be doing live printing demonstrations on a table top press so you can get up close and personal with the process. In addition, we're excited to be selling our newest creations, the Letterpress Library, as well as our regular stock of cards, coasters and more.

Plus you can browse Michelle's super chic collection, of course.

If this wasn't enough to get you down to SOWA during Open Studios weekend, here are a few more reasons to come on down: 

• SOWA Open Studios
• South End Open Market
• Greek Festival (across the street from Michelle Willey!!!)
• Dog Art at Aunt Sadie's & Gracie Finn (two doors down)

We'll be there on Saturday from 11 to 5 and Sunday from 12 to 5. Michelle Willey is located at 8 Union Park Street, in Boston's South End. 

Hope to see you there!

Seen in the wild - Gracie Finn

Lately we've done some printing for the fabulous lady duo behind the new collection from Gracie Finn. Owner Martha Field and illustrator Susy Pilgrim Waters collaborated to create a darling collection of postcards, greeting cards, gift tags, onesies and more based on Susy's playful calligraphy.

This past weekend I dropped by Gracie Finn (the store) to see some of the finished work out in the wild! The displays look great and I'm delighted to hear that the cards have met with fabulous reception.

From their site: "Overcome with creativity they started writing... Inspiration a jaunty Spare Spry but feisty wistful playful elegant collaboration." Brava!

Visit Gracie Finn in Boston's South End or see Susy at the Squam Art Fair this weekend in scenic New Hampshire.

Miles of piles

At the end of August we shipped out a giant batch of our Bright Ideas journals to Anthropologie! All 17 boxes-worth marked the end of a month of non-stop journal production (I admit we have some streamlining to do before we take on this sort of project again...). Here are some of the pictures of the mountains of covers, innards and tags in production.

 

Printed covers, before the fold.

Covers folded, waiting for "guts" (we had to scrounge up every available box in the studio as temporary housing for the various steps in progress).

 

This is what 63,000 sheets of paper looks like (yes, all three boxes).

Here are a few hundred of them folded and ready to be stapled into their covers.

Our bird tags printed and all cut down. Now they just had to be hole-punched and tied to the completed sets. Believe it or not, I sat through many quiet hours at the Gift Fair punching holes (even as our buyers from Anthro came by to say hi) to keep things moving. It was the only reasonably portable step I could take out of the studio!

Look for your own set of Bright Ideas journals in stores now!

With never-ending thanks to Becka, Matt, Jesse, Daphne, Melissa, Danielle, Rachel and especially Bobsie and Daniela (our tireless interns) for making this happen!

In flying colors

We just shipped a particularly colorful order to a store in Portland and I couldn't resist a picture.

We welcome Powell's - the newest shop to stock Albertine Press goodies (and a personal favorite of mine)!

Look out world, here we come!

This week we sent off our first international wholesale order!

A grand bienvenue to Buk & Nola in Montreal!



As described on their website, one of the co-owners is bold, audacious, and funny. The other is feminine, sweet and sensible. A wonderful pairing, I think, for a wonderful collection of modern, chic homegoods.

Can't wait until I can head north to see the store in person. In the meantime, I hope all of our fans and friends north of the border in the land of the Quebecois will stop by and say hello to Laurence and Caroline (and maybe pick up one of our journal sets).

Spotted in the wild

For the past several months, we've been shipping card orders to Paper Source, a nation-wide chain of fabulous stores with four local branches. Ever since I've been keeping my eyes peeled to see when the cards hit the shelves. Well, here they are!

They picked up the Marisa holiday cards "Snowman Gothic" and "Twas the Night", both cute and different from the regular fare at PS.

After pointing out the cards to the staff at the store in Cambridge (where I'm known), they kindly repositioned the Snowman Gothic up at eye level, right next to its friend.

Where have you seen Albertine Press lately?