stationery guide: Sarah Phelps Creative

Here are some examples of Halifax-based Sarah Phelp's stationery work whom we featured in the UPPERCASE Stationery Guide.

If my work inspires a smile, I know my job is done. My bright, clean designs are full of whimsy, laden with heart, and born out of a deep love for both traditional letterpress and gocco screen printing—as well as simply adding a little cheer to the world with every item I create. 

Some folks may call me old-fashioned at heart. When realising those just-can't-stop-thinking-about-it ideas, my process always begins with putting pen to paper. I also lovingly produce my pieces by hand for a truly tactile product crafted right in my home studio, with slight print variations bringing character to every piece. 

Aside from my paper goods, I also offer bespoke stationery and invitation design. I work closely with my clients to bring their character and personal style to life on paper, whatever the occasion. I also work one-on-one with clients on a range of design projects.

In addition to the guide, UPPERCASE subscribers (as of mid March) received a special insert courtesy of one of our guide participants in their copy of issue #17. The bookmarks, above, were Sarah's generous contribution.

stationery happiness guide by Present & Correct

Image by Present & Correct

National Stationery Show

For those of us who would love to attend the National Stationery Show on in New York right now but can't, have a flip through the (free) UPPERCASE Stationery Guide to get your paper goods fix. The guide is part of our current issue.

stationery guide: top ten tips from Lilla Rogers

For more career inspiration, pick up Lilla's book!

This article appears in our current issue, #17 and is part of our free UPPERCASE Stationery Guide.

Get your work on stationery

By Lilla Rogers

You walk into your favourite little shop, and you covet the ridiculously cute illustrated journals and cards and notebooks, and even the charming sticky notes, and you ask yourself, “How do I get that gig?”

getting a fab illustration gig

1. Go to shops, turn over products you love and note the manufacturer.

2. Go to the websites of these manufacturers and find their submission details.

3. Stop and reflect on what you love to draw. What’s out there already? Now draw something different.

4. Colours are key. Look at websites like fossil.com or modcloth.com, or at a sumptuous page in this magazine for colour ideas.

5. Set up your palette of these fresh colours.

6. Now draw and paint or vector your images. Make a mess. Use references. Put on awesome music. Dance around your studio. People buy your joy!

7. Free-floating silhouetted icons give the client great flexibility. Having lots of isolated images, such as a mushroom, an anchor or a telescope, give the designer bits to play with. These are used to create coordinating patterns for things like journal endpapers, packaging art and interior pages of sketchbooks. You are making a kind of art kit for the client, a designer, to have fun with.

8. Make sure your icons are related to the theme of your main image.

9. Pop the images onto your website. Post, blog and pin your images. Send out a newsletter with them. Now you’re ready to email them directly to your favourite manufacturers. In the email, pop in about three to five jpgs that are 72 dpi, RGB, and add a link to your website.

10. Rinse and repeat. The system works!

Stay tuned for an amazing opportunity to work with Lilla!

stationery guide: free guide!

Does your heart beat faster at the sight of beautiful stationery?

Issue 17 of our magazine includes this special Stationery Guide of small stationery companies from around the world. We’d like to share this content with you to help promote their businesses and to give you a small taste of the quality content you’ll find in each and every print edition of UPPERCASE magazine.

Please share this guide on your blogs and your social circles to help promote all the talented people who have contributed their work to this guide.

stationery guide: Verónica Grech

Verónica Grech is featured in the Stationery Guide and sent us these photos of her enjoying the magazine. She writes, "I studied Fine Arts and Design at San Carlos University in Valencia. Currently I reside in the north of Spain, in a small town nestled between mountains facing the ocean, with beautiful views in every direction. I work with a variety of clients supporting my illustration projects. I love nature and landscapes and enjoy creating strange and fun characters, poetic portraits and colourful urban scenes."

Purchase Verónica's card on Etsy.

sniff collector

In addition to being an UPPERCASE contributor, Amy Peppler-Adams is a graphic designer, budding surface pattern designer and co-author of the Vintage Scratch & Sniff Collector's Guide. She recently wrote about her experience as a scratch and sniff sticker collector on her blog. 

"Some of you may know that my obsession with collecting (hoarding) includes a passion for vintage stickers from the 1970s and '80s. For the first 10 years of the 2000s, right after I turned 30, I was consumed with finding and buying all the stickers I collected as a kid, replacing all those I had stuck to old notebooks and magnetic photo albums with pristine, unused stickers on their original backings. This included scratch and sniff stickers, which had to be unscratched and still have their smell. And I wasn't the only one—eBay was crawling with avid sticker collectors, especially those who wanted sniff stickers. It was a tense 10 years, watching hundreds if not thousands of listings and usually bidding at the last second to try to win. But my collection is nearly complete, and occasionally I am able to fill in some holes when I get the inkling to check out the eBay listings again.

During this time I was fortunate to collaborate with a fellow collector, bubbledog, writing a book dedicated to scratch and sniff stickers: the Vintage Scratch & Sniff Stickers Collector's Guide."

Amy says she was "thrilled to have contributed a short article about the stinky pieces of paper" for issue #17. 

If you're interested in starting your own scratch and sniff sticker collection, you're in luck. Email win@uppercasemagazine.com by May 15 to be entered to win a copy of Vintage Scratch & Sniff Stickers Collector's Guide.

come what may...

Our May desktop wallpaper featuring artwork by Cécile Daladier, photo by Jas Tang and lettering by Janine.

Yesterday, readers of our e-newsletters received a link to download this free desktop wallpaper. If you'd like to download the image, please sign up for our newsletter here.

thanks for the thanks

Sass Cocker and Diesel

Our current issue features an extensive Stationery Guide with 50 profiled stationers and paper goods companies. Australian company Ask Alice is included and proprietor Sass Cocker emailed this fun image in thanks:

"Congratulations on another freakin' A-M-A-Z-I-N-G issue of UPPERCASE. I can't thank you enough for featuring Ask Alice... not once, but twice! It's a real honour for me. My cute Mum was teary eyed when I showed her and has since purchased several copies!"

Looks like her dog Diesel was a little too enthusiastic with the paper flag! (But we love to devour paper products, too. Like this lovely blank notebook with multiple found and upcycled paper stocks.)

Thanks, Sass!

Bee Kingdom Glass

Vinciane in the Bee Kingdom gallery/house for the interview.

Vinciane pulls some molten glass.

It is always enjoyable to spend time in artists' studios and peek in on their process. In our current issue, our Work-in-Progress Society article took a new direction in that we decided to focus on an in-person interview rather than curating from the Flickr pool. Bee Kingdom Glass is an exciting 4-person studio hidden in an unassuming house in a Calgary residential neighbourhood. At one point, some of the members of Bee Kingdom were also roommates living in the house; now the living room is a small gallery, bedrooms are office studios—and the glass studio is out back in a converted garage. This close-knit group is aptly named; as glassblowers they are dependent on one another to see their individual creative visions come into form.

Vinciane de Pape, regular UPPERCASE contributor, interviewed Phillip, Kai, Ryan and Tim while I took photos for the article. When the Bees started a demo, I took an impromptu video of the process. You'll find more of my photos and full article about Bee Kingdom in our current issue.

Join Bee Kingdom this weekend for an open house from 1-5pm Saturday and Sunday. More details on their site right here.

your instagrams in #17

Instagrams by @pennycooke, @coxlaboratories, @artschoolgirl, @dottieangel, @onahazymorning and @fluxahedra are featured in the current issue. Thank you!

Click on the image to read larger.

Subscribe today!

instant love

@kathryncole

@kathryncole

@butterflyandbloom

I love seeing your Instagrams of UPPERCASE. Make sure to tag them @uppercasemag or #uppercase so that I can find them! Here's our Pinterest board of reader images.

my studio as seen by Tracey Ayton

Vancouver-based photographer Tracey Ayton was recently in Calgary on some shoots and she stopped by to visit the UPPERCASE studio. Here are some images of my workspace that she captured; there are more on Tracey's blog. We have published Tracey's work in the current issue (#17) where you can see a photo essay about Granville Eyeland Framemakers.

I was happy that Tracey was here to capture some images of the space "au naturel" (no tidying!), though I am also planning on a final photographic study of the studio to feature in the fall issue of UPPERCASE. By the time the fall issue is out, this space will be a memory and UPPERCASE will be nestled into our new office. It is hard to believe that I'll have to move it all in a few short months.

giveaway on Lotus Events

Photo by Lotus Events

We're happy to give a few things for a giveaway on Lotus Events' blog in anticipation of the forthcoming Got Craft? event in Vancouver April 27-28.

(I'm back from the Makerie; took yesterday off to stay home with my son and decompress from the intensity of those 4 days in Boulder. More about the Makerie this week...)

mmmmmm, 17.

Erin scratches...

sniff sniff sniff

It's always a thrill to flip through a brand new issue. This cover is by the Norwegian illustration duo Darling Clementine.

So much great content in this issue...

An article about Willy Chyr, balloon artist, written by Glen Dresser.

Carolyn Gavin illustrated the story of Ecojot, her environmentally conscious Canadian paper goods company.

Iron Curtain Press written by Emily Grosse and Andie Powers.

That's just a teaser of all the creative and curious content in our spring issue. If you want to see more, click here for a digital flip-through. But trust us, UPPERCASE is a magazine you want to hold (and sniff) for yourself.

{ SUBSCRIBE }

scratch. sniff. happy.

can you smell it?

UPPERCASE issue #17 is printed! The covers were printed and left to dry and then run through the press two additional times to apply coats of the scented varnish for our scratch and sniff cover. It will dry a bit more before it is all in the bindery early next week.

Chris Young sent me these shots of the magazine on the press room floor this afternoon. Apparently when the job was running yesterday the cherry scent wafted through the entire plant—everyone knew that the UPPERCASE job was under way. People at reception were wiggling their noses wondering what was going on. You can imagine that applying a cherry varnish to 10,000 magazines could be a stinky business!

Since Prolific Graphics is in Winnipeg and I'm here in Calgary, I can't often make it to the press check. Thank you to Chris and all the excellent people working at Prolific for taking on this experiment and making it work: you were my eyes AND nose on this one!

(For those of you with sensitive noses, rest assured that once the varnish is dry you can only smell the effect by scratching the varnished area.)

Thinking of subscribing? Subscribe this weekend and your name will be on the master mailing list as this issue makes its way into the postal system. Use the code "hop-to-it!" for $15 off subscriptions. Thanks! 

Code is valid until midnight MST April 1 and cannot be retroactively applied.

Free stationery samples for subscribers!

Lagom Design

This is the opening statement for the paper-lover's extravaganza of a feature in the forthcoming issue of UPPERCASE magazine. Profiling 50 companies who create greeting cards, wrapping paper, stationery and all variety of paper goods, the UPPERCASE Stationery Guide is an excellent reference if you're a paperholic, have a retail shop and are looking for unique items or are an aspiring stationery designer looking to break into the industry.

The companies we've profiled are all part of the UPPERCASE family; the feature was created from an open call sent out on the website and via social media channels. Once again, the talent of our readers is amazing!

As a bonus to our subscribers, each subscriber copy will include an actual sample from one of the profiled companies. Greeting cards, bookmarks, letterpressed goodies... Erin and I were delighted as we opened each box that arrived at our door. I've photographed the samples to show you want you can expect to be hand-inserted into your subscriber copy. The following represent just a teaser of all the samples.

A. Favorite Design

Mac and Ninny Paper Co

Tweedle Press

Curious & Co. Creative

Steel Petal Pres

Just a small sampling of the amazing selection of what will be randomly included in your subscriber copy. Issue 17 is in print production and we're excited to ship this one out.

These free samples are only included for subscribers as of March 26—so subscribe or renew today to get this nice little bonus.

(Use the code "marchingrightalong" for a surprise discount at checkout. Click here to order!)

Thank you to Sandra, my SAIT intern for a week, who Photoshopped these images for me.

Type Tuesday: Engraving for Nerds

In our forthcoming issue we have an excellent article written by Nikki Sheppy about stationer and engraver Nancy Sharon Collins. Nancy is the author of an amazing book, The Complete Engraver, which I highly recommend. I purchased her book last November and was inspired by its content, which led to UPPERCASE contacting Nancy for a feature article in our stationery issue.

Nancy is in the midst of her second Kickstarter campaign, to bring her popular "Engraving for Nerds" book tour to the West Coast of the US. "Engraving, and other slow printing processes, have become satisfying antidotes to tippity-typing on tiny little screens and impersonal computers day after day. In the manner of letterpress and silk screen printing, linoleum and wood cutting—each of which takes loads of love, time, and oodles of patient attention—engraving is scrumptious to look at, enriching to hold, and (best of all) enlightening to make and to use."

Help support her campaign to cover the tour costs and you could receive rewards from various levels:

• Jessica Hische's new font, Minot (the San Francisco presentation is held in Jessica's studio!)
• Be a member of the VIP team for the engraving day at the International Printing History Museum in Carson, CA
• Beta test and be the first 5 to get the new engraving app being developed
• Get the first-ever engraving app Sharon is developing
• Your own engraved, custom monogram notes

Head on over to Kickstarter for more details. 

jump into print

If you've been a blog reader or online follower for a while, now's a great time to jump into a print subscription. Subscribe and start with #16 which will ship out immediately. #17 will be quick on its heals in April.

In case you missed it on Twitter, we have a sale running on our online shop: use the discount code "springfling" at checkout for 15% off anything in our online shop! (Discount code cannot be retroactively applied to past purchases, nor can it be applied to wholesale orders. Valid until the end of the month.)