Why I Decided to Open a Stationery Shop

I don’t have one true origin story for why I decided to start designing and selling my own line of greeting cards, it’s more that there have been small building blocks of origin story slowly stacking up for years until it created a door I just had to walk through.

Block A:  As a graphic designer (both professionally and my own personal projects), I’ve always been drawn to signage, typography art, or any project where you can convey a lot with how you stylize a simple quote or fact. Over the last 15 years or so I’ve created several personal typographic art projects that I display proudly in my home – unfortunately they aren’t something I can duplicate and sell because they are made from quotes that are personally important to me, but which are copyrighted and belong to their authors.

Block B: For years I’ve been frustrated by the limitations of greeting cards available at big box stores; because they are trying to appeal to such a broad audience, I always end up feeling like I am picking something that’s just “fine” most of the time. It’s become a running joke between my husband and myself that I should just go ahead and design my own line of cards.

Block C: When we moved to Chicago, we discovered a wonderful stationery shop in our neighborhood, a.favorite design, that really opened my eyes to what an independent stationery business could offer. (Feel free to check them out if you’re looking for non craft-focused cards – they make all their products on an old-style letterpress and they are gorgeous.) But even the independent stationery shops I’ve visited never seem to have cards specifically aimed at crafters.

Block D: During the height of the pandemic shutdowns, several of my friends and family hit milestone birthdays (ones with a zero at the end) and since we weren’t able to have parties, I ended up developing the habit of sending birthday cards.  It reminded me how the act of preparing and sending even a simple message in the physical mail is an act of care and love – and how doing those types of acts regularly makes the sender feel just as good as the recipient.

Block E: Although my Spoonflower shop offers me a chance to be a bit more experimental with my design work, surface pattern design is very different than typography art and poster-style prints and I found myself wanting to play with that type of design a bit more.

As all of these blocks added up, I one day had the phrase “you’re not just knitworthy, you’re purlworthy” pop into my head and wrote it down on a notepad until I could figure out what to do with it.  Then one day I picked it up again and started brainstorming a list of craft appropriate valentines sayings, and before too long I had a plan for my first card collection.

As I looked into developing this line, it was really important to me that these cards be as sustainable as possible.  Although I hope that WLS Makes Stuff card designs are the kind of cards that people want to stick on bulletin boards and keep for some time, I also wanted to do what I could to keep from adding additional waste to landfills.  That’s why I am trying to ensure everything from the cards and envelopes to shipping materials (including mailing labels) is either curbside recyclable, home compostable, or both. (You can read more about my sustainability efforts here.) It’s also why I decided to set up an independent online store rather than sell through a print-on-demand service -- so I can have full control over my choice of printers and shipping material vendors and try to minimize the carbon footprint of our shipping efforts as much as possible.

I hope that you get as much joy from sending these cards to your friends and loved ones as I have received in making them.  If you like what we’re doing, please sign up for our newsletter or follow us on Instagram or Pinterest (both @wlsmakestuff) to be notified when new products are available.