FABULOUS STATIONERY

What would you rather come home to after a long day of work – (A) a letter hand-written on some brightly-colored, personalized stationery or (B) a long list of emails? I PICK (A)! Emails are fine and dandy but if ya wanna live a truly inspired life, snail mail is the way to go. And part of doing snail mail in style is picking out fabulous stationery. As someone who is always searching for great cards to send, I was totally psyched out of my mind to find an actual company on the internet called – you guessed it! – FABULOUS STATIONERY.

Let me backtrack for a sec. Every year, I search for a festive, non-religious card to send as part of my end-of-the-year mailing. It’s a fun project: I make an alphabetized list of my highlights from the year and tuck the list inside the card. I try to get an early start in October by scouring stores and the internet for That Special Card. When I went into stores this month, I mostly saw the same holiday designs I had seen in past years. On the internet, all the personalized stationery seemed to feature goofy stick people or overly-delicate graphics. So imagine my great delight when I came across Fabulous Stationery via an ad in the back of Dwell magazine. The graphics, with a heavy 60s influence, are designed by Trish DeMasi, whose “inspiration comes from so many things: fabric, fashion, nature, architecture, friends, even pets.”

Then there’s the oh-so-cool feature of the cards developed by Jay Arnold, one of Fab’s founders. Jay developed the ideas of printing the sender’s return address on the back of the note cards and matching the address so it appears in an envelope which has a clear window in the upper left hand corner. That way, the recipient can’t lose the sender’s address. When you order a set of note cards, this feature is free of charge.

The other thing that the company offers that I love are the calling cards. With their retro graphics, these little babies are for people who want to step out in style with something more funky and less formal-looking than a biz card.

So after much perusing, I picked out my holiday card. Technically, it’s a birthday card but it has that just right festive look I’ve been searching for. The only problem with the Fabulous Stationery website is that it is highly addictive. Why am I up until midnight looking at their card designs? ‘Cuz I’m a freaking stationery addict, that’s why!!!!!!!!!!