If you create any conceivable item using paper, and are not yet taking advantage of Parse & Parcel, you're not accessing the "super power of print design." For years now, Jill DiNicolantonio has worked with clients to elevate creations from acceptable to awesome at Millcraft, a paper merchant not unlike Dunder Mifflin — except instead of being in Scranton, it's in Cleveland. Drawing on those experiences, she's distilled her expertise into several exquisite tools to serve as design wing men on one's desk throughout the ultra-important paper selection process.

Jill defines The Parcel as a physical manifestation of a paper rep. Each limited-run collection holds exclusive mill pieces, print samples and real-life projects, produced on real-life budgets, to inspire you with the cutting-edge possibilities of paper. Meanwhile, The Swatchbox is a beautifully presented, complete collection of paper mill swatch books. These neatly organized little black boxes of knowledge serve as visually rich springboards and references for any project. Jill supplements these with services from mock-ups to one-on-one consulting, all envisioned with the idea that regardless of what you print, if you are going to print, you should make it matter. She also offer tutorials and resources to hone your own super print powers.

Jill is also the first person I am personally acquainted with to contract COVID-19, and actually contracted the virus very early on, last Spring. She candidly shares her experiences, including why she has chosen to regard this global pandemic as a blessing. You do not want to miss this catch-up with one of my favorite (local) Paper Peeps!

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you're anything like me, most of your visual stimulation these days is limited to your house, your neighborhood and whatever it is you're looking at on various screens. Hopefully Instagram figures in there somewhere, but if you are not following @amy.atnynow, the riveting feed of my guest today, Amy Loewenberg, Relations & Partnership Development Manager for NY NOW, you are not doing that platform correctly!

You never know what fantastic shop in and around New York City and its environs that Amy will be featuring. It is dynamic, and it's filled with wonder and surprises, just like shopping in The Before Times! This visually rich, exciting travelogue is the next best thing to experiencing the city yourself.

Amy, who also generates webinars and podcasts for NY NOW, visits The Paper Fold to talk not just NYC retail, but NY NOW Digital Market, plus plans for the physical NY NOW Market slated to return to Javits Center in August 2021. This highly anticipated event marks the physical debut of the market's reimagined Gift + Stationery section — and I know I am not the only one who can't wait to experience this highly curated, target destination for myself!

This episode finds me switching up the format a bit. I have a few questions for Amy, then she interviews me (!), and then we have some exciting news to share. Tune in to be one of the first in the know!

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For every Mary Engelbreit or Anna Bond, there are hundreds of smaller makers who are not only sustaining themselves by staying small, but wearing it as a badge of honor — no household name required. Joanna Alberti of PhiloSophie's got a huge boost early in her career, in 2005, when she was named one of Business Week's Top Five Entrepreneurs Under 25. That same year, she and her cards literally put themselves on the industry map with their catwalk debut at the LOUIE Awards gala, held at Manhattan's Chelsea Piers during what was, as far as I know, the only GCA-sponsored card fashion show to date.

Buoyed by that promising start, Joanna has built her brand into a thriving business that "creates joy for others as well as myself." Over the years PhiloSophie's has released an impressive slew of custom creations, corporate collabs, and licensed gift offerings, all administered from Joanna's cozy studio/shop in Spencerport, New York.

PhiloSophie's is populated by Joanna's very versatile spirit cartoon animal Sophie, who is much more than an icon ready to be personalized. Sophie owes her success to the fact that Joanna shaped her from the start into a vehicle for the upbeat, uplifting story Joanna wants to tell the world.

Joanna shares how Sophie has consistently dispensed "aspirational positivity" — like the wisdom of not taking yourself too seriously, or the perils of bowing to your ego. Joanna describes how she has pivoted due to COVID-19 — and how spreading joy can be not just an act of resilience, but resistance as well.

Find PhiloSophie's:

W: www.celebratewithsophies.com

IG: @shopsophies

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Most retailers have had a difficult 2020, but for Suzanne Loesch, owner of Mockingbird Paperie in Ithaca, New York, her summer of 2019 featured a terrifying, headline-grabbing troll attack that plunged her life and business into a waking nightmare. It all began when a customer took a photograph of a few of Suzanne's greeting card offerings, a series of Sapling Press letterpress cards designed to play on political humor. The customer posted the image along with her store's information on a Pro-Trump Facebook page with 30,000 followers alongside with the admonition to "have at it."

The nightmare unfolded as Suzanne dealt with a dizzying, constant series of demeaning insults and even death threats via text, phone and social media. That was followed by national news coverage that left her feeling that the narrative — her narrative — had been taken from her with zero accountability. Suzanne feared for her own and her staff's safety, not to mention the future of the business she'd built for eight years. At one point both her Facebook and Instagram pages were taken down, but someone created a fake one just so people could attack her and her shop.

Fortunately, Suzanne also discovered the best in her community, as many — even those from across the aisle — supported Mockingbird Paperie in every sense of the word. She and her husband also made the conscious decision to respond to every last text and letter, no matter its tone, and learned a few things about both themselves and those they formerly considered adversaries. An unlikely friendship even emerged out of it, along with the realization of how much power lies in simply listening, and how much healing can arise from genuine connection.

I first wrote about this incident in the Fall 2019 issue of Stationery Trends, but with the passage of the craziest year I can remember, I wanted to check in on Suzanne to see if and how the dust settled, and how Mockingbird Paperie fared through the retail crisis of 2020. Have her feelings on CardGate changed with the passage of time? Suzanne also shares the incident's unexpected benefits — and valuable advice for any business that finds itself in her shoes.

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While you may not immediately recognize the name of my guest today — Leslie Moak Murray — you've likely laughed at her cartoons.  Leslie is the creator of Murray's Law, and over the past several decades, her award-winning and prolific body of work has appeared on cards, napkins, note pads, paper plates, newspapers, books — really, anywhere cartoons and jokes can be placed.

Leslie's zany humor has repeatedly struck our cultural funny bone in precisely the right spot, as evidenced by the rather impressive 23 LOUIE awards she's won since first getting into the business in to late 1980s. In the course of her career, Leslie went from running her own company, to licensing and even syndicating her work, to finding a new audience on Instagram. Meanwhile her work can be purchased on various products at Leanin' Tree, Cardmore, Current and even Fabrics.com.

Chances are, if the item in question is printed or can be printed on, Leslie has seen and done it. In this episode, she recounts everything from shrink-wrapping early card orders in Saran wrap, to the love letters and hate mail she's received over the years, to her realization that protecting her work in our digital age is nearly impossible. Her insights into how she has consistently churned out humor for decades and whether she writes the copy or draws the image first are not to be missed!

Big thanks to The Paper Fold's fabulous sponsors. We are thrilled to partner with and promote these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range and see how your stationery can slay!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet!

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every once in a while, a card maker comes along who strikes a cultural chord at exactly the moment it needs to be struck. If I'm lucky enough to spot the range early on, sitting back and watching the world fall in love with it is truly a wonder to behold. I saw this when Emily McDowell and her magnificent empathy cards came on the scene several years back. And now, although 2020 has completely sucked, it's not a complete wash for me as I've stumbled across Janine Kwoh of Kwohtations.

Janine's Welcome to the Grief Club is to the sympathy category what Emily McDowell & Friends is to the thinking of you category. The Brooklyn letterpresser "makes cards as she needs them," and her range has strong themes of inclusion, representation and honesty running through it. Janine's creations help get difficult but necessary conversations started, and in the age of COVID-19, they are more relevant and prescient than ever. Who would have guessed that a card, a sticker, an art print or a care package could help us authentically connect, comfort and validate each other when we are needing it most — but that's the emotion behind every last Kwohtations sale.

Janine made her trade show debut this past February in the Emerging Designer section at National Stationery Show/NY NOW, and I could barely introduce myself to her through the ever-present crowd. Now Janine is compiling the world's first illustrated book on grief for adults, with a working title of Welcome to the Grief Club, to be released by Workman Publishing in Fall 2021. Janine sits down with me to share more about her background, her work and how stationery can help us feel a bit more seen, a bit more connected, and a bit less alone.

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Closing a store is incredibly painful, but my guest today, Liz Scott, is here to share that that difficult decision may just be a badge of honor in disguise. Liz was the proud proprietress of the paper & gift shop Lovely Somethings in Bath, Ohio, for several years before closing its doors at the end of 2019. But, her industry story doesn't end there. Freed from a costly lease, she reimagined and reconfigured her business into the Troop Lovely Somethings brand.

If there was a course in how to create a lively store brand without an actual store, Liz could teach it. Through her online hub, she still sells many of the same exquisite wares she carried in her store, and she also assembles her divinely curated gift boxes. These are one-offs, not subscriptions — grab yours before they're gone. And, three drop today!

Liz calls them two of them Closet Boxes, as in, you are going to need these in your goodie closet — and she also has a bundle of cards culled from some of my favorite makers, paired with posh writing utensils plus stamps for one-stop letter-writing. For me, seeing all these exclusive brands is like taking a stroll through a juried section of one of my favorite gift shows, maybe Atlanta or New York? If you can't actually go to a store, one of these delivered to your doorstep, full of surprises, is the next best thing. Snag yours here.

Closing her store's physical doors has also empowered Liz to do something she never would have felt comfortable doing otherwise: opening up about her personal life. In a series of blog posts entitled My Husband Is Black and I Am Not Special, Liz provides a front-row seat, no holds barred, into her interracial marriage.

She covers everything from how their families initially responded to the relationship, to getting pulled over by a white police officer late at night in an affluent suburb, to what happened when they put up a Biden sign on their front lawn. It is raw, it is honest, it is powerful, and I hope you take the time to read it. Liz shares its impact on her business, on her community, on her Instagram feed. I think you’ll be surprised, so tune in!

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's a first for TPF, namely, I’m dropping this episode in conjunction with a product drop — but this is no ordinary product. In fact, it’s more of a special project. It’s a collaboration, but it’s not like the ones where you see one brand with a little x between them and whoever they’ve partnered with.

Like those, it’s limited edition, but unlike those, it brings nine different makers from all over the place together to submit stellar card designs that are unified by colorway and format, as well as fun themes like snail mail and friendship. The result is cohesive, distinct and irresistable. Best of all, each greeting card is accompanied by a wee trading card with the design and IG handle of the maker on front, and a line drawing of them and their stats on back! They’re baseball cards reimagined for our little world. It’s brilliant, it's beguiling and it’s spearheaded by Pei of The Paper and Craft Pantry in Austin, Texas, my guest today.

As amazing as all that is, what I love most about this collaboration is that Pei didn’t create “to make a little money” for everyone, she approached every aspect to promote joy — and not just for those who buy it at retail, for those who create it too. There were no pressing deadlines to add stress to already harried souls, instead transparency was stressed throughout. And it was designed so that for the card sender, the act of assembling a set becomes the online stationery scavenger hunt that we didn’t know we needed, but we do. This is a celebration of design, of community, of discovery, of connection, and most of all of snail mail, so you know I’m all over it! And while one drops today, it is actually the second edition; that means there is already another out there hiding in the vast internet to hunt down and discover for yourself.

Makers featured in 1st edition: @thepapercraftpantry @xouislove @belleandunionco @sketchynotions @allie.biddle @ilootpaperie @lettersbyshells @calliopepaperie @kristara

Makers featured in 2nd edition: @euniandco @littlegoatpaperco @thepapercraftpantry @ajarofpickles_ @watercoloratx @electriceunice @odddaughterco @thepaperwilderness @bloomwolfstudio

Happy Hunting!

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

International travel may be off the table for now, but for the first episode of our new season, Jason Arbuckle of J. Falkner swings by America to chat from London! J. Falkner may be the only range I've come across that so closely associates itself with a city: in this case, colorful, sunny Palm Beach.

Receiving one of these cards is the card equivalent of catching up with a dear friend over cocktails in some glamorous locale. The brand is really a reflection of Jason himself: he's amazingly dapper, he's witty and well-read, he's entertaining and he's oh-so-much fun to catch up with, as you'll hear.

We touch on his brand's Palm Beach origins, finding inspiration in and around London, Jason's fabulous IG feed, the joy of spying on card shoppers, creating new card designs to help people connect during a pandemic, running an international operation during COVID-19, the current mood in London — as well as the silver linings he's found in these crazy times.

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

National Stationery Show (NSS) first opened its doors in 1945, and although we didn’t know at the time, its February 2020 edition was its final run. On July 27, Emerald announced that the National Stationery Show brand was being retired, and my social media feeds were almost instantaneously filled with fond reminiscences and, let’s be honest, no small amount of angst.

 Undoubtedly, we are all dealing with cancellations and disappointments on several levels, but this one really hurt. I myself attended almost every year since 1998, and have so many great memories of dazzling discoveries, talented individuals who became dear friends — not to mention all those magnificent parties! 

It’s impossible to not be at least a little sad. But while I’m bummed, I’m far more excited about NY NOW’s plans to create one single stationery destination in its market — because, let’s be honest, a lot has changed since 1945! And having this reimagining occur in 2020 is actually quite beneficial. 

Stationery is being rediscovered in a big way during this pandemic, and it plays an increasingly important role within more traditional gift lines than in the past. This is all being spurred by the consumer, who is feeling isolated and sending letters, journaling, working at home, appreciating the post office with new eyes — all of which benefits stationery. In our transformed world, the category demands a fresh approach. 

But rather than me waxing eloquent on the category and how to best serve all of us who love it, today I have Tim Hart, senior vice president, retail group, in The Paper Fold to share more about the challenges Emerald has been facing, how they are reimagining the stationery and gift categories —and what a visit to NY NOW in 2021 will look like. 

**Thank You Sponsors**

Please be sure to support these all-American, women-owned houses of paper.

Girl w/Knife is your incredibly sharp new stationery BFF. Check out this award-winning, ultra-polished range that everyone's talking about — it slays on several brilliant levels!

Kitty Meow Boutique was founded on the idea that your paper goods don't have to be a snooze fest. These stylish, laugh-out-loud selections are by turns sassy and sweet, all the while maintaining a consistent cool.

Music Credits: “Your Treasure is Your Self”; written and performed by Sharon Glassman; Courtesy of Sharon Glassman/Smile Songs. smilesongs.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices