Lately, we've been spending a lot of time researching and drawing inspiration for new stationery ideas and designs from the web (hello Pinterest!) and from beautiful magazines. It's an overwhelming process and our list of products-in-the-pipeline just keeps growing by the day.
As we're fine-tuning themes like bicycles, cats and dogs, sun moon and star designs, hedgehogs and indigenous flowers, we also get inspired by different methods for card making like stamping, block printing, wood cutting, lino printing and of course, designs from printing presses. For stationery nerds like us, it's a wonderful experience to surround ourselves with so much creativity. The beauty of it is that it's a global creativity, a collective movement, and technology makes it so easy to tap into that creativity and share our expressions and impressions with the world.
At the moment, woodcutting is what intrigues us most. It must be the simple lines and the idea of a piece of wood as a blank canvas, but instead of adding to it, you take away from it. Little by little, you chisel away at it until you have your masterpiece.
And you only have one chance to get it right. If you take too much away from the design, it's ruined and you'll have to start from scratch. No second chances (unless you cheat). It's a merciless medium, but the reward kicks in when you perfect the design, because it's then when you get to use it over and over again.