THE GOOD. I hope I don't jinx it by writing it here but we are on track with our National Stationery Show (NSS) preparations! That’s right there is an entire trade show just for stationery. And it’s the one time of year when we get to see our retail customers face-to-face to show them what’s new and hopefully drum up more business. In a nutshell, it’s a big deal around here. We’ve been meeting weekly to go over everything from mailers to booth design to giveaway swag since January.
There’s still a lot on our to-do list but we feel pretty good going into our 2-week count down. We've been able to stick to our timeline because we are benefiting from all of the work that went into changing our booth location last year. The new corner booth looked great and so we’re pretty much reusing the same layout and furniture, saving us a lot of guesswork and time (and money!). Obviously, we’ll be refreshing the overall booth aesthetic with new paint colors and display. Clayton has been toiling away on a large scale art composition made out of hand-cut paper for our counter and walls. And next week we’re going to mock up the booth and test the walls Eric and I are building.
I just dropped our bright yellow mailers in the mail this morning. We divvied up our long list to get everything addressed this week and now we could all really go for some hand massages. But no time for that, we have a trade show to get to!
THE BAD. We are hiring because we've had some schedule changes around here. You may have seen this posting about open positions in the shop (do you know anyone in Boston looking for a job?). This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but sorting through résumés and scheduling interviews does throw a wrench into the day-to-day operations. It's important that we find people who are qualified, excited about being here, and want to be part of a small, quirky team.
THE (NOT SO) UGLY. Harris, our mint plant, is looking mighty happy these days thanks to Sarah and her inner botanist. Just in time for ice tea season!
Interested in joining a friendly and hardworking team with a passion for paper? We have two part-time positions open, and we'd love to hear from you. Contact us if you or someone you know would be a good fit! To apply for either of these positions, email a resume and cover letter to info@smudgeink.mom.
The printer itself is huge and so fast, printing hundreds of sheets in just a few minutes! In fact, it’s not set up to print out just one sheet. During the press check we print on the backs of other test sheets to save paper and avoid unnecessary waste.
Offset printing is a four color process. Above you see the yellow ink (the Y in CMYK). Each color has its own plate, and the paper is fed through the machine one color at a time. While I was checking colors, the press operator made slight variations to the amount of ink to change the output. 
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I spent this past Saturday at 
Lovers of letterpress and fans of Angela’s Italian ribbon (and her husband’s espresso!) filtered in all afternoon. Rachel‘s letterpress demo using a Kelsey table top press was also a huge hit. You can check out