Write. Often. Regularly. With Love.
My shop officially began with a dream in 2009, but my history with paper and writing started when I was around 5.
When I was a kid, my favorite trips involved going to Citibank with my aunt and taking handfuls of deposit slips so I could make magic copies with the carbon sheets inside. I was also obsessed with visiting the library to earn a stamp on the library card.
When I was a teenager, I had a wall, not with posters of Back Street Boys or musicians, but of scraps from my favorite gift wrap that had lovingly snuggled gifts for me on birthdays and holidays.
When I graduated from high school and for two years in college, I worked at the stationery and paper store Papyrus learning everything about cards, stationery, buying and selling, wrapping gifts, pretty ribbons, invitations, and the art of communication.
In the years after leaving Papyrus and entering the real world, I found other paper stores to love and made card making a hobby-I helped a friend make her own wedding invitations, I designed and handmade another friend's first birthday invitations for her daughter, and I made using a hand embossing tool embossed stationery for another friend for her birthday. Yet, it never crossed my mind to have a business. I just wanted to make people happy with gifts of my creation.
Lightening struck in 2009, while traveling around Italy, after running the Rome Marathon and trying to find my footing after my father's sudden death a month prior. Toward the end of my journey, while in the town of Riomaggiore, in Italy’s gorgeous Cinque Terre, I had a dream that involved me removing a card (that I never saw) from an envelope that was designed much like a pair of tights I had worn and ripped a huge hole in. I immediately woke up, sat up from bed and said out loud, "Holy crap! This is what I am supposed to be doing with my life!"
I'm a huge believer in signs and a few days later, as my plan for my business formulated and started to take shape, I was balling up a bag that had contained my lunch at the Montpelier train station in France and noticed an image of a tree with a circle on it that said, "Le papier c'est la vie". I ripped it off so quickly, and put it in my wallet so I'd never lose it. It currently hangs on my wall (photo above) and it reminds me of the 11 years it took for me to come full circle.
When I got home and told my Mom that I wanted to start a stationery company she said, "I could have told you that many years ago!".
I needed those 11 years to learn and grow and now, I'm here, just where I should be, making what I love for customers that I love working with.
Being a paper fanatic, I work with paper of all kinds - handmade from other countries, metallic, recycled, mattes, glosses, etc. I also work with textiles-laces, nylons, anything that is flexible.
My handiwork goes into every project, so while an item may be printed digitally, I will hand cut, hand tie, glue by hand, and/or embellish with glitters and anything else the design calls for. I also hand sketch any illustrations necessary for an invitation or piece before it is imported into the computer and tweaked before printing.
I am committed to my customers and myself to provide the most unique social stationery. I want you to shine through every piece designed - my stationery should help you tell your story. Simple, elegant and thoughtful, it's the S2 Stationery and Design way.
