I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m a sucker for a nice looking foil stamp. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about that shimmer that gets me every time. It’s kind of like in high school when you find out the boy you’ve been crushing on is going to ask you out. It’s just so fun and exciting. Well, I get the same fluttery feeling every time I see the sheen of a foil stamp. I know something special is in store. And that’s exactly the feeling we wanted to share with our latest subscriber exclusive – foil stamp thank you notes!
With the holidays fast behind us, we thought it was fitting for January’s edition of The Parcel to feature a post holiday necessity – the thank you note. But it couldn’t be any old note, it had to be pri-mo. I’ve been dying to use a copper foil stamp with kraft paper ever since I saw the branding LG2 did for the Pork Federation of Quebec. An unlikely combination (in every sense) I know, but the results were just stunning. So when the chance to use a foil stamp on this project came up, I knew it had to be copper metallic.
What I didn’t plan on was how much I’d struggle over narrowing down the paper options. My plan was to highlight three different papers all using the same copper foil. Given my affection for the LG2 project, a kraft paper was a no-brainer, I chose Mohawk Via Kraft in vellum. But what about the other two? I started to think about the invitation trend I’ve been seeing everywhere with gold and blush. And then it hit me, I opened my swatchbox and grabbed the French Paper Construction swatch, put that little copper foil swatch on top of the Insulation Pink and was instantly smitten.
Two down, one to go. I scoured through my keeper file of paper samples. I swore I had an identity sample using a charcoal gray paper paired with copper foil. After twenty minutes of searching I found it – the Andina Capital identity system by Hint Creative. Again, I turned to my swatch books and looked for a nice gray to set off the dull copper foil. While there are a bunch of darker grays to choose from, this paper was for a thank you note – which would most likely be handwritten, in ink, and charcoal was just too dark. Then I remembered the Strathmore Letterpress papers, there was the perfect shade – Smoke Gray. And because it’s a cotton paper, it feels so lush and toothy.
Perfect, I had my paper specs all set. I had already gotten a quote from a printer who specializes in foil stamping here in Cleveland, United Finishing & Die Cutting (btw, Josh is super nice to work with). I got them the paper on a Wednesday and by that Friday afternoon they were ready for me to pick up! I couldn’t be more thrilled with the results and I hope our subscribers are too.
That process was so much easier because I had a ton of inspiration to draw on. And that’s what we try to do with the samples included in The Parcel.
Each month we share some inspiring real world projects, produced on papers specified by all kinds of creatives who work within real-life constraints like budgets, availability restrictions and deadlines. There’s also a healthy dose of eye-candy in the form of mill promos where you’ll see what’s possible on all different grades. Plus we share some P&P exclusives, like these thank you notes, produced just for our subscribers.
Oh, and if you sign up for The Parcel in January, we’ll send you a set of these very thank you notes – foil stamp and all.