Stationery Scoop

Giving back

How was your weekend? We attended a wonderful summer solstice party at friends Jackie and Ray's house. BBQ, jazz, gorgeous weather and friends = a perfect evening!

I wanted to share this image of two recent orders for plantable bookmarks from Botanical PaperWorks. I love how couples are using their wedding as a chance to help out a favorite charitable organization. The couple on the left asked for donations to two special charities in lieu of wedding gifts. And the couple on the right is making a donation on behalf of their guests in lieu of wedding favors.

Charities and not-for-profit organizations have been especially hard-hit during this recession and it's great to see couples giving back. What a wonderful way to start a new life together!

Seed-infused plantable necker

What's a necker? These tags that hang on Rosemount Estates wine are neckers! Each necker is embedded with wildflower seeds so you can plant the paper and grow flowers right out of the paper.

New and notable at Botanical PaperWorks:

• I'm on Twitter. Follow me here.
• Earth Day is fast approaching; lots of plantable cards and coasters shipping out for that special day.
• Six more sleeps until Mexico, olé!
• Enjoying The Happiness Project blog
• The weather continues to be frightfully cold, but did I mention 6 more sleeps until Mexico?!

Plantable Earth Day promotional products

We've greened up are here and it feels good. At the Botanical PaperWorks facility, we have added a number of green, fresh plants to our operations area. They thrive in the brilliant sunshine that beams in from the huge warehouse windows. It feels great.

These days, we're bustling with orders for Earth Day, coming up on April 22. Here are several eco-friendly plantable paper pieces from some of our clients. Each piece grows wildflowers or herbs when the 100% post-consumer waste paper is planted. Check out the entire plantable promotional products line.
Not to worry, Canadian Earth Day copyright owners - it's our American customers who are printing "Earth Day" on plantable promo products NOT the Canadians (apparently in Canada, the term Earth Day is registered and owned by this organization which rigorously defends its copyright ownership).

Beautiful music

It's a restful Sunday afternoon and I'm listening to violinist Itzhak Perlman play Meditation from Thais, a beautiful, haunting melody that I just have to include in this post for you to listen to. Here's violinist Sarah Chang with the Berlin Philharmonica Orchestra, conducted (interestingly) by Placido Domingo.

I was looking through the stack of printing samples from recent customer orders and I noticed a trend of clients using photographs on their plantable postcards, business cards and invitations. The results are excellent as shown below in these samples. Are there any limitations? We tested some birth announcements with photos printed directly on the paper, and the placement of the seed can sometimes look like blemishes on a cheek or forehead, so we tend to steer clients away from using close-up pictures of people.

But I guess you could say that good design and plantable paper make beautiful music together to produce better-than-imagined, synergistic results.

 

Here I am!

Hello there! I've been a little quiet on the blogging front lately for a number of reasons, some interesting and others not so much: technical issues with my home computer (home is Blogging Central for me), working on several new, fabulous stationery collections and balancing all that with caring for kids with strep throat.

Lots of cool custom plantable paper jobs coming out of Botanical PaperWorks these days. Here are three recent plantable business cards:

I've been putting Twitter on and off the blog all week, trying to fix some technical glitches. If you're finding that this blog is loading slowly, would you email me? I don't want to compromise the Stationery Scoop experience with slow-loading Twitter.

Who's seen the new Bond movie? Let me know what you think (but don't give anything away!). I may try to get out and see it this weekend. Ciao for now!

One Million Acts of Green, starting with plantable business cards

Here's something we love to see - a movement that makes a difference, a real difference to our planet. Last week, The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos launched One Million Acts of Green. Did you receive one of these 100% post-consumer waste/seed-embedded plantable business cards? Botanical PaperWorks produced them for The Hour.
 
What is One Million Acts of Green? The CBC website describes it best:

This season, CBC and The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos want to mobilize Canadians to do One Million Acts of Green. In partnership with Cisco, the idea behind the campaign is that one small act can make a big difference.

It’s not about overhauling your life; it’s about one act from each individual amassing to a million. It can be as simple as switching to compact fluorescent lightbulbs, starting a recycling program, or walking to work. You can do one act – or you can do all one million! It’s up to you.

Young and old, parents and kids, small towns and big cities, we want to create an exciting grassroots initiative. All you have to do is go to this website and register one act – or more. Our green calculator, designed by GreenNexxus, will determine the impact of those acts on the environment.

We're asking everyone to get involved: schools and universities, cities and communities, business, politicians, and even celebrities. George and The Hour are challenging other CBC programs to go green, including CBC News, Kids’ CBC, Steven & Chris, Living, and CBC Sports. But most of all, YOU.

Together we can make an impact. Together we can make our lives, our communities, and our environment greener.

One million acts of green, one act a time.

Plantable paper in action

We're working with an innovative client right now designing plantable packaging for a line of consumer goods. I've blogged before about the plantable boxes that we make for Lilyfield Cakes, made super strong with triple-thick Garden Greetings™ wildflower seed paper. Did you know that triple thick paper also means that the paper has triple the usual amount of seeds, so this paper is going to grow A LOT of wildflowers!

This is a bloom growing right out of a piece of Garden Greetings plantable paper that I have planted in a pot on my window sill at home. This particular flower appeared about a week ago and opened up just yesterday. It was very exciting to watch the transformation.

I received this promotional piece in the mail today from Toyota. Nice that they used FSC paper, but too bad they didn't use 100% tree-free plantable paper!

Wednesday

The garden is such a wonderful place of inspiration. I get so excited when the perennials start to bloom, like these beautiful white blossoms that poked up at the beginning of Spring. The wildflower seed blend that we use in our Garden Greetings™ plantable paper is a mix of annuals and perennials, so if you choose to plant your paper in an outdoors garden, you'll enjoy the bounty year after year. How wonderful!

Here's a plantable promotional piece that we recently did. The University of Arizona is starting to promote an event in 2009 with these plantable give-aways. The gray-tones + red makes the piece pop.

Plantable promotion for DECCA

Here's an interesting plantable promotional piece that we did recently for client DECCA Hospitality Furnishings. DECCA offers premium furnishings for the hospitality sector and this full-color piece with plantable house die-cut is distinctive and memorable. When the house is planted, it will grow wildflowers right out of the paper giving the lucky recipient an enduring reminder of the give-away and DECCA.
 

Plantable promotional products

New! Plantable promotional products to help you "grow" your business! See the entire line by downloading a free catalog from the Botanical PaperWorks website. Here are some of the products included in the program:

Plantable Postcards

Plantable Bottle Bibs

Custom-Printed Plantable Business Cards

...and much more!

Contact us to get started on designing a piece for your business. And get growing!