pulp obsession

a big thank you!

the stationery show is around the corner and we just finished shipping out the last of the paper on friday (well except for one small order on monday). it has been insane over the last three weeks, the mill has been running 16 hour days with two days of that whole time. i for one am glad to finally enjoy the weekend, and who knew it, i have a family!

i wish everybody the best at the national stationery show!

now it is back to normal schedules, product development and summer interns…welcome to “camp porridge”.  we have revamped our wine tags and also came out with small favor boxes, all in plantable seed paper so you can give a gift that keeps giving.

Hi guys! Samantha here… back at long last! Hopefully you’ll be hearing more from me now that I’m back in the mill!

Christopher and I were just discussing the handful of letterpress printers that we’ve had switch to our paper  over the past couple of years. He suggested that I start warning them about the emotional changes they need to prepare for. With this in mind, I thought I might suggest a little therapeutic exercise for any letterpress printer who has not, or will soon be printing on our lovely handmade papers.

OK - ready? (after reading this) Close your eyes and imagine yourself with a ten-pound brick on your chest. Imagine that you’ve tried everything to remove this brick… EVERYTHING… lifting, pushing, pulling, helium balloons, dirigibles, creating ingenious contraptions, etc. Then picture someone walking up to you and giving you a ticket. Picture this ticket is your favorite color and the printing on it is astounding in richness and detail… the ticket itself has the most luxurious, velvety texture you’ve ever let your phalanges run across. With this ticket in your hand the weight on your chest disappears into a small flutter of birds or butterflies or bees… or whatever winged creature your little heart can imagine…

THAT- my friends - is what the switch to our paper is like. Or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe with some of the e-mails we’ve received.

ok! Back to work now! You haven’t seen the last of me!

i started porridge papers back in 1993. it began in my kitchen, moved to the basement then in 1995 i rented a space in the historic district in lincoln, nebraska on 7th and o street and started producing stationery sets for stores up and down the midwest. business went from 2 stores to 30 in over 3 months!

after a few years we moved to new mexico and occupied a few warehouses for the next 9 years. we then decided to come full circle and move back home. so lincoln, nebraska is now home once again for porridge papers.

we purchased the building back in may of 2006, we thought is was so big and had great plans for the space, now we are running out of it and are eying the building next door! so that is a little history. if you were wondering, i was doing a bit of spring cleaning with my wife at home to make way for our new baby and came across those old photos of our first papermill. oh how i do miss it sometimes…or is it just the memories?

we finished with a project for jason ensminger. he had us make a handmade plantable thank you card for him to send to his clients as well as a custom size business card. i really liked how he had us incorporate the deckled edges on just 2 sides of his business card.

with the whole green movement we have had a surge in requests for both our regular handmade paper and our plantable paper. i never would have thought 15 years ago when i started that making paper from recycled scraps and tossing in some seeds would make such a huge impression 15 years latter.  it has been real exciting to talk with people and discuss all sorts of uses for our papers! we have some very exciting projects on that way that i can’t wait to share with you once they are done. we also hope to be adding some more plantable products ready for purchase in the very near future!

so we got this wonderful little note today and it got us thinking that we need to make some t-shirts for our various interns that we get. it would be a “camp porridge” shirt!

little notes like these make us love our job. thanks suzie for making the switch.

happy earth day!

on a cloud rainy day we like to sit around and eat soup, drink tea and find ways not to work so hard!  brizida, the one in the green is our newest intern. after her first “real” print job she and samantha are admiring her handy work. way to go!

she did a fantastic design. she also learned that designing a 3 color 2 sided card with bleeds and letterpress printing that design on plantable seed paper are not quite the same. none the less it turned out awesome. so for those of you that order from us you will be receiving your very own plantable memento.

so this past saturday we held a paper sale. handmade paper for $0.25 up to $2.50 a sheet. the sheet sizes were 4×6 up to 19×25. it was crazy, and a lot of fun as well! thank you everybody for coming out. we will definitely be doing it again. we still have several thundered sheets we need to get rid of. so stay tuned!

there is so much going on around the mill as far as plantable paper goes. we have been producing plantable paper for so many companies over the last few months that we forgot what it was like to make paper without seeds. and a lot of which we cant even tell you about just yet!

we are very excited to have a new intern that started with us, her name is brizida, and she is, as my daughter says “a rock star designer”! with the help of brizida we will be working up some really cool designs for our line of plantable paper products. some of which will include plantable wine/bottle tags, plantable coasters, plantable bags, plantable pillow boxes, plantable bookmarks and anything else you can dream up. we will also be publishing our wholesale/bulk price list on our web site in the next few weeks. if you can not wait please call us at 402.742.5415.

there are times where we get to print a wonderful design! at first we are a bit skeptical, is this color right, or that design just does not look right?? occasionally we call the designer to make sure that is what they want before we print the rest of the job (which they are thankful for…sometimes). when this job came in from nessa at cardgirl, i have to admit i was wondering what was going on with the paslies (sp). but i was so wrong, it was absolutely beautiful!