Stationery Store Day

Stationery Store Day 2023

We celebrated Stationery Store Day with Paper & Pencil this year. They had a pop-up makers market and invited us to participate and, even though it rained all day, we had a great time meeting fellow stationery fans in Andersonville!

Paper & Pencil looked so charming all decked out for the holiday. The store was busy from open to close, proving that this silly little holiday is just what stationery fans needed to truly celebrate the paper and pencils and stickers that we love year-round. Isn’t it just fun to celebrate in community sometimes?

Sidenote: Let’s take a moment to admire this Journey of a Letter poster in the P&P shop.

My helpful assistant gave me a little break so I could go inside and buy some official Stationery Store Day merch. He also brought me coffee and snacks throughout the day and kept inching my frames out of the drips coming down from the sides of the tent. Truly Employee of the Year behavior.

In addition to the official Stationery Store Day items, I bought two cards from Submarine Paper Co, who was also part of the makers market. I love her style!

And in case you’re wondering why I didn’t buy more, well it’s because I was just shopping at Paper & Pencil last month. April, my pen pal from New Zealand, was here for a visit and we spent a day in Andersonville stationery shopping. Pictured is everything I bought that day (except for the Japanese mail frog, which was from Raygun, just around the corner from P&P!)

That’s a wrap for Stationery Store Day 2023! We’re already looking forward to next year. But for now, I’m back in production mode for Garage Galleries on August 26–this time we’ll be in my own back yard!

I’d love to hear how you celebrated Stationery Store Day!

P.S. Here’s how we celebrated the inaugural Stationery Store Day last year!

Stationery Store Day

Did you know Saturday was the very first Stationery Store Day? (Is Stationery Store Day a totally made up holiday? Yes. But so was Book Store Day and Record Store Day, so, why can’t paper sellers and fans have a day, too?)

When I saw that A. Favorite Design was a participating shop, I decided this was my chance to finally get up to the north side to see the shop. I’ve purchased things from them each year at Show of Hands, but I’ve never been to their shop.

In a total blogging fail, I didn’t take any pictures inside the shop. I haven’t been stationery shopping in so long–since we went to Japan in 2020! I was relishing every moment! Most of their offerings are their own letterpress designs, but they have a fun selection of vintage postcards, stationery, and wrapping paper, and they have other paper and desk offerings as well.

As you can see, I found plenty of treasures! I picked out some vintage advertising stationery (which I can’t wait to feed into my typewriter for a letter soon), some letterpress “Dennison label” cards, “Dennison Label” paper tape, vintage Chicago postcards, mail stickers, my new favorite pens, some greeting cards, a vintage ephemera and office supply letter set, a “Down the hatch” sticker, and (underneath it all) a sheet of vintage vegetable wrapping paper.

And, the picture at the top shows the Stationery Store Day freebies–a letterpress print I pulled myself, a Stationery Store Day bag and postcard, and a A. Favorite Design birthday card. (How great is that Etch A Sketch?!)

Before we went shopping, we stopped at Spinning J’s for brunch and pie.

I had a BLT, a strawberry rhubarb phosphate, and the key lime hibiscus pie with blueberry compote. (This is the meal I would recommend to anyone trying Spinning J’s for the first time, though their tuna melt is also excellent. Really…you just can’t go wrong with their menu!)

I brought out my letter purse that Naoto gave me last winter. It was the perfect accessory for the occasion! And, you can pencil in the next Stationery Store Day–August 5, 2023!