New Father's Day Cards

With Father's Day around the corner on June 15th, I thought I'd share the new Father's Day cards that I've added to the shop this year. I feel as though I'm finally happy with the cohesive nature of my shop with the addition of some of my latest work. Again I've opted for bold colors and simple designs that provide something both recognizable and relative for most of us.

While Father's Day tends to be a less card heavy holiday than Mother's Day, I still feel that it's important to recognize the dads in our lives. When I was growing up, my dad was the stay at home parent for quite some time, so I have many fond memories as a child in a different way than many people may have had, and for that I am incredibly thankful. While I didn't crash the family car and I rarely text my dad, one thing that I do enjoy doing with him when I visit home is sitting and chatting over a good cup of coffee at my mom's bakery.

What are your favorite things to do with your dad? Did any of you have a stay at home dad?

3 Sharable Links That Will Change Your Perspective

We're all guilty of getting sucked into the black hole of the web. However, sometimes that black hole isn't such a bad thing. Recently, I've found that some of the articles I've happened upon have literally changed the way I think about my daily life. I thought I'd share three of those with you today in the hopes that they'll give you the same boost or that "aha!" moment that they gave me.

1 // Andrew and I bike a lot when the weather is nice, he even more so than I. As we have officially entered the season or gorgeous weather, he bikes to work almost every day and we try to ride our bikes as a way of getting to Orioles games, happy hour, the farmer's market, or wherever we are traveling locally. Last week, Andrew already had two very close calls due to drivers that were not paying attention to the fact that he was in the unprotected bike lane. Things would be much easier for all parties involved if we had a system like this ingeniously designed intersection for protected bicycle lanes.


Protected Intersections For Bicyclists from Nick Falbo on Vimeo.

2 // I think as whole our society tends to get burned out on the job. I loved this article about 5 simple office policies that make Danish workers more happy than Americans. The points made are absolutely true for many people. Especially important in my book, was point number five in which being happy with your work is an absolute priority.

3 // Some days, I find myself having an incredibly bad or unproductive day for one reason or another. This article about how to make your unproductive days better has some really great ideas on getting a restart and sums up a lot of the same strategies that I often use.

What new ideas have helped put things in perspective for you lately?

Copper and Gold Foil Stationery

After introducing gold foil pressed cards into my shop several months ago, the creative wheels began to turn as I thought of all the beautiful foiled stationery that I could create. While the hot foil press seemed to be an easy shoo-in for foil stationery, it came with many limitations that began to irritate me. I could only press paper with letter type that was sized small enough for my press, and I couldn't really use my own designs.

With these limitations in mind, I began looking into the process of foil embossing and printing without the use of the hot foil press. I spent many hours completing test runs, and finally felt confident with the results. I have since debuted two new designs in my shop-- a beautifully simple stationery set printed in copper paired with aqua envelopes, and a gold foiled hello card sweetly paired with light pink.

I'm thrilled with how my original visions for these designs have come to life on paper, and look forward to adding more foiled paper products in the near future.

Do you like the foil look? Do you prefer foil on stationery or art prints?

The Biltmore Estate

A few weekends ago, Andrew and I planned a four day weekend mini road trip to Asheville, North Carolina. Our basic plan for the trip was to enjoy the vast number of craft breweries in the area, eat amazing food, and take a day trip to the Biltmore Estate. Beer, food, and architecture tend to be our general itinerary for most places we travel to or explore, and Asheville didn't disappoint in any of those departments. In fact, there were so many places that we didn't get to try, beer and food-wise, that we hope to make another visit sometime in the future.

As an architect, Andrew always wants to take in the famous or historic buildings that are nearby, so the Biltmore was an obvious no-brainer. If you ever plan to visit, you will need at least a day to take in the gardens, go on the house tour, and enjoy the winery afterward. The estate is absolutely huge, which we knew going into it, but we still hadn't realized just how huge until we arrived.

While it ended up being a rather overcast and gray day, we still enjoyed our time strolling about the estate. The spring flowers were in bloom and were just gorgeous. Perhaps my favorite part about the entire estate were the many greenhouses that you could wander through. I could have spent hours amongst all of the lush plants and flowers had Andrew not nudged me along to the next thing.

Have you taken any quick road trips lately? Have you had the chance to visit the Biltmore?