I designed business cards today for my Etsy store and ordered a set from Vista Print. What I liked about Vista Print: they had an Illustrator template that I could download to ensure that the resolution, size, and printable area were all set correctly; their price, at $19.99 for 250 cards, seemed about right; and I’ve found a few people who ordered from them and were happy with the results. What I didn’t like: being forced to go through seven screens of upselling during the checkout process. No, I don’t want address labels, note cards, magazine subscriptions, pens, $25 from Google, or any of the other items they were hawking—good grief! I almost went elsewhere. But when I finally got to the last checkout page, there was a field for a Promo Code, which gave me the idea to Google for “vista print promo code” and led me to this rather old blog page which still had valid links to promotional deals on the site. So instead of $25.73 with shipping, my order came to $9.73. The moral of this story: the internet is your friend.

The other exciting thing that happened this week is that my new paper cart arrived yesterday—all 136 pounds of it. I bought the large one, so the shelves are large enough to hold 23″ by 35″ sheets of Mohawk Superfine, rolls of book cloth, full sheets of book board, weights and other tools, AND my giant Kutrimmer paper cutter on top, where it’s usable, instead of on the floor, buried under weights and other tools.

I also finished off some new Coptic-bound journals, the first of which (shown above) is now available in my Etsy store. The remainder will be going up over the next couple of weeks. I’ve now gone through almost all of the prepared sections of paper I had on hand a month ago: they’ve turned into 15 books. Wow!