Giveaway Winners

Dear Readers, 

Thank you to all who entered the vintage letterhead sample pack giveaway! 

There were 23 entries. I wrote each entry down and numbered them on a sheet of paper. Then, I went to random.org and had the generator select three random numbers between 1 and 23. Easy peasy.

Without further ado, the lucky winners are:

• Twitter user, @lucasmines
• Commenter, Jackie Flaherty
• Commenter, paperedthoughts

Winners: Please use the "Contact Me" link on the top right of this page to send me your mailing addresses, and I'll get your letterhead to you ASAP. 

To all others: Thank you, again, for entering the giveaway. My favorite part of giveaways is learning more about the people who read Everyday Correspondence. You're all so interesting! I'd love to hear more from each of you, both on Twitter and in the comments. You have so much to add and so many great ideas to share.

Very truly yours, 

James

P.S. Don't forget, the images printed on the letterhead for the giveaway are always available for free download in the vintage letterhead archive!

A Summer Break

Dear Readers,

To you I offer my apologies, I have gone almost six weeks without a post and no explanation as to why. As some of you may recall, I am (or rather was) in law school. This year, the month of May brought me not only my usual final exam period, but my last final exam, period!

I graduated from law school on May 28 and have been feverishly studying for the bar exam ever since, an exercise that requires an incredible amount of time. That is why I have not had the time, or the content necessary, to update Everyday Correspondence. The bar exam is the last week of July, after which I plan on taking a two week vacation to sunny Minnesota. So, while I may publish a post every couple of weeks, it is my sincere intent to return to Everyday Correspondence with my previous level of dedication sometime this August. I hope you'll all drop by for a visit.

Me with Deb Kinney, after she fine tuned a couple of troublesome nibs, at the Triangle Pen Show.
As you can see, I'm a very satisfied customer.

In an unrelated note, I attended the Triangle Pen Show in Cary, North Carolina a few weekends ago and had an amazing time! I'd like to give shout outs to the helpful seller Fred Martinson, the informative pencil master Joe, the Chilton guru Hirsch Davis, the humorous Tom Mullane, the deal maker Alan Hirsch, and nibmeister Deb Kinney. Each of these individuals proved to be great resources for pen history and information, as well as wonderful people from whom to buy. I recommend them all to people interested in pens as writing tools and/or objects for collecting. If you're interested in what a pen show experience is like, I recommend Richard Binder's series of posts, A Virtual Pen Show.

May you all have a magnificent summer, I will see you in the Fall!

Very truly yours,

James

Site Design Update

Dear Readers,

I'm looking to update the appearance of Everyday Correspondence (beyond just font changes). I haven't made any decisions on changes yet, so I beseech your help. What can I change/add/subtract to make the site more cohesive? How can I alter the design to better reflect its content? Would it be helpful to widen the main column, so that images may appear larger? Is there any information that would be helpful for me to add to the sidebar?

Suggestions are invited!

Very truly yours,

James

And the winner is...

chandlerguera!

Thanks to all who entered to win a copy of Yours Ever, and a special thanks to those who spread the word about the giveaway.

Very truly yours,

James

EDIT: I attempted to copy and paste the widget used to determine the winner, but after failing to do so properly, I just removed it from this post.

On Holiday.

My apologies for the infrequency of December posts, first it was my final exams, and now I'm on a brief holiday visiting family in Minnesota. But, I assure you, Everyday Correspondence will be back up and kicking in the New Year. There are a lot of exciting things on the horizon.

Of particular interest is the new zine that will be published, with collaboration from members of the Everyday Correspondence community. Submissions are due on January 9, 2010, and I'll be working hard to produce a final product just as soon as possible.

Additionally, I've received a number of vintage letterhead images from members of the online letter writing community that I will begin "refurbishing" for addition to the archive just as soon as I'm back home.

And, I'll have time in the New Year to begin tinkering with my newest printing press (my first platen press)!

To those of you that are Christians, I wish you a Merry Christmas! To those of you that celebrated, I hope you had a wonderful Winter Solstice. And, to everyone, I wish you a very Happy New Year!

Very truly yours,

James

See You Soon.

Dear Readers,

As some of you already know, I am a law student, and, for me, December means final exams. As such, in the interests of not failing my courses this semester, I will not be updating Everyday Correspondence until at least December 15th. I will, however, be posting links to good reads and giveaways that I come across on the Everyday Correspondence Twitter Feed, as a boy needs to procrastinate somehow, right?

I do hope that this first half of December treats all of you well.

Very truly yours,

James

Everyday Correspondence is on Twitter!

Dear Readers,

After discovering that so many people in the online letter writing enthusiast community were on Twitter, I couldn't resist getting Everyday Correspondence in on the fun! It's still a lot to take in, but I should be up to speed in a few days.

Followers of the Everyday Correspondence Twitter feed will get: notice of more market watch items than are posted here on the blog, site updates (i.e. new links to the Vintage Letterhead Image Archive) that are not posted about on the blog, and more links to recommended reads than are posted here on the blog. I'm sure that there will be much more that's exclusive to the Twitter feed... but I'll have to add them when I think them up.

Thanks to Okami and Jackie for their warm tweets of welcome!

See you on the Twitter feed!

Yours in 140 characters,

James

Everyday Correspondence Community Project Proposal

Dear Readers,

These last few days, I've been giving serious thought to producing a zine for and from the Everyday Correspondence community. For those of you unfamiliar with the medium, think of mainstream magazines like Newsweek and People as the big studio movies of the periodicals industry. A zine would be like a student art film, shot on a camera phone and edited on her parents' computer.

The idea is to put out a call for submissions around a TBD central issue theme. And then for me to put them together, add whatever necessary elements for the zine to be cohesive, and then publish it at my local FedEx Kinkos. Distribution would be by mail.

Why? Because while the internet is well and good, sometimes it's nice to have something to read on a road trip, to place on your coffee table, to write on with a pen, to cut out an amazing picture, and to hold in your hands as you to say, "I helped make this."

So, before I get too far with this idea, is anyone interested in participating?

Itching for collaboration,

James

Image Archive Update

Hey there, Everyone,

If you haven't visited the Everyday Correspondence Vintage Letterhead Image Archive (whew!) in a few days, I wanted to let you know that I've begun adding links to other websites below my images.

These sites are ones that I have stumbled upon myself and found quite useful. They offer image from address boxes for envelopes to images of vintage papers, such as forms, book illustrations, and more. I will continue to add links to the Image Archive as I come by them.

Very truly yours,

James

Old Newspaper Font

Although I'm respecting the results of the new banner font poll... I can't say that I'm terribly pleased with the results. The Old Newspaper font just doesn't enlarge well. I have done no editing to the font, I just used 50 pt Old Newspaper for the current banner. Thoughts? Should I just choose anew from Jane Austen and American Typewriter?

EDIT: Okay, I tried something new. I think it works MUCH better. This, I like. This will work.

Vote on the New Banner Font!

At the top of the page, I have added a poll. Please cast your vote for one of the above five banner fonts. They are: 1. Jane Austen, 2. American Typewriter, 3. New Yorker, 4. Old Newspaper and 5. Warsaw Courier. The poll will close Friday at 12 PM EDT.

A million thanks.

Very truly yours,

James

Layout Tweak

As it would happen, late in the night, I stumbled upon the layout settings that I had been searching for ever since I began writing Everyday Correspondence. Not wanting to waste a minute of creative thought, I made a few changes to the fonts on the site.

My two objectives were to: 1. make the text around the site more uniform; and 2. make the text in posts more natural to read. To achieve these ends, I changed the header and sidebar title font to courier, in keeping with the vintage newspaper-type layout. In that same vein, I also changed the color scheme of the fonts from blues to greys. To improve post readability, I changed the font from a large Verdana to a more manageable 12 pt. Georgia. And, I also changed the post font to a dark grey, to keep the color scheme cohesive.

Do you like the changes? Any other suggestions to make the site easier to read/more thematically cohesive?

Very truly yours,

James

New Contest Winner

I have bad news and good news. The bad news is that it has been over 72 hours since the Rhodia notebook contest winners were announced and I haven't heard from Octoberchild. I hope he's just been away from the site because he's on some fantastic vacation. The good news is that, per the rules of the contest, that means that a new winner has been selected!

Drumroll...

Joy Fleming, you have been selected to receive the second Rhodia notebook in the Everyday Correspondence giveaway. Please contact me at james[at]everydaycorrespondence[dot]com with a mailing address to receive your prize.

A million thanks, again, to everyone who was eligible to enter the giveaway as a Google follower of Everyday Correspondence.

Sincerely,

James

Poll Closing Soon

Good morning all, this is just a gentle reminder that the Everyday Correspondence poll will be closing in 24 hours, at 10:00 AM EDT. If you haven't already, please vote and/or leave a comment about what you already like about the site and/or would like to see more/less of.

Your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Hear ye, hear ye!

The two winners of the Everyday Correspondence drawings, each for a No. 11 Rhodia lined notebook, are octoberchild and Stardust! Octoberchild won the first drawing, and as such will receive the notebook in his choice of either black or orange, and Stardust won the second drawing.

Thank you to everyone who follows Everyday Correspondence, you're a wonderful community.

Very truly yours,

James

Winners, please contact me via e-mail at james[at]everydaycorrespondence[dot]com to claim your prizes.

I'd Appreciate Your Vote.

Hey there, Everyday Correspondence Readers!

Although it's only been three months into this blog-venture, I'm really having a good time, and I hope that you are, too. But, I'd like to make it better. For those of you have have been with the site for a while, you know that I post about a variety of different subjects under the umbrella category of correspondence. Because the objective of this site is to be informative and inspirational to you, as well as a creative outlet for myself, I'd like to get your feedback about what keeps you coming back to Everyday Correspondence, and/or about what drew you here in the first place.

To gather this information, I have posted a poll at the top of the web page, asking which post categories you most enjoy. If you like a posting category that you don't see listed, or if there is a topic area that you'd like to see that is not currently covered on Everyday Correspondence, I'd love for you to let me know by leaving a comment on this post.

Thank you sooooo much for reading. And a double thank you to all of you who have left comments, your contributions have helped to make Everyday Correspondence a collaborative effort - and as we all know, two (or more) minds are always better than one.

Very truly yours,

James

The poll will close on Friday, October 2, 2009 at 10 AM EDT.

Change of Season

Alas, summer has come to a close (for me, at least), and my days have again become busy.  Hopefully, that won't mean much in terms of the quality of content that I post here on Everyday Correspondence, although it may affect the frequency with which I post.

Luckily for you, you can keep up with Everyday Correspondence by subscribing to the site's RSS feed!

Click here to subscribe and receive updates in your feed reader when new posts go up on Everyday Correspondence.  Alternatively, you can click the "Follow" button in the sidebar to join the site and receive updates in your Google account.

See you in your RSS reader!

Temporary Leave of Absence

My apologies for not posting this earlier, but I've been on vacation in Minnesota since August 5. I will be back and posting sometime next week. Till then, all the best from the Midwest!

Advertise Here!

Everyday Correspondence is now an approved publisher on the Project Wonderful advertising service. It is my hope that this new partnership will benefit you, the readers, by providing quality recommendations and the Everyday Correspondence, by providing a source of revenue to pay for the upkeep of the site. With Project Wonderful, only advertisers that are both relevant to the content on Everyday Correspondence and approved by myself will be allowed to advertise.


If you would like to advertise on Everyday Correspondence, click on the link below the skyscraper style ad box in the sidebar. That advertising space can be yours for as little as: FREE!

All website revenues will be used to upkeep this site and to purchase items for feature on Everyday Correspondence, such as pens, paper, new letterheads, etc.

Thanks for the support!

Template Problems

Hey there, all. As you may be able to tell, the site is experiencing problems with it's template. From what I can tell, the problem is not with anyone's browser, it's the images that the template html link to. They are no longer locatable at the URL's listed in the template.

I really love the look of the site (when it's working properly), so I'm going to leave it be in hopes that the template developer fixes the problem. If the problem is not fixed in the next few days, however, I'm going to have to try some new things. So, please, bear with me.

Thanks so much for your visit,

James

P.S. If you're website savvy, do you have any pointers for how I might go about fixing the problem myself? Or, do you have template suggestions?

UPDATE: We're back up and running!