New Products - 2016 Spring Release! April 7, 2016 08:00

While you were out on Spring Break we have been hard at work behind the scenes to release new products, and are thrilled to share them with you today.  Get ready, we've got some really exciting stuff!  The shop listings are filled with a lot of information, but we'll give you the highlights of new products below.  Everything you see on the website will be available at upcoming shows and pop up markets, including the Pink Social Girl Tribe Spring Pop Up in Charlotte on April 16 (we hope to see you there!)

Drumroll please...

I know what you're thinking: old news, right?  We'll release 2017 editions later this year, but while we still have some 2016 styles in stock, our prices have dropped AGAIN!  Planners are now $15 and calendars are $5!

This is not a surprise as we've been advertising them on social media and had a previous blog post about them, but we want to stress that we're getting new items into the shop frequently, so make sure to check back on the website for what is available!  We'll post on social media too, so follow us on Instagram (@upstudionc) and/or Facebook if you want updates.  We are absolutely swooning over this adorable umbrella.

Hopefully you saw the poll that we launched and voted for your preference of sticky or non sticky for notepads.  Sticky was the official winner, so these beauties can now easily stay wherever you want them - on the refrigerator, in your planner, taken to the grocery store, on your bathroom mirror, etc.  The dot pattern can be used as a grid for list making, bullet journal style listing, or an impromptu game of dots (anyone else remember doing this on long car rides?)  Side note: check out this life changing sticky pad tutorial from Elite Daily on how to remove a sheet without the sticky side curling up.  So helpful!

We loooove this new set of pencils because these lines from movies really speak to us.  One, all these movies are classics that we've seen countless times, but even out of context, you know exactly what they're referencing.  We wrote down every quotable quote we could think of and picked our top favorites.  Girly themed movies won this time, and we think it's perfectly appropriate for our #girlboss business.  (We'd love to hear your favorite and if these resonate with you!) #illhavewhatsheshaving

The line of Everyday Cards has also been expanded to include 4 new designs.  Highlights of these new cards include small images on the opposite side of the card, as well as some more occasion-specific cards instead of generic designs.  Each one is still all-purpose and BONUS - now you can purchase cards individually!  (Side note: did you know that April is National Letter Writing Month?  Snag a few of these and send out some overdue notes to friends or family!)

Last but not least are journals.  Heavy linen paper covers in the Arrows design protect your choice of either blank pages or dot filled pages to jot down lists, sketches, bullet journal lists, meeting notes, or whatever your heart desires.  All internal pages are top quality for whatever use you choose.  The best part is that these are perfect bound and lay flat!

We hope you are as excited about these new products as we are!  Let us know your feedback - what are you most excited about?  What Everyday Card is your top pick?  Do you prefer dots or blank pages in your journal?  What's your favorite quote from a classic chick flick?  What product do you hope to see next?  (Don't worry - we're already working on new ideas to come out soon!)

Ways to Use the 2016 Typeface Calendar January 7, 2016 08:00

The 2016 Planner has overshadowed the 2016 Typeface Calendar pretty drastically. Today we are going to give the calendar its long awaited spotlight.

First, let's cover the basics:

• This is our version of a wall calendar, but you don't necessarily have to hang them on your wall, there are many uses (which we'll discus shortly).
• The calendar consists of 12 unbound 5" x 7" 130# cover weight pages.
• Each month features an UPstudio original design at the top. We creatively utilize a different type in each design, hence our calendar name, 'typeface'. If you want to check out all 12 designs, we showcase them over on our Instagram account today.
• There is then a single line for each day of the month (labeled by the day of the week and the date) for you to use however you'd like.
• The back is black with our logo at the bottom in white. The back can be seen in the feature image on the product page.

So, hopefully you have a visual now. As a tangent, one thing we have learned is a definite struggle of having primarily only a website presence is that people want to touch and feel your product prior to purchasing, and have some familiarity with it. We hope that by being extremely descriptive you can experience our products enough to want one for yourself! That being said, please let us know if after reading about a product you are still left with questions.

We've had many people ask us what they could use our calendar for. Ask and you shall receive - here are a handful of ideas (but don't let this list limit you):

You can use it as a wall calendar. I (Mary Beth) have it on my fridge to keep track of household things: when the recycling is coming, when we need to change the filters, birthdays, anniversaries, family events, heartworm for Bauer, etc. Anything and everything our whole household needs to remember. You can use it for the same thing at your desk at work to keep track of big meetings or events.

You can stick it in a present in lieu of or in addition to a card. Here I stuck it in a baby shower gift and labeled the due date for the mom to be. This could work for any gift giving event. 

Similarly you can stick it in the mail for any special occasion. Use it as a birthday card, anniversary card, congratulations, etc.

You could also use our calendar to track any type of goal or data:

• Let your children use it to track amount of time spent reading each day
• Track the length of your runs, or the amount of time you exercised
• Use it to track your calorie intake, your weight, or Weight Watchers points
• Use it as a countdown calendar to a big event
• Use it to write down a memory a day while you're pregnant, or after you give birth as a keepsake
• Track big events in your babies first year like when they smile or roll over for the first time
• Use it to meal plan for the upcoming month

Limitless, seriously limitless...

What are your fun ideas? How do you plan to utilize your UPstudio 2016 Typeface Calendar?

Here's to 2016 December 31, 2015 08:00

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!  We can't help taking a look back at 2015 and feeling pretty good about our accomplishments here at UPstudio.  It makes us even more excited to see what 2016 has in store.  We have a lot of plans, both in business and our personal lives, and it'll be a busy but fun year.  Keep an eye out for new products, giveaways, and involvement from you guys!

A new year always feels like a new start, so let's talk resolutions.  Actually, let's not talk resolutions, because they are rarely met after the first week of the year, right?  Instead, let's set goals, but not beat ourselves up if we don't quite make it there.  I for one (Becky), miss the mark constantly, and hit my reset button almost weekly.  Here are a few of the goals that we're setting for 2016:

• Spend time with a daily devotional (Becky and Mary Beth)
• Get as organized as we can with the 2016 Planner and Typeface Calendar (Becky and Mary Beth and UPstudio and everything else)  Have we convinced you yet that you need one of these?  They are still on sale now!!!
• Create new additions for the Everyday Card line (UPstudio)
• Spend quality time with family (Becky and Mary Beth)
• Read more books (Becky and Mary Beth)
• Get nursery ready for new baby girl this Spring (Becky)
• Meet lots of awesome makers in Raleigh (UPstudio)
• Document firsts and fun things as Walt grows up (Mary Beth)
• Eat more cupcakes (Becky and Mary Beth)
• Figure out how to avoid vacuuming the stairs - seriously the worst (Mary Beth)
• Avoid changing out of pajamas (Becky)
• Finally make a toast to creating UPstudio... between pregnancies, newborns, schedules, and more pregnancies, we have still not officially toasted the launch of UPstudio.  This will absolutely be remedied in 2016 with some champagne goodness (Becky and Mary Beth)

What are your goals?  Will 2016 be the best year yet?  I'm thinking that it will be.  Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go set my alarm to go off at 11:55 so I will wake up for the ball drop after inevitably falling asleep on the couch.  Cheers!

Merry Christmas December 22, 2015 08:00

Isaiah 9:6

 From our families to yours: we hope you have a very Merry Christmas!

Just some quick announcements... (don't want to take up too much of your time, cause you should be celebrating and spending time with your family)

1. Our 2016 Planners and our 2016 Typeface Calendar are now 20% off. (Yes, we are serious!) Prices as marked, no discount code necessary. 
2. If you live or work in Raleigh and want to check out our planners in person (and save on shipping) head over to So & So Books on Person Street, or Gather next to 212 E. Franklin Street. We are excited to be featured in both stores!
3. We just added a "Featured" page to our website. It shows up at the top of our webpage, or in our menu on your mobile device. This page will be updated frequently with where to find us or our products outside of our website. IE: events where you can meet us in person, shops where you can find our products, and places out in the world wide web where we are featured.
4. Speaking of features.. Knox from @knoxthedox featured us yesterday on Instagram! Looks like he uses our planner to keep track of all his girls. (By the way if you don't already follow this adorable dachshund from Raleigh, you should! #supportlocal.)

We hope you have a chance to slow down and enjoy time off work and time with your family to celebrate the reason for the season! We plan to do just that, we'll see you next week.

-Becky and Mary Beth

Christmas Giveaway!!! December 15, 2015 07:44 14 Comments

***GIVEAWAY GIVEAWAY GIVEAWAY***

Can you tell we're excited about this one?  Christmas is just around the corner, and we're going to hook one lucky winner up with a pretty great gift - wrap it up and give it away, or keep it for yourself (we won't tell, we promise).  The winner will be sent: a 2016 Typeface Calendar, a 2016 Planner, and a pack of Gold Christmas Tree Paper Clips to use with your planner - a prize valued at over $60!  So, get your typing fingers ready and start entering!  

Use the Rafflecopter widget below to submit your entries.

Here are the official rules:

• You must comment on this blog post to be entered.  Tell us: what you are hoping is under the tree for you this Christmas?
• You can get one additional entry by signing up for our newsletter.
• For even more additional entries, use your social media:
• Instagram - follow us on Instagram and tag three friends on the photo associated with this giveaway
• Facebook - share the photo associated with this giveaway on your Timeline
• Twitter - follow us on twitter and tweet about this giveaway
• Entries are valid through Saturday, December 19 at 11:59pm, EST
• One winner will be drawn at random and notified Sunday
• US residents valid only (sorry about this one - hopefully changing soon!)

GOOD LUCK!!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Paper Weights and Printing Behind the Scenes July 31, 2015 11:04

By day we are an architect and an engineer. So we are comfortable in the design world. But when it comes to our new endeavor (UPstudio) there are many hats that we have had to put on that we aren't so comfortable with yet. We've had to be business ladies, marketing ladies, researchers, website developers, the list goes on and on. We have learned so much already and we continue to be educated every day by all of the people helping us along the way (and by google).

Since our first three products (calendar, everyday cards, and the planner) are paper products the first thing we had to be educated on was paper and printing. 

We won't bore you with all the information we have learned, but we did want to talk about the two big things in regards to paper and printing that drove our decisions: 1: Paper Weight and 2: Digital Versus Offset Printing.

Paper Weight:

We learned that are many ways to measure the weight of paper. The most common way is the U.S. Basis Weight. This was a little hard for us to wrap our head around at the beginning because the same paper can yield different values based on the “Basis Weight” applied while manufacturing the paper. The most common are Bond, Text, Book, Cover, Index and Tag. Higher values don’t always equate to heavier/thicker print media. For example, a sheet of 100lb Text paper is actually much thinner than an 80lb Cover stock. We learned Cover stock was our best option because it is the thickness and would give us the most durable products. We decided on 160 lb cover stock for our Everyday Cards and 130 lb cover stock for our Calendars after looking over tons of samples. The “Basis Weight” is defined as the weight of 500 sheets of paper in its basic unit uncut size. An uncut sheet of Cover paper is 20 x 26 inches. So our 160 lb cover stock really means that 500 sheets sizing 20" x 26" weighs 160 lb.

(Are we boring you yet? If so, feel free to scroll down to the cool behind the scenes pictures of our offset printing!)

Digital Versus Offset Printing:

The two most common commercial printing technologies are digital printing and offset printing. Offset involves a mechanical process of applying layers of ink to paper with a series of rollers. The printing plate (containing your design) is mounted on a roller. Ink and water are applied to the printing plate. The ink binds to the part of the plate that contains design elements; the water is applied to the white space portion of the paper. Oil is mixed with the ink to ensure that the ink and water repel each other and there is no smearing or blotchiness on the finished product. The plate cylinder transfers, or offsets, the design onto a rubber blanket roller, which in turn transfers the design onto the paper. When doing multiple colors, each roller would have it's own specified ink – Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black — or CMYK. As each of these rollers pass over the page, they transfer ink and build layers of colors, resulting in complete images and text on the page. 

Digital printing eliminates the numerous steps involved in the offset printing process, such as creating films and plates for ink rollers. Most digital presses today apply ink in a single pass from a single ink head, similar to common inkjet printers found in homes and offices.

There are many pros and cons of both technologies. The three biggest differences that applied to us were:

1. When printing large areas of one color on a digital printer the ink has a sheen to it even if you print it on smooth matte paper. That wasn't really the look we were going for with our large black printed areas. We really wanted a matte finish.
2. Most digital printers can only handle cover weight up to 120 lb, some up to 130 lb. 
3. Offset printing is usually more expensive by a considerable amount. (Makes sense right based on the process descriptions above.)

So, based on all our research we felt like the parts of our product that were printed in mostly black should be printed offset so that we would get the matte finish we desired.  Everything over 130 lb weight also had to be printed as offset. This meant our only option for the Everyday Cards was offset printing. But for the Calendars we decided to print the back offset and the front digital, to save some money. This drove the choice for the 130 lb paper, because that was the max the digital printer could take. 

We researched and vetted all of the local small format printers we could find in Raleigh in search of the best price and the best customer service. In the end we went with Commercial Printing Powered by AlphaGraphics. They actually do their offset printing in house and they were nice enough to send us some pictures of our Everyday Cards and Calendars being printed.

The plates made for the offset printing:

Some offset process photos:

Final sheets prior to cropping (look just like the plates):

Again, we just hit some of the key points today, but if you are thinking about getting into paper products or are just curious about other aspects feel free to comment below with questions or shoot us an e-mail. We are no experts, but are more than willing to share the knowledge we have.

-- Mary Beth and Becky

BIG REVEAL! July 27, 2015 08:05

Its been really hard not to share sneak peeks, but now it is time for the big reveal of our first two products... a calendar and a collection of everyday cards!

Our calendar is a small unbound monthly calendar, measuring 5"x7". You can use it to show off at your desk or stick in your notebook. It is pretty yet still functional. We wanted to design a simple graphic that played with typography and varies from month to month. Check out more sample months here.

The everyday card collection actually includes four different card designs, so can we count this as five products? That makes us feel way more accomplished!

Use an everyday card for any occasion. Write a thank you, send some snail mail to your grandma to make her smile, etc. All cards are sold in sets of six and include six envelopes. You can choose from five different color options. Click on the picture above to check out our designs and see the envelope color options. Narrowing our collection down to four options was not an easy task. We had exactly a bigillion ideas but in the end these were our big winners. We hope you like them!

--Mary Beth and Becky