funky box studio

funky box studio, funky print studio story, hot foil, letterpress, rant

FPS finally back blogging!

July 24, 2018 Andreea

It’s been quite a while since i last updated the blog, but the entire website is still a work in progress! It’s so difficult to choose an appropriate theme, edit it, update it, add photos and so on. During all this time i’ve changed the theme 15845458 times! Well, i’m sure many of you can understand my struggle. I’m still not happy with this theme, but i think i’ve come to a point where i’ll just say “Oh, leave it be!” The only thing left for me to update is the website’s shop. And that’s going to be a continuous work.

A bunch of things happened since i last updated the blog. There are a couple of new services we can now proudly provide! I’m really excited about both of them. A while back we got a new machine woohoo! (our little studio is growing!) We can now do edge painting in gold hot foil!

Edge painting is a very delicate process and one wrong move can ruin everything you’ve worked on. Well, the gold foil edge painting requires even more attention. However, the end result is stunning. There’s nothing classier than hot foil and the cards are bound to stand out and leave a lasting impression.

The second new thing we can now offer is actually so new i didn’t even have time to take photos! We can now have clear acrylic cards! Hopefully i’ll be able to take some photos soon.

We’ve been keeping busy with the letterpress and hot foil activity, so i didn’t have any time at all to update the packaging shop. Pretty much everything has to be updated there – there are some boxes not available anymore, but a bunch of new ones came instead; i have to update the quantities and prices because of major changes in the post office’s shipping fees, but most importantly, i must take photos. That’s my eternal enemy. :(

That’s about it for now. I’ll definitely try to update the blog more often now!

Have a colorful day!

Contact: office@funkyprintstudio.com

behind the scenes, etsy, funky print studio story, letterpress, letterpress business cards, letterpress calling cards, letterpress cards, letterpress stationery, letterpress tags, letterpress wedding invitations, pantone

Letterpress wedding invitations, business cards, custom designs & life lately

May 24, 2016 Andreea

There are a lot (looooot!) of things going on at our end lately, so obviously, there’s no more time to update this blog as often as i’d want to. That’s why i kinda took it to Instagram for “live updates”. It’s a lot easier than to plan a whole blog post. And i get to share with you the latest projects we’re working on while we’re actually working on them!

There were so many great projects we took on lately that i’m not sure how i’m going to write a separate blog post for each one… Therefore, this one will be a general introduction for several of them.

We worked on some custom bow tie boxes that we hot foil printed on! This was actually the first hot foil printing project we took and they turned out so cute!! We made some samples with the foil we had available at the time, so we used silver, gold, copper, matte red and a dark brown.

Since then we actually took on several other hot foil projects and i’m so very excited about this! They turn out so beautiful and elegant that i decided to change my own business cards and make them entirely hot foil!

Then we worked on a set of business cards and tags and we used a unique ink color here; very delicate and subtle and incredibly difficult to recreate actually! :)

The above is Gemma’s photo and you can see pictures of her amazing work over here.

We actually hand mixed the ink so that it would get to the hue she was after and we were thrilled that she was happy with the result!

Then we worked on a couple of round business cards and i’m starting to like them more and more (actually we just took on another project involving round business cards!).

I was a bit nervous when we worked on the Arisdot letterpress project. Usually letterpress doesn’t work well with large portions of pressed paper, but they actually turned out great! Not only that, but we took on another similar project with pressed background and that one too turned out great!

After that we took on a custom design project that i totally loved and we were praised for!

Finally, the last project i’ll introduce to you here is a custom design letterpress wedding invitation. Well actually it’s an engagement invitation to be more precise.

These are only a few of the projects we worked on lately, but there are so many others i have to talk about! I decided i have to have a separate blog post for all the hot foil projects we did and another one for all the projects involving edge painting. I absolutely love edge painting!

Hopefully i’ll be able to update this more often!
The Funky Studio team wishes you, as always, a colorful day!

Etsy shop I Facebook I Twitter

etsy, funky box studio, funky print studio story, rant

Funky Box Studio turns 3. Funky Print Studio turns 1. Roundup!

April 7, 2016 Andreea

Our boxes and packaging supplies shop, Funky Box Studio has just turned 3 years old, while our letterpress and hot foil shop, Funky Print Studio has just turned 1! Woohoo!!

It’s already our 3rd year selling paper goodies online and i can’t believe how much we’ve accomplished, how much we’ve learned and how much we grew during this time! However, regardless of how much we’ve accomplished, there are still new goals and new targets to beat, as much as we’ve learned, we still find out new things each and every single day, and despite the fact that we grew so much, there’s always room for better. Well the absolute best part of it all is that throughout our studio’s 3 years of existence we only went upwards. Looking back, i re-read the roundups for our first and second year and still think, just like back then: when did the time fly? You can read the first two roundups here and here.

We still get new challenges each day, we still learn, we still experiment, we still do our best for each project and we still remember Nichole, our very first client 3 years ago. I guess she will never know how special she was and still is for 2 people across the globe! Ugh! This is getting a bit too emotional! Hehe!

The most significant moments for our studio during this past year are:

gaining experience – this might not really seem like much, but it’s actually a crucial thing. Letterpress printing brings new challenges every single time, whether it’s about hand mixed ink colors, finding the right hue for the edge painting, working on difficult designs and so forth. You always have to be prepared for the unexpected. Well after one year in letterpress printing, i’m finally getting comfortable with the unexpected!
starting hot foil printing – we decided to make an investment yet again and expand our activity yet again, so we got a hot foil printing machine! This was just another challenge on top of all the others, but it was definitely worth it.
repeat customers on letterpress printing, having regular customers on the packaging shop – even though we started the printing shop just a year ago, we managed to have repeat customers already! On the other hand, for the packaging shop we already have customers who have been purchasing our items from our very beginning!
direct selling – while etsy has been and still is our main selling platform, many people have started contacting us directly on our email and that was actually one of the points where we realized we’d grown! :)

It was a great year for us and our studio. Even though we’re still not doing this full time, we can actually see it happening now. We have enough starting experience, we already know how it’s like, we have numbers, facts, calculations. I don’t know if this is the year when we’ll finally turn our studio into a full time job, but i can still dream and think positive, right?

At the last roundup i was curious about how many sales we’ll manage to have on our packaging shop at the next roundup. Well there aren’t 700 as i was hoping for, but there are 569. So we have a total of 229 sales for this past year! However, these are just the etsy sales and they’re already not relevant anymore since we’ve done a lot of direct selling.

The end of our last roundup still applies today as well, so without further ado:

It’s been a roller-coaster, but still a fun ride altogether. There were countless nights spent working in the studio, frustrations because of so many reasons, but also wonderful people who helped us wake up the next day and do it all again, small successes that made us feel like we’d just saved the planet and all of this makes it all worth it.

Thank you for your support!

The Funky Studio team wishes you, as always, a colorful day!

(photo)

Etsy shop I Facebook I Twitter

artist interview, partners, rant, Uncategorized, wednesday wishes

Wednesday Wishes. New Year’s resolutions

January 27, 2016 Andreea

It was definitely time to put together a New Year’s resolutions post. I have so many plans for this year, both major and little things as well! Really, there’s a very wide range here: from buying hand sanitizer to getting a house! Now that’s a fair idea of the wide range of goals i was talking about.

Oh well, let’s see if we can put together a list:

* Turn hobby into actual business. I don’t think this needs further explaining. It’s going to be a dream come true!

* Get a house. Another “dream come true” thing.

* Visit more of Romania. Though it’s going to be difficult because of the other major goals, but hey? Who knows? It might just work out.

* Get an eye surgery. Oh yeah, my sight is pretty bad, but surgery is possible, so i want to give it a try.

* Get braces put on. As it turns out, my eyes aren’t the only bad thing about me. Also, it’s never too late for braces. Basically, if you want something, go for it!

* Create wedding sets designs, have samples made, get them photographed and listed. I have so many ideas, but so little time. Also, it’s quite difficult and expensive too to have letterpress samples made. But it must be done either way.

* I kind of gave up on the number of sales goal because more and more sales are coming directly through mail and i can’t keep up. As for the letterpress shop, actually most of the sales are done through mail. So basically what i’m trying to say here is that i need to organize the sales somehow.

* Get hand sanitizer and thermal water. I so need these!

* Get better at taking photos. I’m so struggling with this! I even considered having a professional take photos for my items, but it’s driving me crazy that i can’t, so i keep trying…

* Get back into sports. Last year i did great at this, so i must pick it up again. Sports combined with a mere 10 minutes round of meditation. I never thought it would do me so much good!

* Read more. There are soooo many books i want to read and my new toy makes it possible for me to have access to all of them. I have a new Kindle and i love it! Currently reading: “The Da Vinci code”.

* Cook more. I think i always write this as part of my goals. The lack of free time is really killing me, but i’m doing my best here.

* Stop taking everything to heart. This has been my problem for as long as i can remember. I let stupid things (and people) get me down. Must stop caring so much.

* Celebrate birthdays. I have a problem remembering birthdays; i would really forget my own if other people didn’t remind me of it.

Weeeell maybe i should stop for now. I think there are a mot more, but there’s always next Wednesday, right? That’s about it with my New Year’s resolutions for this Wednesday.

Until then, take care!!

The Funky Studio team wishes you, as always, a colorful day!

Etsy shop I Facebook I Twitter