Artists’ Guild Notepads | Miss Mustard Seed

As I’ve been bouncing around the house, alternating between studio work and decorating the house for Christmas, I came upon a stack of the notepads I had ordered and intended to list for sale earlier this year!  You know, when you have an idea in mind, you stick the thing in a closet, and then you forget about it?  Well, that’s precisely what happened here.  I got sidetracked, and the notepads were a casualty of having my fingers in too many pies.

Instead of letting them languish in the closet, I decided to bring them out, finally list them on the website, and make them available for Christmas gifts or for those who are always in *need* of just one more good notepad.

You can shop the notepad HERE.  (As a quick note, my eCommerce software is showing $30 as the default for shipping for one notepad.  Shipping is free.  Enter your country, state, and zipcode, and it will change to $0.)

If you’re curious about the origin of this notepad design, please continue reading…

A few years ago, back when we lived in Minnesota, I stumbled upon a fantastic estate sale during Gold Rush Days, an antique market that takes over the town of Oronoco, MN.  It was held in an old school/music hall that was purchased by a couple to renovate and convert into an event venue.  The prior owner was a gentleman who repaired and tuned pianos, so he had amassed a collection of instruments and parts.

The contents were a mixed bag.  There was a ton of junk, but there were also some lovely antiques and vintage pieces.

As we walked around the rooms, scanning piles, I found a stack of notepads wrapped in bug-eaten paper.  I pulled one out to take a better look and could see that, once the top page was removed, the notepads were in good condition.  I ended up buying four of them, and I have been using them over the years as oversized Post-it notes (without the sticky back) on my desk.

I knew the day would come when I went through all four notepads, and that would be a sad day, so I asked my assistant, Heidi, if she could replicate them so I could print more.  We would make the address generic, remove the phone number, and retain the vintage statement look.

After a few tweaks, this is what we came up with!  Isn’t it fun?

Even though they look like vintage statements, I use them to take notes, make shopping lists, jot down ideas, etc.  It’s just a bit more fun than a blank-lined page.

I ordered the minimum amount to get a discounted printing rate, so I don’t have a ton of them, but I thought it would be fun to make the extras available to those who appreciate unique papergoods.  So, there you have it, the limited-edition Artists’ Guild notepad and the story of how it came to be.