Baum Kuchen

I’ve been searching for a larger variety of analog artifacts to help me “up my game” with my letter-writing. Some creative people design letters filled with ephemera to show off their artistic and design talents. In my case, most of the page is reserved for text. This is somewhat related to my lack of design skills, but also to the fact that I use pencils and somewhat sloppy hand-writing, rather that gorgeous fountain pen calligraphy.

Baum-Kuchen is a stationery store in the Los Angeles area, and I really enjoyed some of their designs. Specifically, they have a postage-stamp-inspired washi tape that I really thought looked neat. I grabbed these as well as the accompanying postcards of the same design, and some other stickers and washi tape.

A couple things I loved about my package from Baun Kuchen was the nice personal reply to my order from the store, asking me where I heard about them and what I liked about them, and what I planned to do with the artifacts. In addition to this personal touch before the package arrived, the package itself had many personal touches. First there was the wrapping, done carefully to avoid damage to the contents over its long trip, and a receipt printed on the reverse side of a Canadian map image, which I assume is not the image printed on the backs of all receipts.

This is the first in a series of posts I’ll be making of various small online stores that make interesting analog ephemera that I want to use in my art or writing, that encompass the wider stationery and scrapbooking market, rather than the narrower pencil and writing market mostly covered until now. Hopefully you find something useful!