Must Have Stationery: 11 Dreamy Picks for the Paper Inclined

If you haven’t yet sent out holiday cards, there’s still time to let friends and family know you’re thinking of them during this hectic time of year. To my mind, photo-heavy holiday cards belong to the realm of my parents and their friends. I prefer a quieter option that trades in red and green for less obvious colors, and candy canes for gentler winter motifs. This festive design from Katie Leamon features a wintry front stoop embossed in gold. It’s a lovely riff on typical holiday imagery that speaks to a Currier and Ives legacy, while also managing to update it. Make sure you have a white gel pen to fill out these cards and seal the envelope with a golden sticker.  If you want to go more minimalist, I’m also a fan of the simple ‘Bah Humbug’ black-text-on-white-notecard.

As much as I’d love to hand pick each card for my favorites' birthdays, I don’t want to end up buying a last-minute CVS pop-up, so when I fall in love with a birthday card design, I stockpile it. Janet Hill creates beautiful collections that you can buy as prints, puzzles, ornaments, and cards. This particular design is titled “Auricula Theatre” after the well-known way of displaying auriculas so they can be admired. The small details drew me to this card: baguettes, deviled eggs, shrimp cocktail, and breadsticks on the table make it look set for an intimate gathering. It doesn’t feel super gendered or age-specific so the design feels appropriate whether I’m sending a note to my aunt or a co-worker. The cozy festivity (garland on the bust, but also a broom in the corner) feels like a dressing up of the everyday, which is exactly what a birthday celebration should be.

I love a good nautical motif, but the best ones often become played out in the paper world (think: mermaids, whales, lighthouses), which is why I was so excited to discover this new take on this well-explored theme. This stationery set channels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea with an old-timey dive helmet in copper. The color is offset by the pastel pink and purple, which makes me think of a steampunk Little Mermaid. An octopus is tucked away in the helmet, with just one tentacle emerging to lend a pop of color. For $22, you get 12 cards (and envelopes), which strikes me as extremely reasonable ($1.83/card). I will definitely be writing my best friend, who loved My Octopus Teacher, on this stationery.

Custom stationery is chic, sophisticated, and a little narcissistic in the best way. I love this asymmetric wave design from the Brooklyn-based Sesame Letterpress. The style is reminiscent of a woodblock print, which is perfect to keep up with correspondence from a beach house. For $175, you receive 50 cards/envelopes with your return address printed, and you can select an ink color for your name to either match the design or contrast with it. My favorite part of designing custom stationery is picking out the small details like envelope liner ($2 additional/card) and painted edges (in foil or ink, also $2 additional/card). If writing penpals back sometimes slips your mind, these luxe notecards will incentivize you to reply speedily.

My paper obsession didn’t come out of nowhere. I’m fairly certain frequent trips to the Sanrio store as a child and this exact type of set (stickers and mini envelopes included!) transformed me into a life-long stationery hoarder. While I now have (allegedly) more sophisticated taste, I can’t resist the lure of adorable characters and whimsical scalloped envelopes. This set has 10 envelopes, 10 letter sheets, 5 mini envelopes, 5 mini letter sheets, a sticker sheet, and 15 memo sheets. A couple of tips from a veteran Sanrio consumer: the memo sheets are stand-alone (meaning, they have no accompanying envelopes) and the envelopes do not have a sticky strip to seal (use the stickers).

I’m an assiduous journaler—even an obsessive one. Though I love Rollbahns, I burn through them rapidly so something with more pages is necessary for my self-reflection habit. This 7” by 9” observer’s notebook has 160 pages (compared with 70 in the Rollbahn) and lays admirably flat even when you’re first breaking it in. Any right-handed journaler knows how difficult it is to write on the verso side of a tightly bound notebook, and how terrible it makes your handwriting look. This notebook poses no such issue. The pages are sectioned off in gridded, lined, blank, chunks so you never write on the same background for long.

Pink Olive is one of my favorite paper stores in Manhattan, and I always leave with more merchandise than I intended. This embroidered cover reminds me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Secret Garden. It’s almost too pretty to use, which is why I’d suggest giving it as a gift. I truly don’t believe I could ever get myself to deface these lined pages with my awful handwriting—so someone in my circle can anticipate receiving this for the holidays. With 400 lined pages, I’d expect it to last for more than a year of Dear Diary entries.

I have notepads on every single surface in my home, in every size imaginable. But when I sit down to brainstorm pitches for TQE or outline a story, I need something bigger than what I write grocery lists on. A legal pad is just the right size for my work needs, but what an eyesore.  Thankfully, I discovered these tortilla kraft paper A4 pads at a stationery store and haven’t looked back. The sheets tear off neatly, and they don’t invoke that office supply look that I detest. The paper is high-quality and soft to the touch, so if your referent is stiff craft paper (the kind sometimes used to wrap gifts), this has a much more flexible feel. I like that the pages are unlined, but if you’re a stickler for neat notes this pad may be a little too freeform for you. I find that pencil shows up faintly, so I always use pens when I’m scribbling on this tortilla kraft paper.

I could praise the functional merits of this beautiful brass device (it keeps your stamps from unraveling and dispenses them neatly), but its great strength is the gravitas it adds to your deskscape. This vintage-inspired accessory would look at home next to a quill and a pot of ink—but it looks just as good on my standing desk next to my reMarkable 2 tablet. You'll feel very official reloading a spool of forever stamps into the brass casing. If you frequently gift paperweights, consider upgrading to this equally hefty piece that brings both grace and function to the recipient's study.

Stickers are the ultimate joy sparker. Even if you no longer believe Lisa Frank is the height of sophistication, you can never truly age out of stickers. This charming collection from John Derian comes encased in a hardback book cover, making it coffee-table-suitable. There are over 500 stickers reminiscent of naturalist prints, which include subjects ranging from carrots to giraffes. You’ll have to find just the right placement for these extra-large stickers (some of them take up most of the 6.5” by 8” page). Use them to decorate gift wrap, or even to customize a blank lampshade—as seen here.

Books make excellent gifts, but occasionally they don't feel substantial enough on their own—so to add some impact, I include this adorably over-the-top bookmark. If your recipient is used to dog-earring the pages of novels, this brass crustacean offers a serious upgrade (and they can definitely expect compliments when reading in public). To stay within the maritime theme, consider giving a title that matches this literary lobster. I’d suggest Olive’s Ocean for young readers, and Winter in Sokcho (which takes place in a seaside town in South Korea) for fiction-lovers.