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Studio Notes

Building a Stationery Set: From Sketch to Sleeve

· by Monster, Darling

The Midnight Writers stationery set took six months from first sketch to finished product. Here is how it happened.

The beginning

Every set starts with a mood. For Midnight Writers, the mood was: a writing desk at 2 AM, a lamp casting warm light, a moth drawn to the glow. We collected references — old manuscripts, Victorian letter paper, botanical illustrations of moths — and pinned them to a board above the desk.

The illustrations

The moth ornaments along the margins were drawn in ink, scanned, and cleaned up digitally. We wanted them to feel like specimens — scientific but beautiful, like something you would find pressed between the pages of an old book.

The paper

We tested fourteen paper stocks before choosing Accent Opaque Textured paper with a Vellum Finish — 97 Bright, 104gsm. It takes fountain pen ink beautifully without bleeding through, and the vellum finish gives it a slight tooth that makes writing feel deliberate.

The assembly

Each set is assembled by hand and includes 8 stationery sheets with 2 designs, 4 envelopes, 3 die cut stickers, 1 sticker sheet, 1 bookmark, 1 magnetic bookmark, 1 pen, and 1 notebook or notepad depending on stock. Everything is placed in a kraft sleeve with a gold-foil label. It takes about four minutes per set, and we do them in batches of fifty.

The result is a letter writing set that feels like it came from a strange old stationery shop — because it did.

Stay strange, darling.

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