Paperwheel Press produces remarkably authentic, hand-made letterpress both pre-made (sold at Etsy.com) and custom (you email in specs and talk pricing). I'm no stationary buff but this is the nicest letterpress I've seen. Her pre-made cards are quite whimsical, and there is a cool Twitter card that says "A Tweet from the desk of:........." Very cool. The paper is buttery-smooth and a joy to write on; 100% cotton. The proprietor, Elizabeth, is very friendly and basically bends over backwards to accommodate your requests, no matter how picky or idiosyncratic. She really cares about her clients, and is a joy to work with! read more

I used paperwheel to create custom valentines cards. This is my 5th year using a local letter press maker for creating holiday cards so I have some experience working with a designer, how letter press functions and the pricing. I was happy with the way that the cards turned out but very disappointed in the process and would not recommend this letterpress team without some serious caveats. Pros: Elizabeth and vanessa took on the project in a short time frame. The quality of the letter press is good - the paper is very nice and the ink was lovely (although could have been a bit deeper in color). Cons: I was very disappointed with the way in which this project was executed from a customer service perspective and from a design process. Here's what happened. Communication / Mailing The communication between elizabeth and vanessa was haphazard at time (this is definitely a side project for them) and it led to a number of things going awry. The biggest of which was that they sent the time-sensitive letter press cards to me via the postal mail with NO tracking and no express delivery - even though they had committed to a specific delivery date and not communicated that they might need to change that date. In fact the cards were ready on that date but instead of sending a courier (we are all within miles of each other) or having me pick up the cards, they dropped them in the mail without any tracking. I ended up spending 3 hours at the post office tracking down the cards so that I could get them in time to send out. It was a total disaster -- and something that could have easily been avoided with a simple fedex or a small communication. We had similar miscommunications around colors for the cards and the card size. Design Personally, I found the type of design/artistry to not be an ideal match -- I should have done more vetting. I had wanted a custom design and had a concept in mind. We set up a pinterest board to share concepts. When we initially chatted it seemed like we were on the same page for a clean aesthetic and a stars and moon theme. When I got the first design it was a cartoon. I sent a bunch of feedback to get things on track, but it was difficult to get away from the cartoony feel and I ended up asking for that part to be removed and replaced with a different image. I think if you have a more straightforward (less creative) design that is simple they could probably do very well, but what I wanted was a bit outside of their comfort zone. Billing We negotiated a price, a number of cards to be printed and a set number of reviews. The original price included envelopes. However, they couldn't get the envelopes in time so i purchased my own envelopes. During the design process we hit the limit on the number of reviews -- they made this very clear and I agreed to the design before we reached the limit. It was actually a bit awkward and I felt very much under pressure to agree to the design. I did add 20+ cards to the total amount. However, when I received my bill i was surprised to find that the price was non-trivially higher than we agreed upon and that I was not compensated for the late delivery and there was no discount for the removal of envelopes. Additionally, when I asked for more detail on the bill -- to understand the per item pricing and the exact breakdown, they wrote back essentially saying it is what it is and that they had increased the price because of the additional reviews. I was really surprised by this but at this point was so done with their services, I just paid the bill. Net-net: if you want letterpress cards they will do a competent job on the actual cards, but lack professionalism and detail when it comes to customer service and execution. read more