The White Tree

FINALLY! I've actually gotten a chance to post. Whew! This is the first of quite a few for today, so here goes.

The White Tree is a line of stationery that I produce. With all the talk about global warming and dwindling resources, I thought I'd do my part to help make art out of trash. Well, not trash exactly...magazines.

A small aside here: I LOVE magazines. I read a lot, but I like to flip through a magazine. I can be very interested and pour over it for hours, or I can be flipping through one because I really don't have anything else to do (rarely happens). I always have a mag in my car; most of the time I have one in my bag. They're great for passing the time between client meetings.

Okay, enough about my love for the things...now to the good stuff.

The White Tree products are made from 99.9% recycled materials (not the glue, staples, coils, or the labels...the binding stuff). The magazines come from either my personal stash or from the community. The envelopes, paper and cardstock used are from the Neenah Evironment line...100% recycled paper with 20% post consumer fibers. The outer envelope is a "brown bag" envelope made by a company called the GreenGrocer. For the life of me, I can't find their website, but the site that carries them verifies that they're made from 100% post consumer waste. So there you have it...art with heart. HA!

I currently produce 5 different sets: Lifestyle, Fashion + Music, Spaces + Places, Art + Design, and Houston Mags. Let me elaborate:

• Lifestyle: Publications like Real Simple, O, Self, & Body + Soul. These cards are generally more pastel in color. They have food items, room layouts, clothing pictures...all sorts of stuff.
• Fashion + Music: Magazines like Nylon, Jane, Lucky, Flaunt, InStyle, Rolling Stone, GQ, & Details. Anything goes here -- crazy rocker portraits to Jimmy Choo articles. The colors are generally more vibrant and the layouts are erratic.
• Spaces + Places: Geared more toward the art of a well planned space, these cards can be very colorful. They can also be very subdued -- but they're always pretty! I use Domino, Dwell, Architectural Digest, and Discover to name a few.
  
• Art + Design: If any of these cards are made for guys, these are. Magazines like How & Layers are turned into really neat stationery. These types of magazines already concentrate so much on their layouts, the cards pretty much make themselves. Urban graphics, grungy text, and cool effects are in a lot of the artwork, so these are perfect for a guy or a girl.
• Houston Mags: H-Town! We have a few publications here that I use, mainly old issues of Envy and 002 magazines. Sometimes I use others, but I stick to those for the most part. A lot like the Fashion + Music and the Art + Design categories, these cards are generally bold colored and flashy. And they have Houston stuff...

One last note. For each set, I try to coordinate the 5 cards by color & layout (but I do take some leeway...don't get picky!). I also used the same magazine for all 5 in a set to keep the page finish the same.

These cards are great...you never know what they'll look like until you open the package. Visit my Etsy store to view more pics (and BUY them!).

Enjoy.