We worked with Erica to create our wedding invitations and she went above & beyond to help us! She…read morewas able to take our very high level vision and help make it a reality. I appreciated her responsiveness and ability to guide the decision making process so it wasn't too overwhelming. I would absolutely recommend Erica for her painting & calligraphy services!

Erica was simply amazing to work with. Fast turn around, amazing service, and easy communication…read more Simply flawless. Every bride should be so lucky to use her services!

Stacey is a magical paper fairy. Stationery and paper goods feel like an easy thing to overlook…read morewhen wedding planning, but you have no idea what Stacey can do. Steracle's services from Save the Date envelopes to our wedding invitation to all the day-of goods made a tremendous impact on our wedding, and we had numerous guests praising the attention to detail throughout our events. A large credit for that goes to Steracle. First off, we were trying to use Minted for our Save the Dates, and when they messed up all of our envelope addressing, Steracle was able to quickly turn around custom envelopes. That remained a constant theme throughout. The team was extremely responsive, turning around many many revisions very quickly as we proofread every single comma. Second was our wedding invites. We had this crazy idea to try and create a book for the invite, similar to special editions of famous books that evoked memories of fairy tales. It was just a vague concept, but Stacey and team took that idea and ran with it, creating the invitation of a lifetime. We actually cried when we saw it, and it will be forever placed on our bookshelves as a memento. Numerous guests sent personalized praise for these invites. A quote from one of them: "This is so refreshing in the days of e-invitations. Very very beautiful and elegant design. What a GORGEOUS wedding invitation!!!!!! The invitation reminds me a lot of the fairy tales I used to read growing up. The invitation brought back the romance of weddings. Nowadays people try to save time and (especially) money by sending e-invitations and those make me sad because there is something special about receiving an actual invitation. And this one blows all invitations out of the water. It sets the stage for a royal wedding." Needless to say, the bar had been raised for the rest of the paper goods, and somehow Stacey and Steracle met them. We had four separate events, and the team crafted unique feels for each event. They took certain themes and motifs and blended them across all events while maintaining the unique identity of each of them. Stacey kept coming up with brilliant ideas that made every element feel personalized, creative, and completely unique. Our wedding menu somehow had a 3D butterfly effect, and she took our love of fantasy books and created a completely custom fantasy-inspired map for the food stations at our reception. There were so many other brilliant design choices that we can go on and on about the quality and craft that Steracle illustrated. We want to keep all of these items as mementos, and we are probably going to be using our bar menus in our home going forward. It might be easy to overlook stationery as a crucial part of wedding planning, but trust us, if you go with Steracle, you will see the impact it can have and how it can elevate your entire wedding. Plus, you'll get to work with Stacey, and that's reason enough.

We loved working with a local stationer for all of our wedding paper goods. From start to…read morefinish--Stacey, Ruby, and Dvorah helped make the design process easy and created an invitation suite we were really happy with! Our day-of paper goods were also perfect - everything had a cohesive feel to it. Everything felt bespoke with the use of their original artwork and custom monogram of our initials! Already looking for another reason to work with them!

Christy is absolutely incredible! She gold-foiled initials onto wallets for my groomsmen and the…read morework turned out perfect. Exactly what I was looking for! She delivered under a very tight deadline and even went out of her way to meet me to make things easier. On top of her amazing craftsmanship, she could not be sweeter! Truly one of the nicest people I've ever met. I can't recommend her highly enough!

I was referred to Christy by my Wedding Planner: Urban Allure Events. In short - SHE IS AMAZING!…read moreHer final product, pricing and customer service are all WONDERFUL! Christy provided a seating chart mirror for us, as well as a "Hello Gorgeous" mirror for selfies. She answered questions via email quickly. Everything at our event was on time and high quality. We were thrilled! Hire her now with confidence and move to the next item on your wedding planning list. Wishing you much success and love in your happily ever after!

After interviewing a few calligraphers, Mike was the stand-out…read more Getting married the day after Thanksgiving and ISO a creative calligrapher to convey our particular pizzazz, we found Mike on a list of Chicago-local calligraphers recommended by the Paper Source, a local, excellent, well, source for paper. Mike worked with us to create the perfect invites for us. Each is as unique as our invited guests, including the recipients names on the invites, envelopes and enclosed RSVPs. They are entirely hand-written, nothing machine-printed nor stamped about them, except for the postage stamps (we'll be using the 2014 Jimi Hendrix). Our wedding is a second wedding, a small affair for which there's only room for 30. We had to be draconian when it came to whom to invite. However, we had substantially more room for a planned Thanksgiving. So, half of the invites included invites to both our wedding and Thanksgiving, while the others were invites for Thanksgiving alone. Mike worked to customize the invites and RSVPs for each guest, they turned out as well as we'd hoped. For the amount of attention he paid to us, and work he put into the invites, it was a remarkable value. Plan to recommend Mike to friends and family ISO a responsive, professional and considerate calligrapher. So you can see his work, uploaded a scan of some of the items, with the names/address/locations blurred for privacy. Cream, orange and brown colors. Mike came up with the handwritten turkey himself, we love it, very cute! Also, he illustrated a seven-pointed star, only a bit of which is shown in the scan, sorry. These star were drawn on round cream stickers with which to close the envelopes. Well done!

Mike is creative, patient, prompt. The finished product is wonderful,, exactly what I wanted. I…read morewill definitely use him again.

I love small letterpresses. I love the creativity; the history; the art; the passion of those who…read moremake this their craft. Every once in a while I do a search online to see if there's one I should follow on Instagram, because I love buying cards, and I like to support small businesses, so that works out pretty well, right? I've searched for letterpresses in Chicago more than once. More than once in the last couple months, even, when I was trying to decide where I wanted to purchase my holiday cards. Somehow I've only come up with one or two, and Starshaped Press was not one of them--though I live less than half a mile from where it's located. I lucked out and found Starshaped two days before their annual open house. Perfect timing. The studio is in this really awesome Art Deco building that of course I've seen in the neighborhood but have never had reason to enter. We got there right at noon so we could beat the crowd, and Jen was a gracious host. She had samples of her work out, consisting of pieces decorating the studio as well as prints and cards for purchase. (I ended up spending... way too much money). She also had delicious cookies for us too! She was so open to any question we had, and showed us how the press worked. She had set up many examples of the letterpress dies set in various designs, and they are so incredibly intricate. There may be hundreds in a single print of all sizes. I loved seeing those set up with an example of the pressed item next to it. Starshaped Press also has a print club, which is a subscription service where you get printed goodies from the press on a monthly basis. There are a few different options so you can choose based upon your budget. I signed up for the print club and will get my first this month (January 2022), and can't wait! It was suggested that I might want to get my own holiday cards printed at a letterpress--perhaps Starshaped Letterpress--and I find that idea quite intriguing. Review 641 - January 23, 2022 22/2022

A bit of a belated post but still highly relevant. We came across Starshaped press during an art…read morewalk in Ravenswood. I did a secret project / present for my 1 year anniversary, "the paper anniversary " . I wanted to give a surprise Christmas present to my wife and had the idea for a concept. Reached out to Jen and she got back very quick, and we had a call to price out . I was able to give her a proof of concept to develop the unique paper print and she turned it into a forever treasure that is hung up in our home . A very cool unique thing but we gave our Chinese characters of our last names and she made it into a press and we got to keep it as a keepsake. Please consider her for projects like that but also cards and invitations . Wonderful experience

The Flying Dolphin Studio and John- Michael were amazing. I was able to learn new techniques in…read morecalligraphy while enjoying the ambiance. The hospitality once there is also top notch. I would definitely recommend this class and location to my friends.

Initially, I was a little apprehensive to approach the studio as it seemed to be in an apartment…read morecomplex on the third floor. But John-Michael warmly welcomed all ~12 students with hot tea and coffee, quickly making my apprehensions go away. We were provided a pen and folder with information and practice sheets on the Chancery Style of writing we would learn. John-Michael was an excellent teacher who studied Calligraphy for years. He helped us understand that we should think of the Chancery Typeface in shapes, rather than single strokes (like normal hand writing). He was open to questions and showed students step-by-step how to make each letter and number. At the conclusion, we were given practice sheets to strengthen our newly found skill. I would absolutely recommend the introductory course to anyone who is seriously interested in studying Calligraphy and to those who want to enjoy a new experience! I personally had taught myself various hand-lettering scripts, so I appreciated the more formal training.

Masters come in many forms. Each has its own lesson to teach in its own style…read more My particular vision quest involves a drive down lovely Ravenswood, and the mountain I climb is in this case, a yellow door that sticks a little. At the top, or behind the counter, sits a kind and benevolent guru named Guy, who is there for all my and your printing needs. He was patient with me when I forgot to put in printer's marks. When I went to pick up the proofs, he brought me behind the counter and into the printing room and his computer to show me why my particular design would have cropping issues. He patiently sent me back to the drawing board and happily emailed me to tell me when it was time to come back for attempt number two. The prints look great. I can't comment on the prices because the boss writes the checks not me, but Guy is great to work with. I know his phone calls will make me laugh and his prints will make me smile.

In this world of digital sharing of one's identity, I generally do not believe much in paper based…read morebiz cards. But, with some trade show ahead of me, I had to whip up a nice identity branding for myself and had only 2 days in my hand. Came to Yelp and found Dun-Wel and discovered an amazing individual called Guy! In one sentence - Guy is an absolute straight shooter, friendly, knowledgable, helpful and holds your hand into something that he does best - printing! He not only educated me with biz card design formats but also adjusted my digital asset, all for an incredible affordable price. It was an urgent job and he had me covered. Now he is my PRINT guy! All my print campaigns and company product sheets are going to him for sure. If you are in the Lakeview/Ravenswood/Lincoln Park area definitely go to Guy. And if you can drive to him, Dun-Wel should be your first attempt with anything to do with printing.

Cynthia has done several projects for me in the past including my daughter's wedding shower and…read morewedding. She is currently designing baby shower invitations, place cards, thank you cards and game sheets for my daughters baby shower. She is incredibly talented. Her work is beautiful and she is so easy to work with. The work is done on time and she goes out of her way to make sure everything is perfect even when I make a mistake which requires extra time. I can't thank her enough for helping me out with my projects, for doing such a beautiful job and for being so flexible. I would highly recommend her for any artistic project not only stationary. You will love working with her!!

Cynthia was so great to work with and her art is so beautiful! I was introduced to Cynthia from a…read morefriend when looking for a calligrapher for wedding invitations. Cynthia was very responsive, flexible and patient while we ironed out what our final product should look like. She was also very understanding that I was working on a short timeline and was always available for me to drop off/pick up her work at odd hours and on short deadlines - sending status updates along the way and always setting clear expectations. I'd highly recommend using Cynthia for any beautiful art or calligraphy you need!