Back in February of 2015, these mini stationery sets made their debut at the San Diego Mycological Society’s annual Fungi Fair, where I was selling a variety of mushroom related goods like cards, stickers, jewelry, and terrariums. I loved how these tiny envelopes and cards turned out, and the process of creating them was one I enjoyed considerably. This process was essentially:
Collect illustrations of mushrooms
Modify those images to be used as repeating tiles in “seamless” patterns
Apply those patterns to card and envelope templates I had previously created and miniaturized
Print, cut, fold and assemble all the different cards and their matching envelopes
During the first step of this process, I amassed a large collection of images and I happened to stumble across some lovely scans of mushroom postage stamps. I was intrigued and decided to indulge myself and do a deeper dive into the wonderful world of mushroom postage from all over the world. So many countries had at some point produced mushroom/fungi related stamps, and some deeply helpful person had taken the time to catalogue all the digital scans. In fact, just such a person would be David Moore, whose website features an incredibly comprehensive database which merits browsing even if you’re only a casual mushroom admirer.
One set of stamps really caught my eye though. It was a set of 10 offset printed Romanian stamps produced in 1958 by Transylvanian graphic artist, Harald Meschendörfer. For the first Mini Mushroom Stationery sets I produced in 2015, I ended up using the scans of these stamps as stickers which came in a long strip that was housed inside a tiny mailbox and fed out of a slot on the side of the box. I included these ‘sticker dispensers’ with most of my stationery sets until I ran out of mailboxes.
In 2017, I finally had the ability and mental energy to focus on pursuing my own creative projects again after a tumultuous few years of chaotic upheaval in my personal life, and I was really grateful to jump back in where I left off. I still had plenty of miniature cards, envelopes and stickers waiting patiently for the day someone would take them home, sit at their tiny desk and write tiny greetings and thank you cards before sealing them in their matching tiny envelopes to be sent out to their various recipients. At that point I’d started building a relationship with a local boutique store, Little Dame, and approached them with some mushroom related items I was hoping they’d be willing to sell at their brick and mortar shop. Fortunately for me, they were interested in offering these cute little stationery sets and some of my mushroom themed jewelry as well. I packaged up the cards and stickers and before I knew it they were completely sold out.
By 2020, I had nurtured and grown my interest in mycology and my fascination with mushrooms and their beautiful forms greatly. I’d become more involved in my local mycological society’s programming and managed to find a modest group of other artists who shared the same passion and interest in creating fungi related goods that I have. Both of those things afforded me more opportunities to create mushroom related goodies for people who would appreciate them, and inspired me to dream up new ideas in much the same way I had first approached things way back in 2015. I started going through some of the files I had saved of mushroom related images and illustrations until I came across those scans I had saved of Meschendörfer’s stamps, and that’s when I decided to take another go at this project. My skills as a graphic designer had only improved as I added year after year after year of fresh new design endeavors to my repertoire, and there was no denying that people had always enjoyed these sets because I’d sold so many of them in the past four or five years since I created them.