Monthly Archives: November 2013

Graphic or Photographic?

F.A.Q.'s

That set in motion more research. I started to call different paper printers in the Pacific Northwest, doing research to find out: how does one produce photographic gift wrapping paper? I learned about offset printing, different types of paper, the differences between stochastic and conventional printing, and received a flood of paper samples – paper weights and paper finishes (velvet, dull, glossy, uncoated…).

Over the years, I had bought enough gift wrapping paper to know what I wanted to do and what I didn’t.  I narrowed down my choice of printers and, a week before Christmas, chose 12 holiday images to go to press.

After the printing was complete, I armed myself with poster bags, put an individual sheet in each bag, and went to local retailers and a few arts & crafts fairs. The response was overwhelming. The one comment that kept coming up was that everyone was calling it “happy paper” and telling me how fun it was to see all the boxes under their trees with these beautiful images. People loved giving their packages away with the holiday images on them, and some people even used them to hang as art.

Now, did I know I was onto something? All I knew was that it made me just as happy then as it does now. There was a huge learning curve, but in that, the journey has been fun and continues today.

Haute Off the Press

F.A.Q.'s

(Nina Fox)It was a year ago this month that I setting up a photo shoot for a local publication. The photo shoot required holiday themed wrapped boxes. The retailer I was shooting for had forgotten wrapping paper to wrap her boxes with. I was photographing holiday ornaments for her product shots anyway so knowing I could photograph in the studio and print simultaneously I told her not to stress, we’d make our own. I began photographing and in succession printing on my Epson 9890 with cheap presentation paper. We wrapped her boxes and she said, “Nina, this could be great wrapping paper.”

What she didn’t know was that the wheels were already turning!  I had recently come up with this idea of printing my photographs on large paper as a way to review  images I might chose for a home decor line in mind. I was in my studio printing and on a whim  wrapped a coffee table book in my studio, and I was thinking… wow, this is really cool! Then I wrapped boxes, stacks of magazines- anything I could wrap. I printed all types of images from my library and continued to wrap until I was surrounded by over 100 “happy” boxes on a ledge surrounding my studio. Everyone that came in went nuts! It was visual candy for all!

After the hundred “happy” boxes were displayed in my studio, the question became why had I not seen anything like this? And, was there such a thing in the marketplace? I scoured the internet searching for photographic gift wrapping paper. I came up empty. I thought, “well, it’s either there and I can’t find it, or there is a reason it doesn’t exist!” And, if not, why not? Every wrapping paper in the marketplace was graphic. The question then became: graphic or photographic?