Must Have Stationery: 11 Dreamy Picks for the Paper Inclined

As much as I’d love to hand pick each card for my favorites' birthdays, I don’t want to end up buying a last-minute CVS pop-up, so when I fall in love with a birthday card design, I stockpile it. Janet Hill creates beautiful collections that you can buy as prints, puzzles, ornaments, and cards. This particular design is titled “Auricula Theatre” after the well-known way of displaying auriculas so they can be admired. The small details drew me to this card: baguettes, deviled eggs, shrimp cocktail, and breadsticks on the table make it look set for an intimate gathering. It doesn’t feel super gendered or age-specific so the design feels appropriate whether I’m sending a note to my aunt or a co-worker. The cozy festivity (garland on the bust, but also a broom in the corner) feels like a dressing up of the everyday, which is exactly what a birthday celebration should be.

I love a good nautical motif, but the best ones often become played out in the paper world (think: mermaids, whales, lighthouses), which is why I was so excited to discover this new take on this well-explored theme. This stationery set channels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea with an old-timey dive helmet in copper. The color is offset by the pastel pink and purple, which makes me think of a steampunk Little Mermaid. An octopus is tucked away in the helmet, with just one tentacle emerging to lend a pop of color. For $22, you get 12 cards (and envelopes), which strikes me as extremely reasonable ($1.83/card). I will definitely be writing my best friend, who loved My Octopus Teacher, on this stationery.

My paper obsession didn’t come out of nowhere. I’m fairly certain frequent trips to the Sanrio store as a child and this exact type of set (stickers and mini envelopes included!) transformed me into a life-long stationery hoarder. While I now have (allegedly) more sophisticated taste, I can’t resist the lure of adorable characters and whimsical scalloped envelopes. This set has 10 envelopes, 10 letter sheets, 5 mini envelopes, 5 mini letter sheets, a sticker sheet, and 15 memo sheets. A couple of tips from a veteran Sanrio consumer: the memo sheets are stand-alone (meaning, they have no accompanying envelopes) and the envelopes do not have a sticky strip to seal (use the stickers).

I’m an assiduous journaler—even an obsessive one. Though I love Rollbahns, I burn through them rapidly so something with more pages is necessary for my self-reflection habit. This 7” by 9” observer’s notebook has 160 pages (compared with 70 in the Rollbahn) and lays admirably flat even when you’re first breaking it in. Any right-handed journaler knows how difficult it is to write on the verso side of a tightly bound notebook, and how terrible it makes your handwriting look. This notebook poses no such issue. The pages are sectioned off in gridded, lined, blank, chunks so you never write on the same background for long.

Pink Olive is one of my favorite paper stores in Manhattan, and I always leave with more merchandise than I intended. This embroidered cover reminds me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Secret Garden. It’s almost too pretty to use, which is why I’d suggest giving it as a gift. I truly don’t believe I could ever get myself to deface these lined pages with my awful handwriting—so someone in my circle can anticipate receiving this for the holidays. With 400 lined pages, I’d expect it to last for more than a year of Dear Diary entries.

I could praise the functional merits of this beautiful brass device (it keeps your stamps from unraveling and dispenses them neatly), but its great strength is the gravitas it adds to your deskscape. This vintage-inspired accessory would look at home next to a quill and a pot of ink—but it looks just as good on my standing desk next to my reMarkable 2 tablet. You'll feel very official reloading a spool of forever stamps into the brass casing. If you frequently gift paperweights, consider upgrading to this equally hefty piece that brings both grace and function to the recipient's study.

Books make excellent gifts, but occasionally they don't feel substantial enough on their own—so to add some impact, I include this adorably over-the-top bookmark. If your recipient is used to dog-earring the pages of novels, this brass crustacean offers a serious upgrade (and they can definitely expect compliments when reading in public). To stay within the maritime theme, consider giving a title that matches this literary lobster. I’d suggest Olive’s Ocean for young readers, and Winter in Sokcho (which takes place in a seaside town in South Korea) for fiction-lovers.