Spruce Avenue

Spruce Avenue was conceived in the fall of 2004 in an attempt to combine our passions for textiles, landscapes, and animals, with our desire to work in a casual studio environment. Through the joys of dressing down, turning up the radio, bringing our pets to work, and working with our hands, we are able to create unique, fun, and exciting handcrafted paper products.

We consider each card to be a piece of art that features our own distinctive design and color elements. At Spruce Avenue, we only use the finest quality inks and papers, and all cards reflect our commitment to the highest production standards. As such, we carefully craft each card through a combination of graphic imagery and hands-on silk-screening techniques.

Silkscreening is based on the technique of stenciling, one of the world's oldest forms of art. The process involves a fabric mesh that is tightly stretched over a wooden or aluminum frame. Though there are many ways to manually create a stencil, today, stencils are more frequently created through a photomechanical process. A stencil is essentially a negative of the image that will be created. Once the stencil is created, a squeegee is used to pull the ink across the screen. This process forces the ink through the open areas of mesh, thereby leaving the design on the material underneath. A separate screen is necessary for each individual color in a design. It's a lot of work but every bit worth the look and feel of the final product.