It’s the little things that count.

We here at Old Tom Foolery are suckers for the details. We love it when a person or company puts in that little extra effort to make something surprising out of something ordinary. It doesn’t have to be over-the-top or crazy. Sometimes a subtle piece of creativity is all it takes to break through the blah. We’re always trying to think of simple ways to do unexpectedly cool things for our customers, and we want to make an effort to notice when other people do it, too.

A few weeks ago, I ordered a CD online from an independent music distributor called CD Baby. After I made my payment, I got a confirmation email from the company. This easily could have been another boring piece of communication, but as you can see here, it wasn’t:

Somebody put some thought into this thing, and it shows. Not only did it make me chuckle when I least expected it, but it also made me want to write this post to tell people about CD Baby and how cool it is.

See, a little extra effort goes a long way. Kudos to the gang at CD Baby.

P.S. If you want to be instantly transported to a middle-of-nowhere dive bar with pedal-steel music twanging from a dusty old jukebox, buy this CD from Zoe Muth and The Lost High Rollers right now. Think Emmylou Harris, but with less creepy gray hair. Really, really good stuff.

May we all live to be 100

OTF is taking a short break for the next week because we're headed to Toledo for our Grandma Clara's 100th birthday party. Grandma is still very much full of life and loves the following things more than anything else:

1) Her family
2) Playing solitaire on her computer
3) Playing bingo at her nursing home

Grandma pretty much cleans house every time she plays bingo. She treasures her bingo prizes, which she calls "gadgets." They line almost every shelf in her room. And since she knows we have a greeting card business, she's always giving us her latest gadgets and encouraging us to sell them along with our cards. So, in honor of her 100th birthday, we've set up a shop specifically for her winnings. It's called Grandma Clara's Bingo Bonanza!, and you can check it out here. Be sure to check back often, as every time we come back from Toledo, we'll probably have more gadgets to add to the shop.

We'd like to sign off this post with some pictures of Grandma Clara, and her signature sign-off, "Have fun!"

Grandma and Grandpa at their wedding

Holiday cards! Get yer holiday cards!

It's that time of the year again. Get ready for envelope licking, hand cramps, and flipping through the trusty old address book. Old Tom Foolery is your source for both sarcastic and non-sarcastic holiday greetings this year. You can find our holiday Footnotes Collection cards here, available as individual cards or bargain boxed sets. And this year we're also offering some limited-edition, non-offensive cards on our Etsy shop. That's where we sell short-run goodies like seasonal items and custom letterpress cards. But we only have a few of these items in stock, so if you snooze, you just might looze!

We're big in Europe

It's always exciting when we come across blog posts about our cards. Especially when they come from other parts of the world. Although we have no idea what these posts are saying, we can only hope they're not hating on us.

Can any of you cunning linguists out there help us decipher these?
(click images to enlarge)

Log roller

Check out this unique interpretation of woodblock printing from artist Bryan Nash Gill. Such a simple, cool idea, and the results are amazing.

Via Ashes & Milk.

A Q&A with OTF

Old Tom Foolery was recently featured on Letter Paper Flower, the fantastic new blog of floral designer Megan Dempsey. If you’re in the Bay Area, give Megan a ring the next time you need a fresh floral arrangement. And while you’re on her blog, check out her weekly feature “Flowers Inspired By…” where she creates arrangements based on readers’ submissions. A very cool idea.

Thanks, Megan, for taking the time to interview us.