Contagious Laughter

Pretty sure it was an Old Tom Foolery card that started this:



Thanks for the tip, Cabell.

Season's Eatings

If you’re anything like me, you waited until the last holiday second to do everything: shop for presents, mail out cards, get your leg lamp out of storage… Regrettably, I never got around to making any adorable little gingerbread men this year, but I’m proud to say that the ole tried and true Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe made its way to my counter last week. With that, about a million deliciously sweet and gooey treats were born.

Sometimes, you don't mess with a classic.

I brought half the batch in for the gang at Old Tom Foolery (cause sharing is how we do), and was greeted by our lovely Heather, who spent her previous evening baking Grandma Helen’s super secret recipe for chocolate peanut butter swirl cookies (not pictured because we ate them all before anyone whipped out a camera. Trust me: adorable and amazing.). To add to the confectionary wonderment, Lauren graced the cookie collection with the remaining stash of treats that Joel’s uncle mailed down, that of which contained some oh-so-yummy powdered sugar tea cookies and delightfully nostalgic snicker doodles.

Cookies: a more delicious Christmas present than a new pair of socks.

Why am I taunting you with tales of awesome cookie time? Because lots of you are probably spending this weekend with the peeps that you love the most, and I’m a strong believer in bonding over baking. Some of my favourite family memories happened over a Kitchen Aid mixer and a rolling pin. So why not pull out Grandma’s top secret recipe, or make a batch of your uncle’s famous sugar cookies, or just throw together the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag? Just don’t forget that your dad hates coconut, and your second cousin is allergic to nuts. Share your treats with each other, and then share your stories with us! We’d love to be a part of your holiday too.

Happy holidays to all of you,

From all of us at Old Tom Foolery

In a Holidaze

Wow, the holidays are coming up fast. We know this because everything is covered in seizure-inducing blinky lights and Christmas music has been playing in Target for 6 1/2 weeks. Also because it’s four degrees in Minnesota as I write this post.

Four.

Degrees.

Four.

"I'm gonna go ahead and stay home if that's cool."

Thanks to our good friend Jack Frost, we are doing every ounce of holiday shopping online this year. Relaxing at home in our jammies and sock monkey slippers with a big ole steamy mug of hot cocoa totally beats putting on pants and going to a crowded store in the freezing cold. Did you know that you can do the same thing? It’s awesome! (Slippers optional.)

You can even order fun gifts from Old Tom Foolery if you want. In addition to holiday cards (which you still have time to send, procrastinator!), we have bunches of boxed card sets, posters, t-shirts, tote bags, and notepads that make awesome gifts. Our Typestache line is always a hit with our fellow design nerds, and we also have a new line of Words of Wisdom vintage posters that are guaranteed to class up any wall.

See how wisdomy this homeowner looks?

Don't forget, you can still save 15% on all orders over $30 by entering the coupon code OHMYGOD. Pretty rad, right?

So stay inside this winter and shop from the couch. We won’t tell anyone about that stain on your sweatpants.

New faces at Old Tom Foolery

We're happy to announce that there are some new faces at Old Tom Foolery.

This bright, smiling mug belongs to our new Right-Hand Lady, Heather. With 11 years of experience at Minneapolis-based Blu Dot, Heather is leading the charge on the sales and account management front. She's also a wiz when it come to marketing and really knows how to handle her power tools.

A fresh transplant from Orlando, we're happy to welcome Jen to the OTF team and Minnesota's frigid winters. Jen is our resident Does-Everything Gal and social media maven. You'll be hearing from her here on our blog and she'll surely be tweeting and facebooking away as well. Drop her a comment and make her feel all warm and fuzzy.

Things are a-changing at Old Tom Foolery, and we're looking forward to a doozy of a 2012 with our new gang.

Typestache poster makes a cameo on Design*Sponge!

We were pleasantly surprised to see our Typestache poster on Design*Sponge yesterday. It was featured in this "sneak peek" of Brooklyn-based couple Rachel Been and Ben Brown's apartment. It's a great-looking space--and our poster looked pretty darn good on that wall, if we do say so ourselves. Here's the photo:

Check out the rest of their apartment photos here.

It's Movember!

Among all the gross, sleazy-looking mustaches in the world (see above), there is the occasional follicly gifted gentleman who is able to nurture and cultivate a majestic bushy mass above his upper lip. Let's hope that rare talent lies within the thousands of men who are growing mustaches this month for Movember.

If you're not familiar with Movember, it's an international charity organization that encourages men to grow mustaches to raise money and awareness for prostate cancer every November. And in addition to their hair-growing efforts, many businesses like ours are donating sales of mustache-themed products to the cause.

So if you've been considering snatching up some of our Typestache-themed products, now's the time. Because we'll be donating 10% of all sales for Typestache posters, totes, and tees to Movember for the rest of the month.

Just imagine how good it would feel to get some of your holiday gifts purchased before the calendar strikes December. Just sayin'.

Shop away, good citizens. Shop away.

No words. Just watch.

Via Kottke.

Happy Halloween from The Colonel!

Last dog post for a while. We promise.

Our mascot, Ryder: One year later

Come on, really??

If you're a fan of Old Tom Foolery, you've probably seen this Typestache poster we started selling last year, designed by our friend, the one and only Tor Weeks:

Well, yesterday, we stumbled across an Etsy shop run by a woman from France. Now, we're not claiming we invented the idea of laying things out in a grid, but she could have at least changed the font:

But wait! When you zoom in on one of the images, what are those hats named?

That's right--the exact same names as most of our Typestaches. Oops. Looks like someone forgot to cover her tracks.

It's one thing to be inspired by someone else's work, but it's another thing to blatantly borrow from it. Would have loved to see this lady put more of her own twist on these posters, rather than just plop some new images into an existing design she found on our Etsy shop. That's just lazy.

But enough of our whining. What do you think? Flattery or Scammery?

Old people and webcams: look out.

Four million people scooped us on this one, but it's still funny:

Thanks to our resident web sleuth, Shannon, for the hot (er, lukewarm) tip.

Rick Astley pie chart

Okay, okay. We know the whole ironic Rick Astley craze is sooooo 2008. And yet, still, this colorful little graph managed to tickle our funny bone:

In other Rick Astley news, the White House recently Rickrolled its Twitter followers.

It Would Take A Strong Strong Man to not be impressed by that.

Hall & Oates? Or just Oates?

We were ordering some mundane shipping supplies from Uline today when we were pleasantly surprised to find out we qualified for a free gift. Ooooh!! A free gift?! We never win free gifts!!

The suspense was killing us. What could it be? A pen? A bike? A new car??

Nope. Probably the most random free gift in the history of free gifts:

That's right. Either a Hall & Oates CD, or a solo Oates CD.

Everybody knows Oates is nothing without Hall (or a mustache, for that matter). Total no-brainer.

Which one would you have chosen?

The Oomphalapompatronium

Leonard Solomon makes his own whimsical musical instruments. This organ-esque contraption is as awesome as its name:



He reminds me of Doc from Back to the Future. Long live crazy white-haired inventors.

Via Laughing Squid.

Summer in the City of Lakes

The weather in Minneapolis has officially changed from frigid to fantastic.

Here's proof:

Shannon the Great

Meet Shannon Eveland. Our part-time go-to girl.

You might recognize her torso from this typestache t-shirt photo on our website. In case you were worried she was headless, we figured it was high time we revealed her smiling face for all the world to see.

Shannon is a rare talent. She can stuff cards into sleeves faster than a speeding softball (her favorite sport), even while simultaneously watching reruns of distractingly horrible sitcoms like According to Jim.

But that’s not all. She singlehandedly packs up 99% of the orders we ship from our underground lair, and she does it all with the perfect combination of love and accuracy. Seriously, she’s like a card-packing cyborg, but with emotions and stuff.

(Speaking of emotions, Shannon has a major crush on American Idol winner/George W. Bush’s teenage lookalike, Scotty McCreery. But like the total pro she is, she never lets those gooey emotions affect her machinelike productivity on the job.)

Ms. Eveland is a 2010 graduate of the venerable College of St. Benedict up in Middle-of-Nowhere, Minnesota. She’s been honing her management skills as our Office Manager Extraordinaire since she started working for us last August, and we’re lucky to have her.

We know we can’t possibly keep someone this driven and capable for long without paying her the seven-figure salary she’s worth, but we’re hoping she won’t notice and decides to stay awhile. She’s definitely a keeper.

Thanks for making us look good, Shannon. You’re like family to us.

It's getting real.

In keeping with our apparent theme of parody rap videos, here's another dandy for your Humpday:

Sweat Up In My Creases

Check out this disturbingly funny little video made by some ad friends of ours. It's a timely one, too--the mercury hit 103 Fahrenheit degrees in Minneapolis earlier this week. (Talk about swampy creases.)

Speaking of sweat, get 15% off your order at the Old Tom Foolery website now through June 30th by entering coupon code HOTSWEATYSUMMER at checkout.

Sweat Up In My Creases from Sweat Up In My Creases on Vimeo.

Iron & Wine & Old Tom Foolery

One of the best things about living in the Twin Cities is its awesome local radio station, 89.3 The Current.

Well, we here at OTF were two of only 20 people lucky enough to win tickets to a recent in-studio performance by Sam Beam (a.k.a. Iron & Wine) at The Current headquarters in St. Paul.

What a treat that was. You can actually listen to a podcast of the live performance right here. And if you haven’t picked up his new album, Kiss Each Other Clean, you should stop reading this post and go do so now, because, friend, you’re missing out.

Here's a picture from the show. He kind of looks like our logo, don't you think?

New cards + new website, comin' atcha

We’re pretty juiced to announce that we’ve just released 24 new cards. That's 16 new Headlines cards and 8 new Footnotes cards (and, yes, 16 + 8 equals 24, for all you non-math majors out there).

Here’s a glimpse of the new release:

Check out all 24 new cards right here.

And while you're there, you may notice we've given our website a fancy-schmancy makeover, with help from John, Mike, Chuck and the rest of the talented folks at Chux Print and Design. A big thanks to those guys for helping us look more legitimate in the wild world of cyberspace.

We wo-wo-won!

OTF received the LOUIE Award for best funny Christmas card! Woo-hoo! Buy the award-winning card here.

Start spreading the news

Old Tom Foolery is in town. NSS Booth #2141-2143.

2-peat?

Exciting news for us Old Tom Fools as we found out we’re up for three more LOUIE Awards this year. We won our first two LOUIEs last year, and would love nothing more than to keep that winning streak alive at this year’s competition.

Some of our favorite fellow cardmakers are up for LOUIEs, too, including Amy Smyth Made It, Bald Guy Greetings, Dude and Chick, Screech Owl Design, and Zeichen Press, so a big congrats to all those guys.

The fancy LOUIE Awards shindig will be held on May 16th in NYC. Keep your fingers crossed, and we’ll keep you posted.

Nu Thang

The Eminem of Christian rap:

Off the grid (sort of)

In the midst of all the construction craziness, we were able to sneak away last month for a much-needed creative retreat up to Minnesota’s North Shore on Lake Superior, only about 100 miles from the Canadian border. A little R&R is just what the doctor ordered.

Here are a few photos from our trip:

Come see us at the NSS!

Booth #2141-2143. We’re in a huge doublewide booth this year, so you can’t miss us. Yee-haw!

Told you so

Some of you may have been surprised to hear the news about Osama bin Laden's death last night. Not us. OTF had intelligence to suggest bin Laden was going down waaaay back in 2009. Which is why we released this card:

No, we're not dead

Has it really been almost three months since our last post?!

Yikes. Pretty embarrassing.

In our defense, we’ve been working nonstop trying to get our new Minneapolis headquarters in order. (As you may or may not know, we’ve been operating out of a temporary studio since we moved here last August.)

Well, we’re fiiiiiinally putting the finishing touches on the project, and we’re excited about how it’s all coming together. It’s going to be quite the upgrade from our old digs.

Thank you for bearing with us as we went dark for the past few months. For your patience, we’d like to reward you with a sneak peek of our new warehouse. Just a few more shelves to put up and we’ll be good to go…

Help us win $10,000!

While shopping for a new car last month, we came across this awesome jingle contest put on by our local Nissan dealership, and figured we'd give it a whirl. Our philosophy: writing a jingle is just like writing a greeting card--make it quick and snappy and quirky. That way, even if it sucks, at least it'll be different. You be the judge.

If you like what you hear (heck, even if you don't), you can help us win the $10K grand prize by watching our video, then logging in and rating it 5 stars. And if you're feeling really generous, go ahead post a gushing comment about how much you loved it.

10,000 thank yous in advance.

Now, without further ado, we give you our "Ridiculously Catchy Old-Timey Jingle."

WARNING: You might not be able to get it out of your head:

Do your Valentine right.

Everybody's favorite made-up holiday is just around the corner. This year, we encourage you to skip the syrupy sentiments and make your valentine laugh, not barf.

Collect 'em all:

Lots more V-Day cards here.