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‘People have a love of paper. There’s something very romantic and enchanting about beautiful cards and beautiful paper.’

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Times staff writer

Stacey Himmell is to stationery what Sherlock Holmes was to detective work. With nary a glance, the 33-year-old Encinitas woman can deduce the quality, type and origin of a piece of writing paper. And, using that same piece of paper, she can craft a unique birth announcement, a party invitation, or corporate letterhead. From her small shop in Mission Hills, Himmell has, over the past nine years, helped bring stationery and cards out of the realm of the ordinary and into the forefront of a new genre responsive to fashion-conscious demand. Times staff writer Caroline Lemke interviewed Himmell, and Vince Compagnone photographed her.

I have a psychology degree from San Diego State. I was really just trying to find myself. There’s a part of me that’s very people-oriented and has a sort of intuitive way of being able to work with people. And then there’s a real artistic side of me that being in the psychology field strictly was not going to satisfy.

So, when I graduated from San Diego State, my boyfriend and I traveled for a year, and, when I returned, I had no plans at all for myself. I ended up staying in Los Angeles with my mother and working for a restaurant trying to sock away my money so I could come back to San Diego. I was good at management and good with people, but I really didn’t want to go into restaurant work.

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I sat down with my mother, I was terribly depressed, and I said, “Gosh, what can I do? I’m creative, and I’m good with people.” My mother said, “Why don’t you think about opening up a stationery store in San Diego?” My mother has a stationery store up in Santa Monica; she’s been in business for 17 years.

After I got through all that rebellion about not wanting to do what my mother was doing, I really sat and had a look at it and decided to work with her for a few months and get a feeling for the business. And I could see there was a way of satisfying the different needs that I have and also be independent and work for myself.

I started on such a shoestring budget. I mean, I had the basics. But I was so full of excitement and enthusiasm and motivation it never occurred to me that it wouldn’t work. I would sit in here and just talk to everyone that came through. People would come into the store and there would be artfully arranged boxes and lots of space. I had a desk and some catalogues and a few boxes of stationery, but that was basically it.

I have four sales assistants right now. The front part of the store is mainly fine stationery, pickup items, fill-in invitations, picture frames, that kind of thing. The back part of the store is really the main focus. We don’t actually do printing in the store, we broker everything out, but we handle anything from flat printing, inexpensive quick printing, to engraving and embossing and four-color work. We’ll do anything from a birth announcement to corporate brochures.

I travel at least twice a year to New York, where there’s a national stationers show with paper people from all over the world . . . German, French, Italian. There’s definitely differences in quality and types of paper. My concept was always to have a sort of international flavor, to be able to have things in the store that were from all different areas of the paper field. I’ve had things that were from Afghanistan and Tibet, really earthy paper with interesting textures as opposed to something that was 100% cotton fiber.

People have a love of paper. There’s something very romantic and enchanting about beautiful cards and beautiful paper. It’s a way of expressing one’s self. Stationery is very fashion-oriented because it follows trends in color and design and layout.

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And, when I sit down with someone, I’m doing more than just developing a logo. I have to get a feeling for who they are and come up with a concept, something that they can’t see to something that’s going to be a final product. It’s something that’s coming out of their head through me. It’s tricky sometimes to be able to do this.

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