Inside Paula Skene Designs’ San Francisco Bay Area studio is where they produce every one of their cards, very on shore USA, produced one card at a time, one color at a time. Embossing is much like making waffles: the paper is the dough, and the hand carved brass die and counter die are the “waffle iron.” Embossing is created when the paper is put between the two dies and the press closes and puts pressure on the paper. Foil color is created by a stamping die. Each color is a separate die. Many designs require up to six passes of color all in perfect registration.

Using hand carved brass dies (not machine made), Paula Skene crafts her own counter dies by hand, and selects only premium papers from Europe and the United States.