While our trip was definitely not intended for working, on one of the days The Man went off shopping while I had a total stationery geek-out day.

First on the agenda was a trip to the headquarters of Hello!Lucky. It was so inspiring to visit the studio of this modern icon of the stationery world.

One of these gorgeous letterpress prints came home with me.

Even though they were busy finishing off jobs before the holidays, the lovely girls upstairs were happy to have a chat (and offer Christmas biscuits!) and printer John was kind enough to let me look on as he printed a batch of letterpress cards.

I then made my way with a skip in my step to The Makeshift Society for their Lunch Bunch. I totally felt like the shy new kid at school going up to the cool kids’ group but the ladies I met were super nice and welcoming. It was fascinating to hear more about the awesome things that are coming out of San Francisco and what they thought about Australian talent.

After lunch we let founder Rena (pictured here with the cheeky grin) get back to work as fellow wedding stationery chick Andria kindly invited me back to her studio around the corner.

Andria is the talented lass behind Lilikoi, a boutique letterpress studio which has recently relocated from LA. It was so lovely to meet someone with a similar business to mine, share some stories and learn more about how the industry is in the US.

She gave me some gorgeous letterpress goodies which I’m looking forward to framing/using at home.

Time to hit the shops! I spent the rest of the afternoon cruising the Mission District by myself and OH MY is there some seriously awesome shopping to be done here!

My fave was Aldea – check it out…

See what I mean?! Perfection.

This shop was like visiting Charles Darwin’s study. Full of taxidermy, succulents, seashells, botanical charts and all kinds of curios, it was another world!

(I forgot to write down the name though, so if any locals know please tell us in the comments!) The shop is called Paxton Gate – thanks Rena!

Since I was having a nice leisurely afternoon and could go wherever my whims took me, I followed this intriguing sign down the rabbit hole. What did I discover but a very cute Photojojo pop-up store.

I had already been on a bit of a Photojojo spending spree before the trip (buying gifts for some photography lovers in the family as well as picking up a tripod for our travels) so I didn’t need anything but it was really fun to see one of my favourite online stores come to life.

I would have felt like a bit of a tosser hamming it up in a photo booth by myself so you will have to settle for this photo of the empty booth.

BellJar’s tagline ‘Gorgeous little things’ said it all really.

Over the last couple of years I’ve had the great pleasure of working with Tracy of Wedding Lovely & Wedding Invite Love. She has been a big supporter of Akimbo so when I knew I was visiting her ‘hood, I just had to meet her!

We went out for some awesome tacos (seriously, you Californians should not have take your amazing Mexican food for granted) and afterwards met up with a bunch of other local wedding folks for drinks. To continue the general theme of the day, it was fantastic to hear about the wedding industry there and to share what I know about ours.

It was one inspiring day, that’s for sure!