Noteworthy is located at 101 S. Higgins Ave. in downtown Missoula, and is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and by appointment.
The store sells paper, journals, ribbons and more. One of its big attractions is the letterpress in the back of the store.
“We have different design styles,” Dolan said. “Taylor hand-illustrates and I design more on the computer with a heavier focus on typography.”
Once the design is created, Valliant uses the press to make each piece of stationery or invitation individually.
After the design is put onto an engraved plastic-like template, Valliant hand-mixes the ink to the specified color, hooks the paper onto the press and cranks the roller; she has to do this for each piece.
“It's handmade art, it's not from a printer,” she said.
She realized stationery design was something she really wanted to do after designing both her own and her sister's wedding invitations.
Valliant bought the letterpress on eBay in 2005 and spent the entire fall fixing it. She kept the press in the garage and started an online business called BelleGraphique.
She said she likes having the press in the shop where people can see her using it, whereas before, in her garage, she felt isolated.
“People watch from the windows and come in and ask questions and get a closer look,” Valliant said.
Dolan's dream of opening Noteworthy came to her about six years ago when she lived in San Francisco for a few years.
“I went to the paperies there and recognized there wasn't anything like them in Missoula,” Dolan said.
She owned her own graphic design business, Ink Works Design, when Valliant came back from a stationery show last May and told her she wanted to open her own shop. That's when Dolan decided she was also ready for a career change.
Things moved fast after that. In May, Valliant and Dolan went to a stationery show in New York for supplies and then held a “soft opening” for their store in June.
“We haven't done retail before, so we wanted time to get acclimated and get everything going,” Valliant said.
“We're really excited to be downtown,” Dolan said. “The businesses around us have been really supportive.”
Dolan said she and Valliant wanted the store to be warm, friendly and a place for everyone: men, women and all budgets.
They also pride themselves on keeping their store environmentally conscious. All the paper they sell is cotton and tree-free. They give people recycled bags if they want them; even their counters were salvaged from the Liberty Lanes bowling alley.
During the grand opening, Noteworthy is giving away a free gift with every purchase. There is also a free raffle for things such as Crane and Co. custom gold-engraved stationery valued at $200 and a Cross pen valued at $100.
Dolan hopes the store becomes Missoula's first choice to buy stationery.
“I just love that I can share all these things with people, all these beautiful things,” Valliant said.
Brienna Boydstun is a newsroom intern at the Missoulian. She is a journalism student at the University of Montana.
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