Thirty Years of Sending Something Lovely

A celebration of Stonehenge Designs, thoughtful correspondence, and the women who keep independent creative businesses thriving.

Not long ago, I was speaking by telephone with Jacquie, the founder of Stonehenge Designs, one of the greeting-card lines we carry at Clever Girl. Somewhere in the course of our conversation, she mentioned that Stonehenge is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year.

Thirty years.

That is a milestone worth pausing over—particularly when it represents 30 years of running an independent creative business, making something beautiful and finding a way to keep it relevant in a world that has changed almost beyond recognition.

Jacquie founded Stonehenge Designs in Portland, Oregon, in 1996. Today, she and Sarah are the duo behind a collection of more than 300 cards, all created to help people make real connections with one another.

At Clever Girl, we look at an enormous number of greeting cards. We choose them carefully because cards are an important part of what we do—and because our customers still believe in sending them. They want something that feels personal, something that says what they mean without sounding canned or overly sentimental.

Stonehenge does that particularly well.

The cards pair beautiful artwork and photography with thoughtfully chosen words. Some are funny, some encouraging and some quietly moving. They cover the occasions we expect—birthdays, weddings, graduations and anniversaries—but also the more difficult moments, when someone is grieving, struggling or simply needs to know that another person is thinking of them.

Every Stonehenge card also contains a detachable bookmark. It’s a clever and generous little detail: the card becomes two gifts in one, and part of it can remain tucked inside a favorite book long after the occasion has passed.

That connection between correspondence and reading feels especially right to me. People who love books often love paper. They appreciate the small ritual of selecting a card, writing a message by hand, finding a stamp and sending something tangible out into the world.

Stonehenge’s cards are printed locally in Oregon, and the company pays extraordinary attention to how they are made. They conduct press checks, examine proofs and adjust colors until the finished cards look the way they should. That care is visible. The colors are rich, the paper feels substantial and the images have a depth that inexpensive, mass-produced cards rarely possess.

But the loveliest part of the Stonehenge story may be its endurance.

Thirty years in business does not happen accidentally. It requires good ideas, certainly, but also resilience, adaptability, judgment and the willingness to keep showing up. It means surviving changing tastes, changing technology, economic uncertainty and all the ordinary complications of running a small company.

As Clever Girl approaches its own 20th year, I understand more than ever what an accomplishment that is. There is something particularly meaningful about celebrating another woman who has built a distinctive business and continued to nurture it over decades.

Perhaps the survival of a company devoted to paper correspondence also tells us something encouraging: despite email, text messages and social media, people still want to send cards. We still need ways to mark the important moments in one another’s lives. We still understand that a handwritten message carries something a digital one does not.

A card says, “I stopped. I chose this for you. I sat down and wrote to you.”

That small act of attention matters.

We’re very pleased to carry Stonehenge Designs at Clever Girl—and even more pleased to celebrate Jacquie, Sarah and 30 years of helping people send something beautiful into the world.