Seeking serenity through stationery

TAOthings online stationery shop and small independent design studio are devoted to the love of collecting stationery and journaling supplies. The guiding idea is to embrace stationery love with a sense of mindfulness and creative joy, listening to the heart, rather than succumbing to marketplace-fueled FOMO. TT Stationery emerged from a blog (2022) and transitioned to Etsy (2023) before launching as a small business on Shopify (2025).

TAO is pronounced [dou], as in Taoism. It is also an acronym for "the adventures of" stationery in our journal pages. And it is a nod to Taoist philosophy of painting, which suggests that when a master artist is fully in the flow of creating, the brush moves as if of its own volition, and their art seems to emerge organically. The artist becomes an instrument of the creative life force itself. So this shop's name is meant to be a celebration of the many highly skilled stationery designers whose free-flowing creativity inspires, amazes, and delights us, and of our individual aspirations to reach a kind of creative flow in our own unique creative pursuits.  

Kim, the shop owner, is a former college lecturer with a Ph.D. in media and cultural studies, and is the author of a dissertation on television comedy. She has designed and taught college courses in radio/TV/film as mass media, feminist theory and gender studies, race and ethnicity, humor theory, American/British TV comedy, public speaking, and writing. Due to health challenges, she left the academic life and now works from home. She has a passion for stationery collage journaling, animals, comedy, and cartooning.