Paper House Players: Christine Demarest, Guy Reed, Paige Sullivan holding large die-cut magnets.

Walk into paper house productions in woodstock and things will soon seem familiar.  There's that classic image of a Golden Retriever; the greeting card with a close-cropped view of Dorothy's ruby slippers.  The refrigerator magnet with a photograph of the oozing, half-eaten, peanut-butter-and -jelly sandwich.

Don Guidi, who purchased the company along with a group of investors, from founder Jeff Milstein in 2000, felt the same way before coming on board as president.  "That was my first reaction," he recalls.  "I had come to know the look, but I didn't know the name."  But Guidi, whose previous experience had been as a senior manager at H. George Caspari, known for producing more European-style textile designs, was happy with his choice.  "That was much more formal, and I was interested in the photography and in working with something much more contemporary," he notes.

Down Memory Lane Though it's relatively new to the Northeast, scrapbooking, "or scrapping," as it is known, has been growing substantially in other parts of the country. "It's replacing the quilting bees of the 18th century,"  points out Leslie Jennings, creative director of Paper House.  "It's getting together with people to talk and share an activity.  Lord knows we all have boxes of things we can use." In designing the company's new collection of more than 80 papers to be used as the background for the craft, Jennings was faced with certain challenges.  "I have more of a graffiti/brick wall type art background, and I had to pull back from that,"  she notes.  "We needed to come up with papers that were not too distracting, but that would also succeed in the market."  Because "scrappers" tend to work by category or by event, the papers also had to connect to that, with images of sports, pets, birthday balloons, champagne glasses, and others unobtrusively adorning the edges. The scrapbook products Paper House produces comprise its largest growth area. With its new Impressions line, the company is also hoping to alter the concept of the art itself.  While people might be reluctant to cover the painting reproductions themselves, they might use them to enhance their own ideas, explains Debbie Slutzky, company marketing director. Renoir's Two Sisters might be accompanied on an opposite page by images from the scrapper's own family.  "The idea is that times have not changed. It s just everyday life. It s just moments captured," she adds.

"Contemporary" and "photography" are keys to the concept of Paper House.  Originally started in 1983, the company began with six cards made from photographs of dollhouses designed by Milstein, who had an architecture practice in Woodstock.  The cards were unique in that they were die-cut - cut right to the edge of the image - and included complicated shapes.  The success of those cards led Milstein to photograph more images, which were later applied to magnets and stickers, as well as to his signature paper sculpture and funhouse folding cards.

"That was his look," Guidi points out.  "He made it his thing."

Though Milstein has retired, to maintain consistency the photography end of the company is being handled by his former apprentice, Carrie Vitek, who has been with Paper House for 10 years.  "With customers and sales reps I used to do blind tests, holding up photographs and saying, which is Carrie's and which is Jeff's?"  Guidi says.  "It always worked."

In addition to the in-house photography, the company also creates some licensed products, including those ruby slippers and other images from The Wizard of Oz, as well as depictions of Elvis Presley.

Since the change in management, several new lines have been introduced, including MagnetCards - combining two of the company's previous focuses: magnets and greeting cards - as well as bookmarks and Panoramic Photocards (three-dimensional photographic display frames).  Paper House has also entered the growing scrapbook marketplace, starting by simply tearing the backs off their cards and selling the icons; more recently, they've started designing papers to use as "the canvas of a scrapbook page," according to marketing director Debbie Slutzky.  This summer, Paper House also unveiled Impressions, which incorporates reproductions of paintings by Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and others in products ranging from papers to fine art stickers, as an extension of its scrapbook line.

Noting that the Impressionists were inspired by the then-new technology provided by cameras, Slutzky adds, "The look and feel of Paper House is photography.  We've kept in that style, but just expanded it."

Paper House forged its reputation by creating complicated die-cut cards of iconic images.

The company currently has 26 employees, as well as 200 sales representatives around the country.  According to Amy Hernandez-Metcalf, customer service and inventory manager, Paper House manufactures "99 percent of the things we make in the US," including in California, Utah, Connecticut, and Brooklyn.  The products are sent to fulfillment houses, like Gateway Industries for assembly, and are then returned to either the Woodstock office or the company's warehouse in Saugerties for shipping.

"We ship anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 orders a month, and that includes our key accounts as well as Mom-and-Pop stores," Hernandez-Metcalf adds.  "We also ship to Israel, Japan, the UK."  Some of those key accounts include Target, Michael's, Barnes & Noble and the Museum of Modern Art.

The next step, according to Guidi, is getting into online sales, something he anticipates doing within the next year.  "We're a wholesale-only business.  We would like to eventually sell directly to customers," he notes.  "Sometimes stores can be a filter for you, which is not always a good thing.  They'll cherry-pick items, so that only a few are on the shelves.  If we have access to everyone, we can reach more consumers who want more items."

Given Paper House's catalogue, which is a very full 62 pages, that's a lot of inventory.  Not only that, with awards ranging from the Louie Award for the best blank non-occasion card for "The Ruby Slippers" to Print magazine's Design Award for best computer-aided design, these are not your average greeting cards.  "I know we make some fine-quality, well-designed products," Guidi emphasizes.  "We want to get more of that out to the world, because there is so much crap out there."