We have a graduate, how did this happen? Mrs. PQ and I can hardly believe our oldest quill is graduating from high school this spring. Memories now flood my mind of holding her the moment she was born in a Minneapolis hospital, her first steps, learning to ride a bike, learning to drive a car. As I compiled a montage of her life from iPhoto for her graduation party, I was awash in a mixture of sweetness and a tinge of sorrow that my little girl is heading out of the house. She has made us proud, working alongside us through the PQ start up, really applying herself in school and most importantly becoming a woman of integrity that both her parents are very gratified to see.

The college is set (hello scholarships!) the dorm is picked out and of course the Dad is on the hook for a new Macbook Air or Pro; I would have our daughter work on nothing less than a Mac. Of course if she had it her way, she would head south to her new digs with an iPad 3 and a Macbook. The Graduate Edition case for iPad 3 is her favorite case. She even helped pick out the colors in our current product line.

The Graduate Edition for iPad 3 and iPad 2 is a traditional spine wrapped book made with Arrestox bindery cloth, a company that has been making book cloth for over 125 years! This case wears just like an old book, even developing a patina over time and usage. We’ve included all the great features of the Octavo with this case including a rugged design, magnet on/off, satin finished Baltic birch, the Sure Lock bumper system and of course the signature PQ bookmark for device removal. If you’re looking for a beautiful handmade iPad case for a graduate in your life, this case would be perfect!

Well done dear, we love you!

Mr. (and Mrs.) PQ

A Mother’s Day Note from Mrs. PQ (Editorial note: Or to-do list for Mr.PQ)
 
Mother’s Day is approaching and what mom wouldn’t love a new Kindle or iPad 3? Whether you choose the basics of the Kindle Family or give the gift of surfing the web with the Kindle Fire or Apple iPad 3, Mom’s bound to be pleased with the easy portability of her new technology (unless she’s really in to trail running and actually wants a pair of Salomon S-Lab Running Gaiters to keep those pesky rocks and pebbles out of her shoes). Of course, if you do buy an Apple iPad 3 or Amazon Kindle for Mom, you will want to purchase a handmade PQ bookbindery case to protect her new device.

At Pad and Quill, we’ve been making the case for books for almost two years now, so we know our customers love the quality leather, precision craftsmanship and stealthy book like appearance of our Octavo and Contega cases for iPad 2 and 3, Little Black Books for iPhone 4 and our full line of Kindle cases like the Kindle Firekeeper and Kindle MiniKeeper. We are pretty sure your mom would love one too (in the event she doesn’t want a Fuel Belt Hydration 4 Bottle Belt).

Your mom loves getting out in nature too? An iPad 3 is a great way to minimize the bulk of maps, books and journals, as well as save a few trees. A Pad and Quill Graduate Edition case for iPad 3 will allow her to protect her gift while adding a mere 11 oz overall weight. Of course a Snow Peak Titanium Multi Compact Cook Set will also help shave weight, but that would only make sense if your mom were a co-owner in a company that makes wonderful bookbindery cases for Apple and Amazon products and thereby owns a multitude of e-devices and covers…

-Mrs. PQ
 

The Octavo Luxury cases for iPad 3 and Little Luxury Books for iPhone 4/4S are shipping this week. The first batch arrived at our shipping department here on Tuesday. I could hear from the shipping area exclamations like ”wow, that’s amazing”, “whoa”, and “these are unbelievable!” Yeah I’m fairly certain that if our own team is freaking out, we have a win on our hands.

We are so excited to bring these to our customers. These iPad and iPhone cases are crafted with very soft, stitched genuine leather and lined with deep earth tone traditional bookbindery cloth. Each one has a unique pattern and texture that can only be found in premium genuine leather. The iPad sits in a Russian Baltic birch frame that was given extra coats of satin lacquer finish to produce a furniture-like finish on all the wood. Of course the iPad case features our new Sure Lock bumper system that keeps the iPad nestled quite nicely. We are now looking at even more genuine leather designs and other product lines for later this year! Think Contega iPad cases, covers for Kindle, MacBook Air cases and more

Our goal, as always, is to provide the most premium handmade cases on the market. With the Octavo Luxury case and Little Luxury Book we feel that we have achieved that objective.

Happy Spring!

Mr. and Mrs. PQ

(Brian and Kari)

Mrs. PQ and I (Kari and Brian) have been overwhelmed with the response to our new series of handmade cases for the iPad and iPhone. We take great passion in the art and design of our products that we deliver to our customers. Yet what really stokes us is the new Minneapolis jobs that are created due to your purchases. Thank you from the entire PQ shop!

The Octavo and slightly late shipping Contega pre-orders are all shipping this week.  Graduate and Luxury Genuine Leather iPad cases are shipping soon. We’re confident that you will find the build, materials and finishing touches of our iPad cases to be industry leading and an amazing value.

Please do not hesitate to contact us! We can be reached by phone Monday-Friday (8-5 CST) to answer questions, hear comments or take orders by phone. You can also reach us via email. Jill and Karl look forward to working with you.

Toll Free: 1 855 PQ BOOKS

Email:  info@padandquill.com

Thanks again!

Mr. PQ

Last weekend Mr. PQ spent the hours of delightfully early spring working with our awesome photographer Cory, of CJ Ryan photography, capturing our new Luxury Line of the Little Black Book for iPhone 4/4s and Octavo for iPad3. Choosing wonderful locales such as the historic St. Paul Hotel and artistic Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden, the guys captured the feel and essence of our new line of products as well as adding some spring to our existing bookbindery cases. We think you will enjoy the artistry as much as you enjoy our books. In the course of hauling mountains of gear from site to site, Mr. PQ failed to notice the absence of one iPad 2 and its beautiful Octavo case. No wonder, we designed them to be sneaky like that.
 
Just ask the wonderful mom of twins from Chicago who happened upon the “journal sketch pad” leaning against a park bench. As it happened, she was in town for a wedding and had taken her young family to enjoy the sculpture garden when she found our iPad. She called the next day to say she had our iPad 2 and ask how she could return it to us. She even felt badly that she had forgotten about it until she unpacked the Octavo Monday morning. While Mr. and Mrs. PQ in dismay had feared the worst, it was the great Chicago Mom who reminded us there are a lot of great people in the world.
 
-Mrs. PQ
 

These days it’s good to be a Holmes. We have so many new things going on here at Pad & Quill we are scrambling to cross our “t”s and dot our “i”s. Thank goodness for the SIRI “remind me” function. Take for instance our new Sure-Lock technology, featured in our iPad 3 Octavo design, which offers incomparable restraint while your iPad 3 is housed in the Octavo, but releases with ease. Mr. PQ assured Mrs. PQ that using the term “technology” will seem like a stretch to Apple geeks, but Mrs. PQ thought the whole 3D imaging, injection molding process was pretty amazing and thinks the mechanical engineers will agree with calling it technology.
 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would be proud of our new Luxury Line of genuine leather cases for iPhone and iPad. Bound in soft stitched leather, the Little Luxury Book for iPhone 4/4s and Octavo Luxury Case for iPad 3 invite your senses to enjoy the fragrance, feel and appeal of leather, while offering our classic camera porthole (indispensible for that new 5mp camera!), signature bookmark and moleskin disguise.
 
If a whole new line of bookbindery cases wasn’t enough, we are now carrying accessories from Zagg, Blue Lounge and Earjax. Pad & Quill is now your one-stop shopping location for Apple accessories.
 
-Mrs. PQ
 

Wow, the rumor mill is in full production this week as the iPad 3 news keeps coming! The official announcement just went out today from Apple to the media for the iPad 3 unveiling event on March 7th. The current run down of top features that are purported to be coming include:
 
- HD screen resolution that looks like printed paper
- Much better camera that may include full 1080 resolution for video
- 4G LTE capability creating amazingly fast download speeds
- A Quad-core processor for amazingly fast processing speeds
- NEW ONE – No home button! That should be interesting!
- Microsoft Office for the iPad 3
 
Well, you can imagine what’s going on around here at PQ headquarters regarding all of this news. Planning, lots of planning. We cannot wait to share with you the line-up we have of cases for iPad 3. We’ll feature new lines that will not only be practical and protective, but will include some of the most beautiful iPad case designs and materials that we’ve ever offered.
 
Make sure to sign up for our newsletter as we will be announcing pre-order dates for all the case lines.
 
Feels like Christmas in March!
 
-Mr. and Mrs. PQ
 

We have been thrilled to create our beautiful handmade cases for Kindle e-readers and tablet devices. Although the iPad is our number one case product, we always felt that the best device to marry with our covers was the Kindle. A device built with reading a book as its number one focus.
When you wrap one of our cases around a Kindle it really feels like you’re holding a book…because you are!
 
At the PQ household, we have decided to keep all book purchases through Amazon. We all love the feel and size of the Kindles for reading. They just seem a bit more natural than the iPad. My current Mitch Rapp thriller is being read on the Kindle Fire. I have found that using the Fire as an e-reader first and then a tablet second works best for me. Mrs. PQ loves her Kindle Touch and the Mini Keeper case that keeps it nice and safe.
 
Our daughter is borrowing our Kindle 4 to get through the Hunger Games series late at night. Speaking of that, Mrs.PQ is working through those books as well. I’ll have to check Hunger Games out or… just be lazy and watch the upcoming movies.
 
What is your favorite book right now on your Kindle? We are looking for new good
reads!
 
-Mr. PQ
 

Admittedly anecdotal, I had heard many people state they would hold off on buying an iPad
until a camera was included. Well, Apple not only included one camera, but two bad ones!
 
This was a very good marketing move as many of my fence sitting friends suddenly found themselves
owners of the iPad 2 last year. I wonder how many of them ever use that camera?
I especially wonder about the ones who have an iPhone 4 or similar smart phone quality camera?
These cameras blow away the iPad 2 in quality and you don’t feel so dorky holding up a big
tablet to take a .8 MP camera shot.
 
Some days I think I actually felt guilty we put a camera hole in our cases considering quality
of photo vs. a hole in the back of one of our beautiful handmade iPad cases.
 
According to many recent rumors, the iPad 3 will include a high quality camera on the back side.
When I say high quality, I’m referring to point and shoot type capabilities. Apple, Google,
Samsung and other manufactures are disrupting the point and shoot market with HD quality cameras
included in their smart phones and tablets. Apple’s rumored move to include a serious camera
in the iPad 3 will only add to the tablet’s dominance in the market and could provide many new
applications for the device.
 
My question is:
will I use it? I never use the iPad 2 camera because it’s so awful, but I wonder if I will pick
up the iPad 3 with more frequency due to the quality of images I could shoot.
 
What are your thoughts on the possibility of a great camera on the iPad 3? How would you use it?
 
-Mr. PQ
 

Within the next month or so, we are very excited to announce new mobile and tablet accessories at padandquill.com. We assumed that locating some great products like headphones for iPhone®, wall chargers for iPad®, and iPhone screen protectors would not be that difficult. That assumption was clearly wrong. The surprising amount of utter junk on the market is so beyond what we expected that the process has taken a great deal of time.

When we began the search we wanted to find items that were of the highest quality for our customers. Weeding through iPhone headphones that sounded like a tin can was rattling in our ears and iPad chargers that literally looked like a fire hazard finally gave way to procuring some very high quality products that we actually have been using ourselves and would be totally stoked to own. Innovative design, attention to detail and quality are the framework for all of the accessories selections that we will soon be announcing. We are confident that you will find these tablet and mobile accessories a delight to use with your iPad, iPhone, Kindle Fire or other devices!

For the latest updates, sign up/check out our newsletter, twitter feed: @padandquill or our fan page on Facebook: Pad and Quill
Spending the week hand selecting lots of cool stuff,
-Mr. PQ