PeachSkinSheets Review
A real Atlanta bedding brand since 2013 with genuinely soft brushed-polyester sheets — legit, but pricey for microfiber and with a thin, negative-leaning review record.
Papertrey Ink Review 2026: The Color-Matched System Is the Reason to Buy, and a Third of It Is Sold Out
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What Is Papertrey Ink?
Papertrey Ink is a US cardmaking and paper-crafting supply retailer that designs and sells its own stamp sets, cutting dies, stencils, dye inks, cardstock, ribbon and embellishments, and runs a bi-monthly card kit subscription called the Creative Card Club. It sells direct to consumers online only; there is no retail store, and orders ship from Ohio.
The paper trail on the company is unusually long for this category. The domain was registered on September 30, 2006 (WHOIS), the company blog’s archive runs back to 2006, and a 2018 post on that blog was titled “Evolution of Cardmaking Over the Past 11 Years” — which puts the working start of the business at 2007, when it released a single new stamp set a month. That makes it roughly a 20-year-old brand as of October 2026, which in a niche full of two-year-old Shopify stores is the most meaningful single fact about it.
Ownership has changed once, publicly and in a way the community noticed. The company was founded by Nichole Heady alongside a mother-and-daughter pair, Jane and Julie. Heady announced her departure in December 2017; a 2Peas Refugees thread opened December 5, 2017 tracks the reaction, which ranged from shock to open predictions that the company would close within a year. It did not. Jane and Julie took sole control, and the current About page is written in their voices. The BBB profile names Ms. Julie Heskamp as owner, lists the business at 5514 Fair Ln, Cincinnati, OH 45227-3402, and records a file open since August 22, 2011 with zero complaints in the last three years. The terms of service name the entity as Papertrey Ink, LLC.
What did follow the ownership change was a reset. On January 31, 2019 the company announced a “fresh start,” stating it would take time off from releasing new products “in order to reduce our huge inventory of over 5,000 active items,” and opened with 15% off most of the store from February 1 to 8, 2019. That number — 5,000 active items — is worth carrying into the pricing and stock sections below, because the catalog is still enormous and still partly stranded.
One more piece of recent history matters for anyone judging the site itself. The storefront you shop today is new even though the business is not. It runs on Shopify, and every one of the 4,166 products in the store’s public catalog feed was created in that Shopify store during 2026 — 652 in February, 3,376 in a single March push, and the rest trickling in through October. The Internet Archive’s May 14, 2026 capture of the homepage still shows the previous PinnacleCart-powered store. So the platform is months old, the company is decades old, and a few of the rough edges documented further down — three different support email addresses, a help page describing a release schedule that no longer applies — look like migration debt rather than deception.
What Papertrey Ink Sells
The catalog is deep and genuinely first-party. As of October 2026 the public product feed lists 4,166 products. By the store’s own product-type tags the largest sections are dies (1,479), stamps (686), paper (604), a clearance section called Last Call (223), Perfect Match ribbon (211), Perfect Match ink (171), stencils (116), accents (94), other inks (79), embossing supplies (66), embellishments (55), packaging (46), buttons (40), stamp accessories (39), felt (34) and Creative Card Club kits (34).
The Perfect Match system is the spine of the range. Papertrey Ink maintains 57 named colors, and the colors run across several parts of the toolkit rather than living in one product only. All 57 come as a dye ink pad, a small ink cube for edges and detail and a 0.5 oz refill bottle; 55 come as color-matched cardstock, 29 of those in a 50-sheet premium pack; 38 come in several ribbon weaves; and 34 come as a felt sheet. That is 138 color-matched cardstock listings under the store’s own Perfect Match cardstock tag, 211 ribbon listings and 34 felt sheets as of October 2026. Most competitors coordinate ink and cardstock; coordinating ink, cardstock, ribbon and felt across this many shades is unusual, and it is the single strongest reason to buy here rather than assemble a palette from four brands.
Stamps are clear polymer on acetate carrier sheets. Product listings describe sets arriving on 4” x 6” acetate sheets with per-image measurements down to the eighth of an inch — the August 2026 Bewitching Bookcase set, for example, documents a 3.25” x 5” bookcase, a 3.125” banner and books ranging from an eighth-inch wide upward. This is a change from the red rubber the brand was originally known for, and it is worth knowing before you order if rubber was the reason you bought in the first place.
Dies are the biggest section and the most elaborate. The 1,479 die listings run from single fillable frames to large build-your-own sets — the Build-A-Ghost Die released in the August 2026 drop is a 7.5” x 8” plate carrying 41 individual dies for $45.00. Recurring families include Love to Layer (layered shapes), In Stitches (faux-stitching outlines), Into the Blooms (florals), Go-To Gift Card Holders (structural folds for gift cards) and Reflections (scripture designs). There are also press plates for debossing and hot foil plates.
Paper is sold two ways. Paper Basics covers neutrals and specialty stock — Stamper’s Select White, Rustic White, Rustic Cream, Vintage Cream, shimmer cardstock in ten colors, vellum, acetate and metallic Luxe sheets — while the Perfect Match line covers the 57-color range in 50-sheet packs.
It also resells other brands. This is not a pure own-brand shop: as of October 2026 the store carried 131 Tim Holtz items (mostly Distress mini ink pads, sprays and embossing glazes), Ranger Perfect Pearls pigment powders, Bearly Art precision glue, Nuvo products and VersaMark watermark inks. Those are commodity lines available from every craft retailer, so compare them on price rather than assuming the house discount applies.
The Creative Card Club is the subscription. It ships every other month — January, March, May, July, September and November — and delivers pre-cut materials for three card designs plus a bonus design, with written and video instructions. A one-off Starter Kit at $88.00 bundles a sentiment stamp set, ten Perfect Match ink colors, ten blending brushes, an acrylic block and background stencils for people beginning from nothing.
And then there is the part of the catalog you cannot buy. Of the 4,166 listings, 1,370 — 32.9% — have every variant out of stock as of October 2026. The in-stock rate is not uniform: stamp sets sit at 89.4% and Perfect Match ribbon at 94.3%, but dies drop to 65.7%, paper to 47.7%, other inks to 36.7% and Perfect Match inks to 39.8%. At the item level, 29 of 57 Perfect Match ink pads, 25 of 57 cubes and only 14 of 57 refill bottles were available. The system that makes this brand distinctive is the part with the worst availability, and you should treat the color chart as an aspiration rather than an order form until you have checked each item.
Papertrey Ink Pricing in 2026
All prices below were taken from the store’s own live catalog and policy pages as of October 2026, and competitor prices were taken from the competitors’ own product feeds and shipping pages on the same day. Across the full 4,166-product feed the median listed price is $8.00. The cheapest listings are a $0.00 gift certificate and a $0.50 clearance oddment, and the most expensive is a $200.00 gift card; excluding gift cards and gift certificates, prices run from $0.50 to $162.00, the top being the Elegant Notes Stationery Kit.
| Item | Papertrey Ink price (Oct 2026) | Comparable elsewhere, same week | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stamp sets | Median $16.00 (range $1–$74) | Concord & 9th median $15.00; Altenew clear stamps median $15.99 | New-release sets $16–$24 |
| Cutting dies | Median $20.00 (range $2–$75) | Concord & 9th median $18.00; Altenew median $21.00; Lawn Fawn stand-alone dies median $16.50 | Build-A-Ghost Die (41 dies) $45.00 |
| Stencils | Median $12.00 (range $4–$26) | Concord & 9th median $18.00; Altenew median $8.49 (mostly single-layer) | Harvest Medley set of 8 $24.00 |
| Premium cardstock, 40 sheets | $12.00 (Stamper’s Select White) | — | $0.30 per sheet |
| Perfect Match cardstock, 50 sheets | $16.00 | — | $0.32 per sheet, listed for 29 of 57 colors, 22 of them in stock |
| Premium cardstock, 12 / 24 sheets | $7.00 / $10.00 | Concord & 9th $7.95 for 12 sheets; Lawn Fawn $8.00–$9.00 for 10 sheets | $0.58 / $0.42 per sheet |
| Perfect Match ink pad | $5.00 | Concord & 9th ink pad $7.95 | 29 of 57 colors in stock; Fresh Snow and Vintage Cream are $6.00 |
| Perfect Match ink cube / refill | $2.00 / $4.00 (0.5 oz) | — | 25 of 57 / 14 of 57 in stock |
| Perfect Match ribbon, 5 yards | $3.00 flat | — | 211 listings, several weaves |
| Felt sheet | $6.00 | — | 34 color-matched sheets |
| Tim Holtz Distress mini ink pad | $3.49 | Widely stocked; commodity pricing | 131 Tim Holtz items carried |
| Monthly release bundle | Not listed as of October 2026 | — | The September 2026 bundle was a stamp plus die at $47.00 from $56.00; no equivalent bundle appeared with the September 29 release |
| Creative Card Club | $19.99 + tax per shipment | — | 6 shipments a year = $119.94 |
| Creative Card Club Starter Kit | $88.00 | — | Add-on card kits $5.00 each |
| Gift cards | $10 / $25 / $50 / $100 / $125 / $150 / $200 | — | Do not count toward free shipping |
| Clearance stamp sets | From $5.00 (originally $24.00) | — | 214 items on sale, 391 discounted listings |
| US shipping | Free at $80 (continental, excl. AK) | Altenew free at $39; Lawn Fawn free at $100; Concord & 9th free at $125; Simon Says Stamp flat $6.99/$7.99 | Free at $100 to AK, HI, PR |
Where the pricing is genuinely good: paper. At $0.30 a sheet for the 40-sheet Stamper’s Select White pack and $0.32 for the 50-sheet Perfect Match colors, Papertrey Ink is roughly half the per-sheet price of Concord & 9th at $0.66 and around a third of Lawn Fawn at $0.80–$0.90. That gap is large enough to justify the $80 free-shipping threshold on its own if you make cards in volume. Stencils are a narrower win: a $12.00 median against $18.00 at Concord & 9th, but Altenew’s stencil range — largely single-layer designs starting at $6.99 — carries a lower median still at $8.49, so compare like for like rather than assuming a saving.
Where it is simply average: stamps and dies. A $16.00 median stamp set and a $20.00 median die land inside the same band as Concord & 9th ($15.00 and $18.00) and Altenew ($15.99 and $21.00), while Lawn Fawn undercuts everyone on small stamps — its 2x3 clear sets have a $4.00 median. There is no house advantage here; buy on design, not price.
And there is no direct-buy discount at all. Simon Says Stamp resells the brand, and across 428 name-matched stamp and die SKUs the median ratio of the reseller’s price to the direct price was 0.999 — the same money, listed as $23.99 instead of $24.00. What actually differs is logistics: Papertrey Ink ships free at $80 while Simon Says Stamp charged flat-rate US shipping of $6.99 under $20 and $7.99 above as of October 2026, so a large order is cheaper direct and a single $16 stamp set is cheaper from the reseller. Stock differs too: 37 of those 428 matched items were sold out at Papertrey Ink and in stock at Simon Says Stamp on the same day.
The rewards program is worth about 4%. One point per $25 spent, each point redeemable as $1. Points do not accrue on gift certificates, cannot be spent on the order that earned them, and — a detail the program page states plainly — redeeming points can drop an order below the free-shipping threshold and trigger a shipping charge. Net that out before deciding whether to spend them.
Discounting is real and deep, but it is clearance, not promotion. As of October 2026, 391 listings carried a struck-through comparison price and the sale section held 214 items. The reductions are not token: retired stamp sets that originally listed at $24.00 sit at $5.00, and stamp-and-die bundles that listed at $35–$52 sit at $11–$18. The public promotion running on the storefront in October 2026 was free shipping at $80, with no site-wide coupon code published.
What Customers Say About Papertrey Ink
The honest headline is that there is almost no independent review volume to summarize as of October 2026, and a buyer should weigh that absence rather than read a vacuum as approval.
The three aggregators are all empty. The Trustpilot profile for papertreyink.com is unclaimed and carries zero reviews and no TrustScore. The BBB profile — open since August 22, 2011 — records zero customer reviews and zero complaints in three years, and the bureau states outright that it “does not have sufficient information to issue a rating on this business.” The Sitejabber listing, now rebranded SmartCustomer, also shows zero reviews. And the store itself runs no product review system: the Shopify product pages carry an empty reviews field and no third-party review app. For a twenty-year-old brand, that is a strikingly thin public record. It cuts both ways — three years without a single BBB complaint is not nothing — but it means there is no aggregate service score to check.
The usable signal is in craft forums, and it is older than you would like. The 2Peas Refugees board is one of the few venues that hosts substantive, accessible discussion. A long-running thread on the company running from August 2015 to February 2016 shows a consistent split: product quality drew steady praise — posters described dies that “cut so well,” detailed stamps, and cardstock they had bought “for years and years” without problems — while customer service was described as unpredictable. Some members reported replacements handled with no questions asked and dozens of trouble-free orders; others described being treated as if the customer were always wrong. The thread’s own summary language is “hit or miss.”
A later thread shows the same shape with a value tilt. A 2022 thread asking whether anyone was still buying, running June to December 2022, ran roughly a dozen positive posts against a handful of negative ones. Cardstock value was the recurring reason to stay — one poster contrasted a 50-sheet Papertrey pack against competitors charging $7–$8 for ten sheets, which is the same arithmetic that still holds in 2026. The reasons to leave were about direction rather than transactions: the departure of prominent designers, a complaint about designer compensation, and older grievances about ink quality. That is a brand-affinity problem, not a fulfillment problem.
Treat most of the blog and video coverage as house content. Papertrey Ink runs a named design team, and several of the craft blogs that publish the most detailed project work with these products belong to members of it — the team page lists Melissa Phillips (who is also the company’s Marketing Director), Kelly Lunceford, Wanda Cullen, Bobbi Lemanski, Brenda Noelke and others, and the same names appear on the company blog every few days. This content is useful for seeing what the products do; it is not independent evidence about service, pricing or stock.
Two of the larger craft forums could not be read. Threads about the company exist on Splitcoaststampers and Scrapbook.com, but both sites returned 403 responses to automated access in September 2026 and again in October 2026, so their contents are not summarized here rather than being characterized secondhand.
Net directional read, as of October 2026: product quality — particularly cardstock, dies and the color system — has held a good reputation for a decade in the venues that can be read. Customer service has a long-tailed reputation for inconsistency rather than for failure. And the volume of evidence is low enough that a first order should be sized as a test.
Is Papertrey Ink Legit and Safe?
On the basic questions — is this a real company, will a real package arrive, can you find someone to talk to — the answer is clearly yes, and the supporting record is better than most retailers in this size band can show.
What checks out. A domain registered September 30, 2006 and continuously operated since. An incorporated entity, Papertrey Ink, LLC, named in the terms of service. A BBB file open since August 2011 with an owner named and zero complaints in three years. A published street address in Cincinnati, Ohio and a local phone number, (513) 399-6440. Shopify checkout over HTTPS accepting Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, PayPal and store gift cards — all of which carry chargeback or dispute rights. Shipping from Ohio by USPS, UPS Ground or UPS SurePost with a stated 24–48 hour weekday fulfillment goal. A blog that has published continuously since 2006 and posts every three to four days now. A wholesale relationship with a major independent retailer: Simon Says Stamp listed 775 items in its Papertrey Ink collection as of October 2026, which means a third party with its own reputation at stake buys this inventory and stands behind it.
What is sloppy rather than sinister. The terms of service are template boilerplate that was not fully localized: they impose mandatory binding arbitration with a class-action waiver and offer a 30-day opt-out, but the address given for exercising that opt-out is legal@fashionnova.com — a different retailer’s legal inbox. A consumer who followed the stated procedure would be writing to the wrong company. The same document exempts New Jersey from its liability disclaimer, a standard Fashion Nova-style clause. Support addresses are inconsistent across the site: the contact page lists service@papertreyink.zohodesk.com, the returns and privacy pages list support@papertreyink.zohodesk.com, and the FAQ and terms of service still list a stale support@papertreyink.zendesk.com from a previous helpdesk. The SMS program terms inside the same document route program support to support@scrapbook.com, a third outside retailer’s inbox, so two separate paragraphs of the terms point customers at other companies. The blog’s “Release Ordering 101” guide still describes a 10 p.m. EST launch on the 15th of the month — a claim still live in October 2026; the September 2026 release actually went live on September 29. None of this suggests bad faith, but all of it suggests documentation that has not been audited since the 2026 replatform, and it is the reason to keep your own order confirmation rather than rely on the site’s stated processes.
Where the real consumer risk sits: the return rule. Returns are accepted for 60 days from the order date, which is generous, but only on items that are unopened and in the original packaging. Opened merchandise is not accepted. In a category where you cannot evaluate a stamp set through sealed packaging, that shifts essentially all product risk onto the buyer at the moment of unwrapping. Layer on the rest: the customer pays return shipping unless the goods were defective or mis-shipped; a returned stamp set that arrives damaged draws a $2.50 repackaging fee; orders returned totaling $1,000 or more draw a 10% restocking fee plus the full shipping charge; damaged cardstock must be reported within 30 days; returns take up to 14 days to process and refunds 7 to 14 days after that; there are no direct exchanges; and returning enough to fall under the free-shipping threshold adds the shipping charge back. The Creative Card Club is explicitly non-refundable, with replacement only for damaged or defective contents.
And the stock problem is a practical risk, not a safety one. The site’s FAQ states that if an item sells out while an order is processing, the order is held until restock rather than cancelled, with email notification — so a single backordered item can hold an entire order. The same FAQ says hot items “typically restock within 5 business days,” and says separately that the company “never guarantees that an item will be restocked.” It also describes two other outcomes for the same situation, which do not reconcile with either: one answer says a sold-out item is refunded and the rest of the order ships anyway, and another lists “the item(s) sold out” as a reason an order may be cancelled outright. Which of the four applies to you is not something the site tells you in advance. With a third of the catalog unavailable as of October 2026, that ambiguity is the most likely way an order goes wrong here.
Practical precautions. Verify that every line item shows in stock before checking out, and split anything urgent into its own order so a backorder cannot hold it. Pay with a credit card or PayPal. Buy cardstock, ribbon and ink in one order large enough to clear $80, since that is where the value actually is. Inspect the parcel and check cardstock for shipping damage before opening anything, because opening ends your return right and the cardstock damage window is 30 days. If a specific die or stamp is sold out, check Simon Says Stamp before waiting — the price is effectively identical. And if a subscription is what you want, remember the two-week notice requirement to skip or cancel a Creative Card Club shipment.
Bottom Line
Papertrey Ink earns a 3.8 out of 5 from LegitScout — good, with reservations. It is a twenty-year-old, incorporated, findable US retailer with a coordinated color system nobody else in its price band matches and the cheapest cardstock per sheet of the cardmaking brands checked in October 2026. It is also a store where a third of the catalog cannot be added to a cart, returns end the moment you open the package, and there is essentially no third-party service record to check before you spend.
What earns it: 57 ink colors, 55 of them carried into cardstock, 38 into ribbon and 34 into felt, so a palette actually coordinates across materials. Cardstock at $0.30–$0.32 a sheet against $0.66 and $0.80–$0.90 at the two nearest rivals. Stencils at a $12.00 median against $18.00 at Concord & 9th. Monthly releases of roughly 20 items still shipping on schedule, a design-team blog posting every three to four days, 214 clearance items with genuine 50–79% markdowns, free US shipping at $80, a 60-day return window, a 4%-back rewards program, and a BBB file with zero complaints in three years.
What holds it back: 1,370 of 4,166 listings fully out of stock as of October 2026, with the Perfect Match ink line — the brand’s signature — down to 39.8% availability and refill bottles to 14 of 57. Returns accepted only on unopened items, with the buyer paying return freight. Terms of service that route the arbitration opt-out to another company’s legal inbox, three different support email addresses across the site, and a help page describing a release schedule the company abandoned. Zero reviews on Trustpilot, zero on the BBB, zero on Sitejabber, and no on-site reviews, so the only community evidence is craft-forum discussion that is mostly several years old and describes customer service as hit or miss.
Buy from
What we like
- The Perfect Match color system is the real product, and nothing else in this price band matches its breadth. As of October 2026 the store's public catalog carries 57 named colors, and every one of them exists as a dye ink pad ($5.00 for 55 of the 57, with Fresh Snow and Vintage Cream at $6.00), a small ink cube ($2.00) and a 0.5 oz refill bottle ($4.00). Fifty-five of the 57 also have color-matched cardstock — 138 cardstock listings under the store's own Perfect Match cardstock tag, 29 colors of which come in a 50-sheet premium pack at $16.00 — alongside 211 color-matched ribbon listings covering 38 colors at a flat $3.00 for 5 yards across satin, grosgrain, twill tape, saddle stitch and bitty dot weaves, plus 34 matching felt sheets at $6.00. Buying an ink pad and knowing the cardstock and, for most colors, the ribbon and felt will be the same shade out of the box removes the single most tedious part of cardmaking, and it is a structural advantage a competitor cannot copy quickly.
- Cardstock is the best per-sheet value among the cardmaking brands checked on the same day. As of October 2026, Paper Basics Stamper's Select White Premium Cardstock runs $12.00 for 40 sheets ($0.30 a sheet) and the Perfect Match colors run $16.00 for 50 sheets ($0.32 a sheet). On the same day Concord & 9th listed its 8.5x11 cardstock at $7.95 for 12 sheets ($0.66 a sheet) and Lawn Fawn listed solid cardstock at $8.00–$9.00 for 10 sheets ($0.80–$0.90 a sheet). Even the small 12-sheet Papertrey pack at $7.00 ($0.58 a sheet) undercuts both. Stencils also undercut Concord & 9th — a $12.00 median against $18.00 — though Altenew's mostly single-layer stencils are cheaper still at an $8.49 median, so that one is not a clean win.
- This is an old, findable, incorporated US business, not a dropship front. The domain papertreyink.com was registered on September 30, 2006. The terms of service name the legal entity as Papertrey Ink, LLC. The Better Business Bureau has had a file open on the company since August 22, 2011, lists the owner by name (Ms. Julie Heskamp) and records zero complaints in the last three years. The contact page publishes a street address at 5514 Fair Lane, Cincinnati, OH 45227 and a working local phone number, (513) 399-6440. Orders ship from Ohio by USPS, UPS Ground or UPS SurePost, with a stated goal of leaving the warehouse within 24 to 48 hours on weekdays.
- The release machine and the discount pipeline both still run. New collections drop monthly — the September 2026 release went live on September 29, 2026 with 22 new stamps, dies, stencils and press plates, following an August 25, 2026 drop — the month's September Color Inspiration Paper Bundle is a separate drop that published on September 3 at $8.00 — and the design-team blog publishes fresh project posts every three to four days. On the back end, 391 products carried a struck-through comparison price as of October 2026 and the sale section held 214 items, with retired stamp sets that originally listed at $24.00 marked down to $5.00 and die collections cut 40–60%. The loyalty program adds one point per $25 spent and each point is worth $1, so roughly 4% back on qualifying orders.
What to watch out for
- Roughly a third of the catalog cannot be bought. Of the 4,166 products in the store's public feed as of October 2026, 1,370 — 32.9% — have every variant out of stock. The damage is concentrated in exactly the categories that make the brand worth using: only 47.7% of paper listings, 39.8% of Perfect Match ink listings and 65.7% of dies are buyable, against 89.4% of stamp sets. Broken out by item, 29 of 57 Perfect Match ink pads, 25 of 57 ink cubes and just 14 of 57 refill bottles were in stock. A color system you cannot complete is a weaker proposition than the price list suggests, and the site's own FAQ warns that it 'never guarantees' an item will be restocked.
- Returns are unopened-only, which is a hard rule in a category where you cannot judge a stamp set through the packaging. The policy accepts returns up to 60 days from the order date, but items must be 'unopened and in the original packaging'; opened merchandise is not accepted at all. The customer pays return shipping except on defective or mis-shipped goods, a returned stamp set that arrives damaged is charged a $2.50 repackaging fee, damaged cardstock must be reported within 30 days, returns take up to 14 days to process and refunds a further 7 to 14 days, there are no direct exchanges, and if a return drops your order under the free-shipping threshold the shipping charge is added back.
- The legal and support layer is visibly boilerplate. The terms of service impose mandatory binding arbitration and a class-action waiver with a 30-day opt-out window — and the address given for exercising that opt-out is legal@fashionnova.com, another retailer's legal inbox, which means the stated escape hatch does not reach this company. Support email addresses are inconsistent across the site: the contact page gives service@papertreyink.zohodesk.com, the returns and privacy pages give support@papertreyink.zohodesk.com, and the FAQ and terms still give a defunct support@papertreyink.zendesk.com. The SMS program terms inside the same document route support to support@scrapbook.com, a third outside retailer's inbox, alongside the Fashion Nova address. The blog's 'Release Ordering 101' help page still describes a 10 p.m. EST launch on the 15th, years out of step with the actual noon-ET, end-of-month release.
- There is almost no independent review record to check the company against. As of October 2026 the Trustpilot profile for papertreyink.com is unclaimed with zero reviews and a TrustScore of 0.0, the BBB profile carries zero customer reviews and no rating at all ('BBB does not have sufficient information to issue a rating'), the Sitejabber listing — now SmartCustomer — has zero reviews, and the store runs no on-site product review system. What discussion exists sits in craft forums, much of it years old, and a large share of the blog and video coverage comes from the company's own paid design team rather than independent buyers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Papertrey Ink legit?
Yes. Papertrey Ink is a real, long-established US retailer, not a storefront thrown up last quarter. The domain papertreyink.com was registered on September 30, 2006 ([WHOIS](https://who.is/whois/papertreyink.com)), the terms of service identify the legal entity as Papertrey Ink, LLC, and the [Better Business Bureau](https://www.bbb.org/us/oh/cincinnati/profile/scrapbook/papertrey-ink-0292-90007032) has had a file open since August 22, 2011, naming the owner (Ms. Julie Heskamp, as of October 2026) and recording zero complaints in the last three years. The company publishes a street address in Cincinnati, Ohio and a local phone number, orders check out through Shopify over HTTPS with Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express and PayPal accepted, and its products are stocked by a major independent retailer — Simon Says Stamp listed 775 items in its [Papertrey Ink collection](https://www.simonsaysstamp.com/collections/papertrey-ink) as of October 2026. The legitimate caveat is not authenticity but verification: with zero reviews on Trustpilot, the BBB and Sitejabber, there is very little public service record to inspect before you order.
Is it cheaper to buy Papertrey Ink stamps and dies direct or from Simon Says Stamp?
Neither, on price. Comparing 428 name-matched Papertrey stamp sets and dies across both stores in September 2026, the median Simon Says Stamp price was 0.999 times the direct price — the same number, listed as $23.99 instead of $24.00. What differs is shipping and stock. Papertrey Ink ships free at $80 (continental US, excluding Alaska) and $100 to Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico; [Simon Says Stamp](https://www.simonsaysstamp.com/pages/shipping-information) charged flat-rate US shipping of $6.99 under $20 and $7.99 above it as of October 2026. Stock is the bigger factor: of those same 428 matched items, 37 were sold out at Papertrey Ink but in stock at Simon Says Stamp. If you are placing a large order, buy direct and clear the $80 threshold; if you need one specific sold-out die, check the reseller.
What is the Creative Card Club, and can you cancel it?
It is a bi-monthly card kit subscription at $19.99 plus tax per shipment, billed per shipment rather than monthly, shipping in January, March, May, July, September and November — six shipments, or $119.94 a year at October 2026 pricing. Each kit contains pre-cut materials for three card designs plus a bonus design, with written and video instructions. About a week before each shipment subscribers get an email offering add-on kits (listed at $5.00 each) that ship free with the box within the continental US. There is no contract: you can cancel or skip any shipment with two weeks' notice before the next one. The catch is refunds — the company states the kits are 'not refundable' because of the nature of the product, though damaged or defective items are replaced. A separate Creative Card Club Starter Kit, which bundles a sentiment stamp set, ten ink colors, ten blending brushes, an acrylic block and stencils, was $88.00 as of October 2026.
Can you return a Papertrey Ink stamp set after opening it?
No. The return policy accepts returns up to 60 days from the order date, but only on items that are 'unopened and in the original packaging' — opened merchandise is explicitly not accepted. That makes the effective decision point the moment you slit the package, which is a meaningful risk in a category where photographs do not tell you how a stamp set inks up. Other terms to know as of October 2026: you pay return shipping unless the item was defective or mis-shipped; a returned stamp set that arrives damaged incurs a $2.50 repackaging fee; returned orders totaling $1,000 or more are charged a 10% restocking fee plus the full shipping cost; damaged cardstock must be reported within 30 days of delivery; and there are no direct exchanges — you place a new order and return the old item for credit.
Why are so many Papertrey Ink products out of stock?
The company does not publish a reason, and the honest answer is that the public evidence only shows the scale, not the cause. As of October 2026, 1,370 of the 4,166 products in the store's public catalog had every variant unavailable — 32.9% — concentrated in paper (47.7% in stock), Perfect Match inks (39.8%) and dies (65.7%). The store's own FAQ says sold-out items are typically reordered but that 'we never guarantee that an item will be restocked,' and that the 'hottest items typically restock within 5 business days,' though the same FAQ also describes two other outcomes for an item that sells out mid-order — the order being held until restock, or the item being refunded and the rest of the order shipped — so the behavior is not consistent. Two pieces of context are worth holding: the company announced back in January 2019 that it was pausing releases to work down an inventory of over 5,000 active items, and the storefront itself was rebuilt on Shopify in 2026, so some listings may be catalog history rather than live intent. Check the specific color or die you need before you plan a project around it.
When does Papertrey Ink release new products?
Monthly, near the end of the month, at midday Eastern. The September 2026 release went live on September 29, 2026 with 22 new items, the August 2026 batch went live at 12:00 PM ET on August 25, 2026 with roughly 20, and the batch before that published on July 28, 2026 — a consistent end-of-month cadence. Sneak peeks and countdown posts run on the company blog in the days beforehand, and the design team publishes project posts every three to four days year-round. Two official sources still describe an older schedule and should be ignored: the blog's 'Release Ordering 101' page says new items go live at 10 p.m. EST on the 15th, and the shipping policy describes a release window of the 15th to the 25th during which orders can be delayed 2 to 7 business days. Outside release weeks, the stated goal is to ship within 24 to 48 hours on weekdays.