Craystar Travel Agency × Leatherius Woodman – a leather stamping study
From the Practice Log – an ongoing series of stamping studies on real-world marks.
A July study.
Craystar Travel Agency is the owner-operated practice of Eric Crayton, a certified travel advisor in Springfield, Missouri who books trips for clients nationwide. The founding premise is disarmingly modest: vacation planning has turned into a second job, and a real advisor, at no extra cost to the traveler, can take the overwhelm back out of it. The site leads with “Disney, booked with confidence.” What held our attention longer is quieter. In 2026 Eric certified as an SNG Accessible Travel Advocate, and the site treats accessible trip planning as a stated mission of the house.
The mark earned its study on geometry alone. An orange star, shaded from gold at the crown to burnt orange below, and across it a navy plane climbing toward the upper right on a curved contrail that sweeps in from the lower left. Beneath, CRAYSTAR in bold navy capitals. It is travel-agency iconography, admittedly, but the drawing has conviction; the curve of that contrail already knows the difference between leaving and arriving.
The mark, as found
Pressed
Honeyed russet and navy-blue do the work the artwork assigns, the russet standing in for the warm star and its contrail, the navy for the plane and the wordmark. Black carries the gold foil, as our third pressing always does. We went back and forth on which hide should lead the photograph; the russet won, mostly because the star did.
Untangled
Untangled is drawn in one unbroken line. It begins low on the left as a scribbled knot, the trip as most people first meet it, then the same line escapes the tangle and resolves into a single smooth curve that bows across the tag like a contrail, ending at a small plane climbing toward a bold five-point star. CRAYSTAR sits in plain capitals along the bottom. We tried a version with the knot tidied up and the drawing lost its argument; the mess has to be there for the resolution to mean anything.
We made this out of love. Leatherius Woodman is on a mission to create and share artifacts of beauty, craft and love – this study is one of them, and we hope the feeling is mutual. Every image is a render – how we prototype before cutting a die.
If you're Craystar Travel Agency and you'd like these made real, or anything here changed – say hello through our contact page.