January Bridges 5/7/26 January Bridges 5/7/26

march / april 2026 in review

Hello hello and happy May to my avid drink-may-be-hot-dot-com readers! What a whirlwind the last few months have been. My original plan was to write a post like this for each month, and it probably isn’t a great sign that I have already failed that by my second post, but life has just been nonstop since I started this blog! As I mentioned in my last post, I’m getting married this month, and the combination of everything going on both with my job and preparing for the wedding has made for a very scattered me. March went by in a blink, April went by in something even shorter than that, and I don’t even want to know what’s going to happen to May (it’s the 7th?!) - I gotta get this post out!

I collected many wonderful cup sleeves in Marpril (what I somewhat affectionately call March and April in my mind), it will amount to a truly legendary haul! This entry will follow me on my business trips to Los Angeles, CA , Durham, NC , and Portland, ME in addition to a handful of mail swaps and onine pick ups. I invite you to get a blanket, a snack, maybe a drink (with a special cup sleeve on it perhaps :-)), and get cozy while you read up on my latest trials and tribulations!

So, let me start out by saying that my trip to Los Angeles in mid-March was so incredibly gorgeous. Every time I get the chance to go over there, it is usually later in the year when it’s already unbearably hot, but the few days I had the joy of spending there this year had temperatures in the perfect 60-80 degree range. I was too busy to venture very far from my hotel at LAX, so I wasn’t able to scour for far away cup sleeves this time around. A few years ago, at the same event, I was able to get a very nice handful of sleeves from the Santa Monica area that you can see on my California page! Many of these cafes have since switched to double-walled cups or generic sleeves, so I very much cherish these now.

We’re starting slow - the first new sleeve I will share with you this time is this The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf sleeve that I got from a location in LA’s Little Tokyo. I already have a few cup sleeves from this chain, and I actually even have a sleeve from them that looks almost exactly the same as this new one! However, I compared the two afterward and noticed a small difference about the way the back is laid out. I will include the one I already had below the new one, and you can compare and see if you can spot the difference! ;) (Spoiler : Check out the location of the recycling symbol!)

At the conclusion of my otherwise quite lovely stay in Los Angeles, I had a horrific situation with my flight that set me back a bit of money and had me stuck in Los Angeles for an extra day. I will spare you the details of this situation as I don’t want to re-live it at this point, but in short there was a blizzard on the East Coast that prevented my incoming flight from making it back to LAX. Because of this, the soonest flight my airline could put me on was several days later, and I had to cancel and purchase a new ticket with a different airline. As you may have put together (or already know) by now, I travel for work and often think that I’ve just about seen it all, but this was a special kind of hell that reminded me that no matter what, I will always have more to learn about the world! ☺︎

As I was leaving LAX that first time, I stopped at the Urth Caffe in Terminal 1 and asked the incredibly hard-working ladies there for a cup sleeve as they were finishing someone else’s beverage. I would have loved to try something while I was there, but with the amount of stress I was already under I figured my heart probably wouldn’t appreciate the added caffeine… I had seen folks wandering the airport all day with these beautiful sleeves and was so thrilled to find the source of them. I think they’re very over-the-top and the text is hard to read, but in a beautiful way.

After getting home to Minneapolis at the conclusion of my stressful adventure, I took a long and relaxing walk to reclaim some semblance of sanity. My walk took me far past where I usually go and into a cozy neighborhood in northeast Minneapolis with this incredibly stylish little coffee shop called Cafe Mojo. I had actually been here once a few years prior during a live music event they were hosting, but there weren’t any custom cup sleeves back then. The one they have now is far from elaborate, but it’s clever to use a cup sleeve as a loyalty stamp card! It’s to encourage the reuse of the cup sleeve and reduce waste, which I think is a really smart way to offset the potential waste involved in making custom sleeves at all. Also, love that they’re encouraging folks to hold onto their sleeves! The coffee and pastry I got here were wonderful, and there was a very cute antique shop across the way, so I definitely think I will be back in the future!

In late March, I noticed that Mercari was offering some kind of discounted shipping sale, so I went through some of my saved items to see if the sale applied to any of them - and I was able to pick up these really interesting collaborative cup sleeves from Gong Cha featuring Felix from Stray Kids! Now, obligatory “I don’t do the K-Pop Thing” disclaimer, I have no idea who this guy is or why he’s on these. After a bit of research, I learned that he’s considered an ambassador for the company and has collaborated with them a few times now! Things like this always make me zoom out and think big - how many collaborations have there been over the years? Weird obscure mixtures of people and companies and art, lost to time and obscurity, never to be seen again? Modern collectors and archivists have such a heavy job on our shoulders to ensure nothing as interesting as this is ever lost again, for the good of our culture! Anyway, yay, Gong Cha!

Avid readers who remember my last entry might recall that I consider myself a bit of a Neopets fan. The obsession started young, as it often does - a small child in Pennsylvania, making the pilgrimage to the promised land of Limited Too at the local mall to buy whatever plush was left on their beautiful pink striped shelves… The day the Neopets McDonalds toys dropped was pure hysteria in my town, lines wrapped around the block to see what locations had the Starry pets, kids at school had them chained to their backpacks down to the dusty concrete outside the lunch room, none of us knew how to pronounce any of the names… There were cards you could get at Target to play some kind of game, but we all just put the same identical structured theme decks into our Pokemon binders to try and trade them at school the next day. It just brings a tear to the eye to remember, doesn’t it?

These modern collaborations that the new owners of Neopets are doing with boba chains feel familiar to those days in a way. We aren’t kids anymore, but these events aren’t really for kids, are they? I know I would have hated the boba texture situation as a kid. No, these are definitely to target us Gen Z’s who were there at the beginning - cards are back on the shelves, we’re going to fast food restaurants to try and get the right toys and everything comes with a code to use online again. I think there are a lot of things that companies are doing wrong in trying to get their then-child fanbase back, but I think Neopets is doing a lot of things right. I know I started playing again when all of this started back up! I’d like to see it continue, but let’s see what their stamina is like…

I was really excited when this collaboration with Gong Cha was announced. We don’t have any locations in the Twin Cities, so I immediately fired off some texts to my friends on the east coast to see if anyone could pick up a sleeve for me, but none of them had any luck at their locations. The Instagram advertisement clearly showcased the cup sleeves, and they were honestly pretty beautiful and well-designed with relatively intricate artwork - it just felt like a lot of effort to do all of that for something that wasn’t even real! I spent hours researching during the first few days after the collection dropped, and I slowly came to the understanding that the cup sleeves were a Canadian exclusive, because of course they are! I pivoted to asking in discussion forums and Discord servers and eventually found a really nice person in the Toronto area who picked one up for me in exchange for a couple of postcards. I am really grateful to have this one in my collection because of how limited the event is, how nostalgic the subject matter is, and how memorable the story will always be. A highlight of this blog post for me, for sure!!

Sometime in mid-Marpril, we stopped in at our local grocery store to deposit some cash at the ATM. There’s a Caribou Coffee counter inside of the store, and Sean pointed out that the basket of cup sleeves was left on the counter even though the Caribou was closed. I wasn’t that interested - I have a lot of Caribou sleeves by now and I kind of just assumed I had whatever these were - but as he went through them, I realized I didn’t recognize any of these phrases and he pulled out one of each for me. Caribou does this thing where they release between two and four "designs” every few months, and I sort of have a love-hate relationship with them. I think it’s awesome that they’re so consistent, it’s honestly satisfying to lay them all out together and see the small variations within specific parameters. But also, with the same swing of the sword, they’re pretty boring! I think it would be really cool to see them do something less controlled and more image-focused sometime, just to mix it up. The Christmas before last they did a ugly Christmas sweater thing that you can see at the bottom of my Caribou page here, and I thought it was so refreshing. Anyway, here’s the Spring collection~

Now, my next trip was to Durham in sunny North Carolina. I have a lot of thoughts about Durham - I’m not expert, but I think it is such an underrated place! I’ve been going there every year for the same event since 2023, but this was my first year in the downtown area. I have, by now, been to many of the big cities in the US and I am all too familiar with the rigamarole that comes with that - the busy sidewalks full of people rushing, the constant sense of urgency, the busted pedestrian stoplight that has you googling the lore of the jaywalking laws in that particular area while cars are stopped at a diagonal across both crosswalks honking at you - but Durham is nothing like that. It has a quiet, small town feeling, yet you can tell it’s alive, and I was amazed at how vibrant, creative, kind and progressive the community felt. There were flyers and signs everywhere about events of every kind going out until late summer, old buildings revitalized with new hands and hearts, plenty of sunny parks, a busy-but-organized farmer’s market with all types of people and goods, and historic small businesses kept alive through the modern era. It sort of felt like being on a TV show to walk around there, especially with the very lucky and sunny 60-70 degree weekend that I got while there. I am sure it has its problems as everywhere does, but the locals I spoke to seemed happy and proud of it, which just made it feel good to be there.

I got in early on the Thursday night of the weekend so I passed out on the early side, which means I woke up before the sunrise the next day. I had done plenty of research on the way there and was thrilled to discover there were loads of local cafes, and many had images on their Google reviews of cups with very decorated sleeves, which were looking pretty hopeful. I put together a little list and then went for a stroll as the sun rose. Not gonna lie, it was pretty picturesque out there. I passed a couple of joggers and dog-walkers who greeted me as they passed outside the highrises and apartment buildings, and I stumbled across Durham’s tiny but gorgeous Central Park. While I was walking around and checking out the local greenery, a lady came out of the apartment building nearby holding a cat carrier, asking me if I had seen a little black kitten anywhere. I helped her look around the park, but I never saw anything. Around twenty minutes in to looking, I saw her get up from a crouch and run back into the apartment building, so I like to hope and believe that was her finding her baby!!

At the end of the road I had set out on was Cocoa Cinnamon, a really lovely little place. I could tell as soon as I got to the front door that a lot of love and care was put into it - it just had that rustic, revitalized-old-building feeling that Durham does so well. The outside had a little pergola-covered patio with nice tables, flags and plants abundant all over… It was just idyllic, man. I stepped in and was blown away at the warm string light-y vibe and antique-y furniture at all different angles. The old wooden counter had community flyers and signage all over it. It was empty when I got there since they had just opened at 6am, and I talked to the folks working there for a little bit about what it was like to live and work in Durham. I ended up ordering a dark hot chocolate and a pastry because they recommended it, and because I only drink one coffee a day and had lots of other places I wanted to check out, but in hindsight I regret not ordering a coffee while I was there! Check out what it says on their sleeve that I picked up on the way out about their coffee.

Ah, well, there’s always next year!

I circled back from Cocoa Cinnamon to this little place on the bottom floor of a luxury highrise building called Geerhouse - Nectar Cafe. Nectar was recommended to me by a past client who was local, and I chose here for my morning coffee so I could sit outside and look over the aforementioned Central Park (maybe the little black kitten slipped away for a latte!). I got a little raspberry iced latte thing and sat outside sipping it while the sun rose the rest of the way. The guy working the counter told me that he submitted the drink concept himself and he was super excited that it was accepted onto their spring menu, which I just thought was really awesome stuff. I asked him for a cup sleeve even though the drink was iced, and he remarked that it had a cool design so lots of folks ask for them despite their iced cups not really fitting them! I wonder if any of those people kept those sleeves too…

As a side note, my trusty ol’ scanner has begun to produce the ‘streaks of death’ across my scanned images. It is pretty subtle on some, but more pronounced on darker sleeve designs on this one, so rest easy knowing that someday I will replace the affected images! This scanner has been in our household for nearly five years and has flown all over the country with me, so it is certainly approaching retirement and will be replaced in the coming months. For now though, check out this kickass fractal hummingbird!

My final stop that morning on the way back to the hotel was Foster Street Coffee, which I didn’t really have a plan for given that I couldn’t possibly order a third drink in the same morning. Luckily though, when I got there and opened the door, it was an absolute zoo! A beautiful and modern cafe just full of folks getting their morning routine coffee. It was such a drastic vibe shift from the first two, frankly incredibly peaceful, places I went to, but how busy it was made for a very easy cup sleeve grab since their little cream-and-sugar cart was right by the door! No one noticed I was ever even in there (probably).

I had the joy of spending the evening parts of this weekend with some very dear friends of mine, one of whom was an absolute rockstar who smuggled coffee into the convention center for me every day from the nearby Narrative Coffee Company. I had ruled this place out because it looked like they didn’t use cup sleeves from their Google photos, but I must have been wrong because they had a very delightful and striking purple ink hand-stamped design!

On the final night that we were in town, I double checked my list and saw that I missed a place - a place that was thankfully open quite late! We walked over to The Oak House and I took a LaCroix from their display. When I went to check out, the guy at the register asked if I wanted a cold one instead and went into the back to swap them out for me! I asked for a cup sleeve and, with no follow up questions necessary, he handed one right over to me. It was awesome, and it felt so good to finish the downtown Durham checklist for the year. Now I get to revisit and see if anything’s changed the next time I go back!

The same friends I was staying with had just gotten back from a trip to Baltimore, and they surprised me with this sleeve they got from a combo vinyl / coffee shop there! I love a used sleeve like this that tells a bit of a story. It was really so nice of them to think of me like this, and considering I don’t think I’ll be headed to Baltimore anytime soon, much appreciated to get my hands on something special!

I had a pretty tight turnaround between Durham and Portland, which is another city I think is on the underrated side. You always hear people talking about Portland, OR but never Portland, ME! This city has so much character and charm, theres art coming up between the bricks of the street, the people are all so interesting and every single thing about what you see seems to have a story attached. But - I’m getting ahead of myself! On the way there, I stopped at my favorite spot in the MSP airport- Joe & the Juice! I have a sleeve from here that I got a couple years back, but since I was getting a drink there anyway I happened to check and realized the text on the back was different than I remembered. Great, another Caribou to start keep an eye out for…

I got there on the early side of Thursday for this trip, but I had already had a coffee for the day, so I just took a walk and did some sightseeing and window shopping around the area. On my way back to the hotel I passed Another Round, which is this little board game cafe that was just the cutest little hole-in-the-wall space. I want to say something with so much emphasis; the people here sounded like they were having so much fun. I’ve been to a few board game cafes in my life, but they’ve always been either empty or maybe there’s one or two people quietly playing Magic in the back corner. I spent maybe thirty seconds in here, but the group by the coffee counter was playing some kind of tabletop RPG and just having the giggle of all giggles, it was so infectious that I wanted to stay! But I got my sleeve and headed back out into the windy grey to return to my hotel.

I thought the food in Portland was fantastic, but the coffee was just so-so. I felt like a lot of places were on the milky side, which weirdly matched the rainy vibes that the city was serving up all weekend. I also found a distinct lack of cup sleeves at many of the cafes I went to, which was a bummer, but I still had some luck!

I stopped in a place on Friday morning that had a whole tray of hand-stamped sleeves. Funny enough, this was also the place with the best coffee that we found throughout the weekend, and we went back several times even though I usually don’t do that. Their drinks were the least milky on the street and the vibes were very cute and community-based! I definitely recommend checking it out if you’re in the Portland area.

In the hotel lobby on one of the mornings, I stopped to get some fruit water from their little station and glanced in the trash (which is a bit of a theme for this trip, as you’ll soon read) - right on top was a bright red sleeve from a place I hadn’t yet tried, Flatiron Coffee Bar! I saw the outside of this place, it’s a very cool spot inside one of those very New England-y narrow buildings. It was great to cross one off for free like this when the amount of time I have is so limited.

That same morning, I went to a wonderful local bakery called Standard Baking Company, which had these fabulous little lemon tarts. I checked out their coffee station on the way out and, while I was disappointed they didn’t have a custom sleeve, they did have a generic that I’m pretty sure is new for my collection! I’ll definitely take it in place of nothing :-)

While working throughout the weekend, a guy passed by me holding a cup with a sleeve I didn’t recognize. I had done an embarrassing amount of research on the cafes in the area, so I knew it had to be from a bit further out. I tried calling out to him to ask about it, but he didn’t hear me, so I started looking up where the place was and felt like it was probably too far for the scope of this trip. I had started to put it out of my mind as my break approached, but as soon as my friend came to watch my table so I could stretch, the same guy passed by again - this time without the cup! I was bummed at first, but the turnaround had been so quick, I suddenly had the crazy idea that it was probably right on top of whatever trash can he dropped it in. It felt farfetched, but it was possible, so I did a walk around the venue and scanned the tops of the cans - and I’m not sure how, but I found it - right on top, just like the Flatiron one! This is real trashin’ hours here folks! And to top it all off, the sleeve is genuinely sick, and it’s local specific with the skyline. I’m a fan.

I usually leave bright and early on Monday mornings after trips, but this time my flight wasn’t until the evening, so I spent the morning and afternoon with another dear friend who was visiting for the weekend. He brought a cup sleeve for me from his local joint in upstate New York, which was so incredibly kind of him! I’m not sure when I’ll make it up there, so similar to the Baltimore one, I’m particularly grateful for something like this. I also love the all-over print of the coffee beans, it’s very old fashioned in an endearing way!

On our way out of the hotel on Monday morning, we passed a guy outside of a building smoking a cigarette with a coffee in his hand, and the sleeve on his cup was the most beautiful and eyecatching thing I had ever seen. I am aware as I write this that it sounds like I have gone completely insane, drunk with cup sleeve lust on this trip, and that is maybe true. I don’t have any comebacks for that. I initially passed him by, figuring I wouldn’t have time to go wherever it was from anyway, but as we waited for the crosswalk light to change I had a dramatic movie moment and ran back to ask him where he got it. He told me it was Crooked Mile, which was a coffee shop about a twenty-five minutes walk away, and the friend I was with was down for the walk so we went together. We ended up finding another part of Portland, the Old Port area, that was more touristy and super cute, so it was really cool to have such a noteworthy catalyst for something like that! (I know, I know, I’m bargaining - but wait until you see it!)

The Crooked Mile, featuring Carrabassett Coffee Company, 2026

This sleeve is such a stunner, I’m still mindblown that I was able to add it to my collection on this trip. A massive thank you to my very patient friend for walking around with me on this day! As you probably noticed, the sleeve turned out to not really be for the coffee shop itself, but for the roastery that their beans are from, similar to how Peace Coffee does it in the Twin Cities. What’s cool about this is that this company is based out of Maine too, meaning it still counts as a very local souvenir. ☺︎

On that same day on our way back toward the hotel, we stopped in one more coffee shop on my list, Burke’s Perks. This place was very old school, one room with a counter, a sugar-and-cream stand, and a bar with a couple of stools. The lady there was friendly but stern, very New England - if you know you know. I got a small decaf coffee since I already had a big caffeine boost from Crooked Mile, and when I asked for a cup sleeve at the end she said they didn’t fit the small cups. I panicked and asked her if I could have one anyway which was probably the weirdest thing I could have done socially. She looked at me like I was kinda crazy, but I got the sleeve, so who won? The friend later asked me why I didn’t just tell her I collect them, and I had no answer for him… It was a psychic curse…

Yeah, Portland was pretty crazy, and I got home pretty tired after all of the dense travel. It isn’t something that tires me out that much anymore, but I do still feel it when I haven’t been home in a while. I returned home to one more little sleeve I forgot I picked up for dirt cheap on the internet - another collaboration, this one between POP MART and HEYTEA of the character Twinkle Twinkle! I have been saying for forever that I was sad I don’t have a Labubu cup sleeve, but maybe I should be careful what I wish for now that these floodgates are open. This sleeve is seriously cute, and it has this little piece with stars that pops out away from the cup when it’s put on. It’s also on the thinner side, since it’s probably meant for iced drinks like boba. I am very thrilled about this little piece, and in all seriousness I hope that there are more in the near future!

HEYTEA, POP MART Twinkle Twinkle Collab, 2026

Okay - quick check in moment. I’m aware that this is getting to be chocolate-chip-cookie-recipe-article length. I guess this is what happens when I can’t make a post every single month? Anyway, I humbly encourage you to take a break if you’re tired of reading the words ‘cup sleeve’ or looking at scanned in pieces of trash on some blog online. I do have a few more to go, so please read on if you’re still hanging with me. ☺︎

The week after getting back, Sean and I had to go out and run some errands for the wedding, which brought us to the mall up in Roseville. In this mall there’s a food court area, and in this food court area there’s this cool little waffles-n-coffee place. It was way too late in the day for some coffee, but they were still open, so we asked the person working there if they had a cup sleeve. She said they usually did but they were out, “or else she’d stamp one for me”. I suddenly had a Jimmy Neutron-like epiphany when I remembered I had a handful of blank generic sleeves from God knows where in my backpack, so I pulled one out and she was very happy to stamp it for me. I am delighted with this one for the memory, but I will need to go back in the future to get one that’s stamped on the proper generic. I know that’s crazy of me to say, just like everything else so far, but it does kind of bother me that it might not be the right shape or tone!

A few days after this, we had one of the first truly beautiful days here of the season, so we went for a long walk. It’s easier to go on that long walk if there’s a destination, so I did some digging and found this place with a cup sleeve I didn’t have yet called Sip of Silk that was a few miles away. I didn’t think we would actually make it there, but we ended up not only making it there but walking far beyond it and into St. Paul! We walked so far we decided to just Uber home because it wasn’t worth it to make the hike back. It was such a beautiful day, and really cool to see a new part of somewhere so close to home!

Sip of Silk was lovely as well, very college-y with a lot of study groups and laptops, and they were out of a lot of drinks which I always consider a great sign. I got a cookie butter latte that was honestly amazing, and I think their cup sleeve is beyond fabulous! My scanner unfortunately attacked this one a little as well, but trust me, in person it is so matte and beautiful, like a rich burgundy fabric.

A new plant-based restaurant opened up recently in a friend’s neighborhood, so we all went together to try it out last week! Since moving here, I have definitely developed an appreciation for Vegan food. It is so nice to just not really have to worry about what you’re eating as much, weird textures are basically absent, there’s no evil meat bits or expired dairy or eggs to worry about. I got this really yummy waffle meal and some fries there, and an iced latte with their house cashew milk that was really good (although it did leave me a little bloated…). On the way out, Sean asked for a cup sleeve for me, and I got this beauty that you can clearly see I immediately smudged with my greasy little finger on the left side. Ah well, I love this artwork, such a clean handstamp of such a cool drawing!

Part of the reason we had gone out was to see the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s popular yearly tradition, Art in Bloom, but as we got to the MIA we realized that it was even more popular than we initially thought! It was very busy inside and hard to move around, and with the wedding and one more trip coming up we weren’t looking to get sick, so we left pretty quickly after getting there. On our way out the main hallway I happened to spot that everyone was holding cups with a design I didn’t recognize on them… You guessed it, I got my magical brave hero Sean to go to the counter and ask for a cup sleeve for me again! Agra Culture is the name of this little cafe, and it looks like there used to be more locations, but according to their website this one location in the MIA is their only one now.

The last and final piece of Marpril’s cup sleeve update is this bunch of sleeves I got in a swap from a mail pal in South Korea. She sent me four cup sleeves she had collected in recent times in exchange for… Something we haven’t figured out yet! It’s a busy time of year for all of us. These are seriously beyond cool. As per usual, even with our awesome Neopets and Twinkle Twinkle collaborations, we can’t even hold a candle to the collaborations and brand deals that chains in Asia get. I mean seriously, a Snoopy pop-out?! The hugest thanks ever to this awesome person for trading with me, hopefully we’ll be able to do more swaps in the future (or at least finish this one)!

Twosome Place, Peanuts - Ooh! Dive into Summer Collab, 2025

Okay, I think I have combed through everything - that’s all of them! All in, Marpril brought in 35 new cup sleeves across time and space! I feel pretty good about that number, especially thinking back on all of the kind souls who chatted with me and helped me out. I will always be thankful that my hobby takes me into the real world, where I am reminded that human kindness still exists and surrounds all of us, even in these sometimes very bleak times.

A very special thanks to all of my good friends who saved their sleeves for me, followed me into the rain to help me look, and to my dear husband Sean for always asking at the counter when I’m too scared or tired! I feel so very blessed to have so much love and support in my life.

Until next time, which at this rate might be November - cheers, and enjoy a fun drink for me!

January

January Bridges 3/1/26 January Bridges 3/1/26

february 2026 in review

Hello to you all and happy March! May your weather app begin showing warmer days, your windows sit comfortably open for the breeze to roll in, and iced coffees magically find their way to your hands as Spring finally approaches. As a Minnesotan, I probably still have another month or two until I experience this for myself - but that’s okay, the cooler weather lends itself to more hot-drink-with-cup-sleeve types of adventures.

This month, I did not find myself in many situations to pick up sleeves in person, but there were still a few times I manufactured some opportunities. I was on a business trip in a suburban area just outside of Oklahoma City in early February, and, let me just say - the pickins were pretty slim out there. I am usually very limited by the fact that I don’t fuss with renting cars or really straying away from the location I’m working at much at all, and the only cafes nearby were either smaller coffee shops without a strong enough brand identity to tout their own sleeves, or generic we-serve-Starbucks hotel cafes.

There was, however, a Swig nearby, which is a delightful little drink place I have visited in the past just outside of Salt Lake City. The chain is mostly known for their dirty sodas, but they had a limited menu for the Valentine’s season that included a few different hot chocolates, and my interest was piqued. A good friend and I stopped in for dessert sodas one evening so I decided to shoot my shot and see if they had anything for me. I was initially disappointed that the sleeve they gave me didn’t include their Swig logo, but upon further examination I realized they had given me an eco-friendly generic I didn’t yet have, so I suppose it is still a victory in some way?

So that was cool. Shortly after returning home from Oklahoma (which had stunning weather in the 60 degree range in the beginning of February by the way, genuinely mindblowing to me), Sean and I went out for a quick errand in south Minneapolis and I did a little research for a cup sleeve-related side mission in the car ride over (as one does). I found a very cute little place called Unwind Corner Cafe a few streets over that had some promising pictures in their Google reviews, and he humored me and let me lead him on a twenty minute walk in nineteen-degree weather so I could get a hot chocolate there and see if they had any silly paper for me (yes, Sean is very nice to me).

When we got to the Unwind Corner Cafe, it was only about thirty minutes before closing and it was completely empty. I realized as we got to the register that their display cups on the counter were the dreaded double-walled kind which do not fit cup sleeves. I say dreaded here with humor - I think it’s a great thing that cafes and coffee shops are making a pivot toward more eco-friendly solutions than custom printing their sleeves, which I’m sure is not very environmentally friendly and has also just gotta be a pain to deal with for the employees sometimes. That said, I want cool stuff! So I was pretty bummed out about it, but went ahead and ordered a hot chocolate anyway since I also just wanted one. It was really good! But I also kept repeating that I was pretty bummed there was no sleeve for me because that’s what I do, I complain. Well, Sean was brave and loves me very much so he asked the employee if they had any left over in the back from when they transitioned to the double-walled cups. I was basically cowering in fear behind him when he asked, but to my genuine shock the employee emerged from the back room moments later with a cup sleeve for me! I guess you really do miss 100% of the shots you (or your husband) don’t take.

This was technically not in February, but since I didn’t write a blog post for January, I will stick it in here so it looks like I was able to do more in-person collecting this month. We went to the Mall of America to celebrate my birthday at the end of the January and stopped by at the Barnes & Noble cafe because I am OBSESSED with their peanut butter cookies and so it is, logically, a mandatory stop whenever we’re at the MOA. The cup sleeves they were handing out at the counter are a design from last year that I already have, but as we were leaving I stopped by the condiments island to double check and found a different design I didn’t have yet promoting some of their Teavana teas. I think it is so cool how the design ranks their caffeine levels, and I like that it’s less flat-graphic centric than the last few designs that the Barnes & Noble cafe has been using. It’s beautiful! The year listed on the copyright is 2024, so I’m not entirely sure if this is a new thing they’re promoting or just an older sleeve they had laying around. As always, I wish that information like this was more readily available.

I think that is all for my in-person adventures, but I did have a lot of luck with online swaps and such this month. Here are three very unique collaborative cup sleeves from boba tea shops that I was able to get my hands on! I have been a passionate Neopets fan since my childhood, and was delighted to see that they’re finally cashing in on the fact that we are older now and love fun and fruity drinks by collaborating with popular boba tea chains. Neopets is doing another collab with Gong Cha this month and I am fighting hard to get my hands on the (apparently Canadian-exclusive) sleeve from that as well! Next, I just want to say that I have long appreciated Omori for its rich artistic direction and apparently-complex narrative, although I have never gotten to actually play it (it is high on my list!!). I was blown away to see that there was an official collab with the west coast-based Sunright Tea Studio. It looks like this mini-chain does a lot of collabs, and every single one has a cute cup sleeve to go with it, so I have a lot of work to do! Lastly - while I am not terribly involved in the K-Pop world at all, I know the fandom’s cup sleeve community is pretty passionate and there are a lot of collab sleeves featuring all of their little guys. I think the one I got is pretty cool, even if I don’t know much about the group on it!

My final big splash for this month is that I had a devious little idea that is actually more of a devious big idea. I run my own art business and have, in the past, requested sample packs from printing companies to evaluate quality before spending money on an order. These sample packs range from something like two stickers in an envelope to a whole bubble mailer of different varieties of merchandise, and I suddenly started wondering if the cup sleeve printing companies had something like that - and y’all, they totally do! I was able to find two different companies that were willing to send me samples, completely cost free. And I don’t want to brag, but this was kind of the best idea I’ve ever had!

The first company, Good Start Packaging, sent me a box (of mostly tissue paper) with four sleeves from their previous client work, plus two Your-Logo-Here generics with some (honestly really helpful if I was actually ordering customs from them) specs and font size recommendations printed on them. I was actually so thrilled that the samples they sent me are from real businesses they worked with - while I have a bit of homework to do on the very vague Aria sleeve to determine where it’s actually from, it’s crazy that I was able to get such nice sleeves so easily and at no cost. The Coraline one from the collaboration with Stumptown Coffee Roasters in particular is just, for lack of better words, fucking awesome. Also, the sleeve for the Nest Kitchen & Cafe is from a cafe in New Hampshire that appears to no longer be in business, so I literally could not have gotten it anywhere else (unless someone randomly hoarded one and happens to find out about me and sends it to me, which seems crazy).

The Nest Kitchen & Cafe, 2025 (no longer in business)

The other company that I ordered samples from, Your Brand Cafe, approached things a little differently. They do it all, so they have kind of made up their own brand as though they’re a coffee shop themselves and use their own design logo all over everything, which is honestly a pretty cool solution for advertising while sending out marketing samples. Their box also included stuff beyond just cup sleeves, including hot and cold cups and lids. I’m sure we will use these all over the house for art supply and trinket storage! But most importantly, the fact that they use their own logos on everything gives all of their sleeves a very specific exclusivity that is hard to describe. I probably shouldn’t be this excited about these - I’m not like Coraline x Stumptown collab excited, but I’m definitely into the sleeves they sent. In a very different way from the Good Start Packaging sleeves, these are also an example of something I couldn’t get anywhere else!

And with that, there’s my February report! In total, I collected 16 sleeves this month, which is pretty good. It does feel like cheating that 10 of them came from sample packs, but I’m still going to count it because I made up this whole site and I don’t care. In March, I have a business trip to Los Angeles that I’m hoping I can get something from, and I hope to have secured some kind of mail swap for the Neopets x Gong Cha collab sleeve by then. Other than that, you’ll be just as surprised as me to see what happens!

Until next time, stay safe & warm and enjoy a fun drink for me!

January