Free Shopify theme · Books & Education · Editorial
Sorrel & Blotter
A fern green storefront for a two teacher press in Ashland, Wisconsin that builds flower presses and nature study lessons for home and classroom.
Published September 28, 2026. Built from a brief, no account needed to download.
The brief this store was built from
Sorrel & Blotter is run by two retired science teachers in a one room schoolhouse outside Ashland, Wisconsin. Marit cuts and drills the presses from ash boards in the old cloakroom, and Joel writes the twelve week nature study lesson set folded inside each one. Every press is sanded by hand, fitted with solid brass hardware and packed with twenty sheets of cotton blotting paper. Most orders go to homeschool families and teachers buying one press per table.
- Product
- Schoolroom Flower Press, $46
- About it
- A nine inch square flower press in solid ash with four brass wing nuts, twenty sheets of cotton blotting paper and the twelve week lesson set folded inside. It presses a fern flat in about ten days and is sized to fit a child's backpack.
- Brand facts
- Each press ships with a twelve week nature study lesson set written by a former science teacher. Boards are northern ash from a sawmill in Bayfield County with solid brass wing nuts. Twenty sheets of cotton blotting paper come in every press, and refills are sold by the hundred.
- Style
- Editorial. Editorial serif — italic headings, refined typography
Who this theme is for
A small educational publisher or kit maker with a short catalog: nature study kits, workbooks, lesson sets, science tools, anything a parent or teacher buys after reading what is inside. The Editorial style sets long product descriptions in a serif that reads like a book page, so a lesson plan or a table of contents does not feel squeezed into a shop layout. It suits a store that sells one main kit with refills and a few add ons, bought by homeschool families and classroom teachers who compare the contents before they compare the price.
What was decided in the brief
The style is Editorial on the green variant, because a nature study shop should feel like a field notebook rather than a toy aisle. Fern green carries the headings and buttons and rust red is held back for the price and the add to cart, the same two colours as a pressed fern and a maple leaf. The three brand facts sit as separate lines under the hero because a teacher checks three things in turn: what does it teach, what is it made of, and what do I reorder. The page stays on warm off white so oatmeal blotting paper and pale ash read as themselves.
What is in the ZIP
- A single-product homepage: hero, trust strip, benefits, how-to-use or specs, reviews, final call to action.
- The whole store shell: product, collection, cart, search and 404 templates, header, footer, announcement bar.
- Valid Shopify 2.0 sections with schema, so every line of text is editable in the Shopify editor.
- The photos you see in the preview, ready to swap for your own.
Questions
- Is this Shopify theme really free to download?
- Yes. You get a complete Shopify 2.0 theme ZIP and no account is needed. In your Shopify admin open Online Store, then Themes, then Add theme, then Upload zip file.
- I sell to schools. Can I show what is inside the kit?
- Yes. Put the contents in the product description as a short list, and add a collapsible row on the product page for grade range and one for what is included. Teachers read those before the price.
- Can I change the green and rust to my own colours?
- Yes. The palette is five settings in the theme editor. Change the primary and the buttons, the header, the links and the section rules all follow it, because no colour is hardcoded in the CSS.
