I love the idea of a wine and cheese party for a bridal shower. I may or may not eat cheese and crackers for actual meals and well, we all know my love for wine... it may not get any better than this.
With this invitation, I wanted to play with a different layout and do something modern and fun, and I am pretty sure I achieved it. I bet I got some smiles when these came in the mail!
Throwing your own wine and cheese shower? Check out these invitations and many others in my shop!
Erin Sander, from Erin Sander Design, is an amazingly talented interior designer here in Dallas and not surprisingly designed a stunning nursery for her son, Ryan.
Wow! (I bet there's no question what she does when you walk into her home!) I love the mix of patterns and those blue drawer pulls. She wanted the birth announcements to be inspired by the nursery and I was excited to work with some bold colors and unique patterns.
I designed 2 concepts for her and I didn't want to take the nursery connection too literally. If you've seen the nursery, you'll know that I was inspired by it, but I wanted it to stand alone as a birth announcement that someone would love without having seen it.
Usually, I am partial to a certain design and I cross my fingers and hope they choose my favorite, but in this case, I loved both so much that I didn't know how to choose. Good thing that's not part of my job description. After a little pattern change, we had the final, adorable, product.
Have you ever seen a fuller head of hair? So cute! Let's hope that stays with him his entire life!
I had lunch with a Dallas wedding planner a few weeks ago (the lovely Stefanie Miles of Lavender Joy Weddings), and we talked about taking the time to establish your brand. We talked about the months we spent on our branding and websites and how during that time, it’s easy to compare yourself to everyone else while you are working just to get started. This time is hard, but in the end, it is so worth the wait. If you are in this phase… just know that it does eventually come together, and it’s worth preparing for success instead of just rushing into it, hoping you can get there quicker. Things have been going really well since my website launched, and lately, I’ve had this overwhelming sense of relief. Relief, that what I started out to do 9 months ago is finally done. Relief, that I am finally reaping the benefits of having done the work FIRST. Relief, that someone actually does want to buy my invitations. (Because that worry was always there until several someones did actually want to buy them.)
I quit my job last November and while I had a few design ideas for my collection, I was essentially starting from scratch with that part of my business. My experience over the past few years has allowed me to learn what I like, what I want to offer, and what I want my focus to be, but I had to establish a consistency throughout my business. Processes, policies, prices, contracts, samples… then finalizing, choosing, printing, photographing. It took time! Also, the control wasn’t always in my hands and it was challenging to not know that everything was going to happen in the time I wanted it to. Sometimes it felt like I would be ‘preparing’ forever! But I chose to finish everything before I would proceed with anything else, and so I kept going.
That meant not advertising, not promoting myself, and not booking brides. Now, weddings, up until this point, have been just a small part of my business. I design for Minted, I design custom designs and stationery, but it’s weddings that I have decided to focus on and the first few months of the year, I didn't book a single wedding. As a whole, my business was actually really profitable while I was working on my site, but I knew that the profits weren't coming from brides and I would compare myself to other wedding stationers… that designer seems to be booking a ton of weddings, she got asked to this, they were featured there, they seem to have a really successful business, more successful than mine…. Doesn't it always LOOK like everyone has it all together? Insecurities about what I was trying to do, the time I was taking to do it and the progress that I was making only magnified how well I thought everyone else was doing. It really made me worry whether what I was doing was the right thing.
Now that I am done and am finally able to do all the things that I was waiting on, it's such a relief to know it was the absolutely the right thing to do. It’s totally okay to choose this route, even while you feel like everyone else is up and running and seems to be passing you by. Sometimes the right thing is to jump in, but sometimes it’s all the hard work and preparation that allows you to be ready for when the opportunities start to come your way.
The new site is live! I've never worked harder creating this wedding collection and website and I am so very very happy!
A little credit, where credit is due... The website is by Cathy Olson, from Love Inspired. The photos of the wedding collection are by Lindsey + Beto Photography, who made the website perfect with their gorgeous photographs. Spiffying up my invitation suites is the lovely calligraphy of Abigail Luby, of Chips & Salsa Designs. And if you make it to my shop and check out the Save the Dates, those engagement photographs are by Stacy Reeves Photography, who generously shared her images to compliment my designs.
But mostly I need to give some credit to my husband. He probably knows more about paper, printing, envelopes, and the many ways one can organize an invitation website. He has been patiently listening to me discuss every detail of this ENTIRE process since November.... that's support people!
Here are some custom invitations that I did for a little boy's sports theme birthday party. So far, he loves any and all sports, so his mom wanted to incorporate them all.
While I tend to lean towards softer colors, I enjoyed using bold colors for a change...
