Royal Jewels

The engagement of Prince William and Kate Middleton has been all over the news. And let's face it, we don't really care about the proposal story or how their relationship blossomed over the last 9 years. We ladies only care about one thing when it comes to this fairy tale wedding - that amazingly spectacular, blue sapphire engagement ring. Words cannot describe how gorgeous that 13 karat sapphire is. And the fact that Princess Di picked it out herself back in 1986 (when lord knows what kind of engagement ring was "en vogue" then) makes it all the more poignant.


To commemorate the engagement of the royal couple, (and that unbelievable jewel Kate Middelton is now wearing on her ring finger) we thought we'd show you a wedding suite that has similar "royal" qualities to it. We created the invitation for a couple who were married on New Year's Eve. The wedding was a black-tie affair at a beautiful antebellum house in Virginia. To create and upscale feel for the event, we added our own jewels to the invites.












Congrats William and Kate. Here's to a beautiful royal wedding. If you need some invitations to the grandiose affair you know where to reach us ;)

Wrap It Up

It seems the holiday shopping season has gotten a head start this year. Christmas trees, outdoor lights and holiday cards have been in stores for a good month now. We normally don't start thinking of the holidays until after Thanksgiving, but we couldn't help but get into the Christmas spirit when we stepped into the Container Store the other day. **Just a little side note: Jen and I LOVE the Container Store. We could spend hours in there. We could probably live there. That's how much we heart that store.** So it was no surprise that when we saw their holiday wrapping paper we absolutely melted.

The colors and cheerful and fun. The patterns are sleek and modern without being too overdone. As usual, the Container Store did not let us down. Here are a few quick shots of some of our favorite rolls:

Look how cute the boxes are, too! Candy Cane nirvana.

And this little box is ridiculous! It's actually a tin jar that looks like a log. What a manly way to wrap a gift.

We were excited to see that many of their color schemes and patterns were ones we used on our holiday cards this year:

So if you want to get a jump on your holiday shopping, go to the Container Store and get some of their fun gift wrap. Your presents will be the cutest gifts under the tree. And don't forget to send out your holiday cards early. Our designs on Etsy are ready for mailing!

Inspiration Monday: crochet flowers

My sister is an avid knitter. She can be seen with knitting needles and yarn just about anywhere. A perfect example is this picture of her watching the Steelers game at a bar near my house. (Yes, she's drinking beer and knitting.)

So when we were concepting designs a while back, we thought it would be interesting to add something a little more tactile to our cards. We had seen crocheted flowers on clothes, bags, scarves and other items...








But we have never seen a really cute, simple card with a crocheted flower on it. So, here are the cards we created! We letterpressed each card then took the flowers my sister was kind enough to mail to us and hand- stitched the flowers to each one.







Eventually Jen and I need to learn to crochet. (For those of you who would like to learn how to crochet a flower, here is a really helpful link I found). My sister was kind enough to supply the flowers for this batch of cards, but I'm not sure she'll be so willing for the next time, especially since our phone conversation went something like this:

"Can you crochet some flowers for our new letterpress cards?"
"Sure."
"Can you crochet, like, 100 for us by this weekend?"(I had called her that Tuesday night.)

I should probably send her a thank you card...

Inspiration Monday: Ruff Translation

The thing I feel like people ask most of our work is, 'How did you guys ever think of that?" I'm compelled to quote the ever-wise Lucas from one of my all time fave movies, Empire Records: "Who know where thoughts come from. They just appear."

It's true. Like pure kismet, ideas do just appear. Unless they don't. And that's when we hop online to our trusty design blogs for some distraction and, perchance, some inspiration. Kis...net. (Yes. I just did that.)

One of our latest series of cards was born of just such fortunate blog-wandering happenstance. Our design idols at Apartment Therapy had some lovely things to say about adding ruffles to your home. We fell in love with this chair from Aiveen Daly.

Now, this isn't the first time we've found divinity in fabric, but it was less about the fabric itself and more about the way it's been used. The ruffles add such an unexpected touch to a classic chair!

And, so, we asked ourselves, could we be so lucky that fabric ruffles could have the same awesomizing effect on a set of letterpressed thank you cards? More wisdom from Empire Records, and we knew we were guided by a force muck greater than luck. We were sitting on top of a good ole fashioned good idea!
Mixing solid and patterned fabrics with different colored thread and ink made for an eclectic little batch of fun notes.

Throw in some colorful envelopes, and there you have it, folks--some tactile, gratitudinal note cards that would hopefully make anyone's day. Would it be totally ridiculous to send a thank you note to the blogger gods for inspiring us with such a rad thank you note?

} jp-c

email us at info@farewellpaperie.com if you're interested in purchasing some ruffle cards of your own. they'll also be up on etsy very soon!

Fall Flop

The weather in Atlanta has been HOT. Normally I really enjoy warm weather, but 85 degrees in the middle of October is not pleasant, even for me. Since I'm originally from Pittsburgh, I start missing the cool weather around this time of year. The leaves are supposed to be changing. I should be wearing sweaters with leggings and cute riding boots. I want to smell leaves burning and fireplaces... It was a "balmy" 60 degrees this morning and I could still feel the humidity in the air when I walked out to my car this morning. Needless to say, I am OVER summer.

This past weekend Jen and I had a lovely event at Urban Cottage to showcase some of our new letterpressed cards. It was called "Fall Love", but it felt nothing like fall. It was, again, at least 85 degrees and all the vendors in the show were sweltering. As I was sitting there, wiping the sweat from the pits of my legs (you know, that area behind your knee) and fanning myself with one of our cards, I thought to myself, "If it can't feel like fall here, I'll at least do something fall-oriented to suffice my craving for all things autumnal." (Well, I really didn't think that, but I did call Justin to see if he was willing to go to North GA the next day to find some fall activities. Of course he complied.)

.... Enter the Corn Maze.
So, I thought it would be super fun to go through this corn maze in Cleveland, GA. The website brags that it's the largest corn maze in GA , so it had to be good, right? After an hour-long car ride my anticipation was building. I couldn't wait to see this awesome maze. Pulling up to the farm, my hopes began to sink. Country music was blaring from a loudspeaker near the parking lot (aka: a field next door) and the owners (or maybe friends/relatives of the farmers?) were sitting in lawn chairs right beside the opening of the maze staring at everyone that was going into the corn. Granted, there weren't tons of participants at this point in the day, being that it was 4pm on Sunday AND it was at least 90 degrees, but there were some kids running in and out of the stalks of corn, so we thought it couldn't be that bad. At the entrance Justin and I were handed this:


And were told to find all the checkpoints in the maze. THAT WAS IT. That was the game. You were supposed to trudge around dead corn and look for checkpoints 1-7 to win.... NOTHING. I thought this maze was going to be massive. I thought we were going to get lost in all this luscious, green corn and after milling around for an hour we'd emerge on the other side of the corn like in Field Of Dreams and feeling victorious.

Let's just say we were in the maze for 10 minutes. Between the blazing sun, the phony paths that other people made through the middle of the maze, and the outrageously loud country music we gave up. I didn't even use my map to get out of it! I felt defeated and deflated. My fall fun was a huge flop. The car ride home was quiet. I must admit, I was pouting and cursing the stupid south for their hot weather and country music. "If we were in Pennsylvania...." I kept arguing. But we weren't.

The "view" as you approached the maze

Supposedly you could see the maze from this high view point, but it just looks like corn to me.

Trying to make light of the situation...

As we are leaving the mountains, Justin decided to pull over and check out one of the roadside stands that advertises the typical produce,trinkets and BBQ. I hesitantly got out of the car and walked around the grounds with arms folded and a frown on my face. I saw bushels of apples, some lawn ornaments and planters full of mums. I walked around the corner and spotted pumpkins... Then I saw squash... and apple cider.... and jellies and jams... I went inside the store and there were TONS and TONS of canned fruits, homemade breads and apple fritters! NO BODY makes apple fritters down here! I began to run around the store and went into a shopping frenzy of "pumpkin-this" and "apple-that". This was the Fall I was looking for.

One of the many rooms in the little roadside stand we stopped at
on the way home. Jellies, jams, honey and dressings as far as the eye could see.

Sixty dollars later and a car full of pumpkins, we head home. I am quietly content and glad to have found such a cool place in my hour of desperation. Now if only the cool weather will follow suit.

-LGT

Fall Love at Urban Cottage

Well, it's been a hectic summer. Weddings, honeymoons, trips to San Fran, cars being stolen, computers breaking, moving to a new place, turning 30... you see where I'm going with this. Somehow, though, amongst all the madness, Jen and I have still managed to stay busy. Not only have we been working our booties off on our custom work, but we have been working on our retail lines as well! To help kick off our retail line, we are going to be at Urban Cottage's Fall boutique show. It starts October 8th and goes through the weekend. So if you're in Atlanta and have some time to browse the Highland shops, stop by Urban Cottage to see our new designs. It starts at 6pm on Friday.

Hand Did

There's nothing quite like a hand-painted sign. The craft and precision it takes to actually paint perfect letters onto the side of a building and make it look like it was some kind of decal or stencil amazes me. It wasn't until I was in design school that I realized I had a love for this art form. A teacher of mine had us travel around Atlanta and take pictures of hand-painted signs. At the time I thought it was pointless and unnerving, since I had just moved to the city and wasn't sure of my bearings, let alone which neighborhoods to visit where I wouldn't have the potential of being robbed or car-jacked. (I suppose I was a bit more skittish back then). But after meandering around the city for an hour or two, I realized how much of this signage was actually out there and how much I really enjoyed looking for it. Growing up in suburbia everything was new and plastic and neon, but in the city, everything seemed more raw, imperfect and dirty. I was hooked. I have no clue what I did with those original pictures. I'm sure they are sitting on a hard drive somewhere, never to be viewed again. But ever since that day, I've taken to looking for old signage and the south has some of the best signs out there. Here are some old-school signs:

Can you believe how amazed I was when I was in Mexico and saw that everything was hand-painted! It was beautiful. Here are some signs from my honeymoon in May :

Yes, this truck was hand painted. I wish my zoom would have worked better to see the brush strokes!

A hand-painted street sign.

This was on the beach, so people wouldn't step on the sea turtle nests.

I'd like to think that all of these tid-bits of inspiration seep into my and Jen's brain and trickle out when it comes time to create new invitations. So, you can imagine how excited we were when our newest client asked for a southern twist to her rehearsal dinner invitations, even though she and her fiance now live in Australia. The bride is originally from Florida and they are getting married near her home town in October. Even though the groom's family is from England, they elected to have a southern buffet for the rehearsal dinner. (which was a nice gesture, if you ask me, since English food really isn't on my top list of fav ethnic foods.) We created a few options to emphasize the beachy aspect of the dinner location, but were really happy when the bride and groom chose the one option that really stood out in our minds. Perhaps I was subconsciously working while I was on my honeymoon, taking in all the beautiful signs. Or I was digging into my design past to recreate what started my sign obsession. Either way, we think it turned out to be a pretty sweet design.