Ya'll Come Back Now

We love it when we have repeater custom orders. It makes us feel like a distant relative or family friend that gets to catch up every so often and hear what's happening in our clients' lives. More often than not it's a birthday milestone or a new baby that we get to celebrate and it makes us feel privileged to be called to do it time and time again for them.

We hit a new record this past week with a repeat customer. It was the third time we were creating a baby shower invitation for her. But what made it even more special was that the baby shower was for herself! The client's mom was helping with the party details, but Tracie wanted to make sure she we created the invitations. So of course we had to pull out the big guns to make sure her invitation was above and beyond her expectations.

We were told the baby's nursery had creams and browns with touches of pink and we could let our imaginations run wild with the design. The result was this little ditty- girly, graphic flowers with a lovely fabric and stitching detail at the bottom of the invite:

 

We had originally thought of using pink seersucker fabric for the bottom portion of the card, but were so glad we decided to switch it up last minute for the cream & pink stripe pictured above. It made the design feel a tad more classic and refined.  

We think Tracie will be pleased with the finished product. (If she hasn't seen the spoiler alert picture on Facebook already. Sorry Tracie!)

Is this thing on?: SFIGF Snail Mailers

So, we're plugging our little hands and minds away getting ready for our first show at the San Francisco International Gift Fair in a few weeks. You'll remember when we first got bitten by the trade show bug in May, only then we weren't showing, just ogling. Well, the time is almost here for us to become official trade show exhibitionists—just me and Lis, wearing nothing but our hearts on our sleeves and a pretty paper line to cover our vulnerable designer bits. Hope they like what they see!

In the midst of printing samples and catalogs and making crucial decisions on our booth decor that will clearly make or break our little company's future, we're getting ready to send out some mailers that will surely bring the crowds flocking to our little booth #1929 at the Moscone Center.
We wanted something that would stand out from other mailers, so of course we went balls-to-the-wall with our letterpressed Farewell pattern in our signature orange. This design will be the same cover to our catalog (more on those soon), an idea that stems from both a strong integrated marketing strategy and a skimptastic mailer budget. We flat-printed the show details and invited people to stop by and say hi, then stitched the printouts to our letterpressed orange backings. Sure, we would have liked to have letterpressed the whole thing, but you gotta know your limits, right?
It's a little scary and a lot exciting to put ourselves out there like this. Hopefully, lots of people will check the "yes" box and come over to check out our new work. Speaking of, there will be lots of that to show you guys soon, too. Stay tuned!

} jp-c

Spring Fever

These last few weeks in Atlanta have finally begun to show signs of spring. The days are getting longer, chirping birds are waking me in the morning, and our neighbors are planting pansies in their yards. For those of you living up north, you are probably cursing me right now for even mentioning such things. But as a northern transplant, I'm still amazed every year how early spring shows up in the South and I couldn't be happier about it.

It's also around this time of year that Jen and I are reminded what spring is really about–BABIES. Baby showers, baby announcements, babies' birthdays... If it's about a little one, we are working on it right now. This past week we created a baby shower invitation for a dear friend of ours, who was hosting a couples shower. In typical FP style we used fun fabrics and a new stitch to create an invitation that we thought really captured the essence of spring.







Be on the look out for more FP baby stationery goodness in the next few weeks ANNND stay tuned for a big announcement coming soon!

~LGT

Wedding Invitations: Old Fashioned Lemonade

When Caroline and Matt came to us with this heart-warming theme for their spring wedding in Charleston, we gushed—literally, like a bushel of fresh-squeezed lemons. They were pretty much the dream couple to work with, letting us run with the color scheme of pale yellow with navy accents to do whatever our puckered hearts desired. And the ideas just started pouring out. Some of the inspiration for their custom suite:

found via pinterest

{ See the full board of inspired goodies here. }

Now, this wasn't our first rodeo on the Southeastern seaboard, you'll recall Lisa and Justin's own Savannah-nanza. But this is our first Chucktown invitation, and we were excited to work with a new, lovely color scheme. (Our new credo: no.more.green.) On our list for this charmingly Southern affair there were three must-haves: soft seersucker. heavenly florals. faux bois (Lisa's newfound fave...stay tuned for more on the matter).

We served up Caroline and Matt a pretty little letterpressed diddy that mixed a modern peony design and a classically elegant type treatment. Then we finished it off with a tall glass of pale yellow seersucker laced with a navy stitched border, all given that extra sweet touch with a faux bois bellyband.

Here's a look at the final pieces!

Delish. I don't know about you, but I can't wait to see the final event pics. Till then, a sweet cheers to you all!

} jp-c

Baby Shower Invitations: Eyelet Fever

There must be something in the water, folks. We’ve got a lot of clients that are bringing some cutie pies into our life. People are straight up burning with the fever de bebe around here. And of course, as two young, newly(ish, for me at least) married gals, what do friends having babies makes us want to do?...

Make pretty paper, of course! (What'd you think we'd say?)

For her sister-in-law’s upcoming baby shower, our client Alana wanted an invitation that celebrated the girliest of girlie. {catch the sneak peek from last week here.} Well, we pulled out all the pink lacy stops for mom-to-be Nickole and Baby Girl Beseau and incorporated some pretty eyelet fabric.

We’ve been, ahem, eying the lovely ways the lacy fabric is used a lot lately, and there are so many things that eyelet fabric can lady up for just the right delicate touch.

{ found via: pillow, apron, sundress, curtains, necklace, buttons }

We’d been saving our own cut of eyelet fabric that we found ages ago for just the right piece, and it went perfectly with Alana’s girlie theme.

Throw in a cute image of the birds from Baby Girl Beseau’s nursery bedding, matched with a zigzag stitch, it was just the antique chic look Alana was looking for.

As you can see, we weren’t shy about the feminine color palette, and adopted a mix of pale pink and green, accented with a nice, vibrant pink (one might even liken it to Honeysuckle, Pantone’s new pick for 2011 Color of the Year).

And there you have it, some baby shower love to get all the ladies excited for our club’s newest member!

} jp-c

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!

New work: Baby Shower Invites

Another baby shower! This was a fun invite to create since the mom-to-be doesn't know if she's having a baby boy or girl. Green and yellow were the colors chosen by our client, but we wanted to add a unique twist to the pieces, so we used chocolate brown accents and stitching. The mom is a very classy lady and has a great sense of humor, so the damask pattern combined with the "Baby Whitaker" line made this invite perfect for the occasion.

Fun little stitching details

Baby Love

We absolutely love this new baby shower invitation we made for a dear and near friend of ours. She wanted something with two little birds in the color scheme of chocolate brown and pink. We couldn't have been happier with the results and our client loved them too!