It amazes me when I come back to this blog and realize that it's been almost a year since I've posted anything. I am going to try to put stuff up more often.

We have been working on Halloween invitations lately and have just released them to the internet vendors. Here are a couple of samples.

My co-designer, Laura, painted the elegantly spooky one based on her view of the catacombs of Paris. It's one of my new favs!

I've also gone "girly" with our invitations. I have been working on all kinds of girls - graduation, holiday and Halloween. Each of our "girl" invites is available as a blonde, brunette, redhead or African-American. Some of them are also offered with an Asian option.

Each of our Halloween invitations also has a coordinating response card and 2.5 inch square label. Hope you enjoy!

Thanks to our vendors!

Want to win a free custom stamper? Just go to Invitation Consultants Blog and follow the simple and quick directions and you might win one for yourself.

Looking for savings on your holiday invitations? I received this email yesterday from Fine Stationery with LOTS of our cards represented! (Top left corner - "Welcome to Vegas"; Directly under that one - "Holiday Glow"; Bottom right corner - "Holiday Loops"; Directly above that one - "Blue Menorrah")

If you love stationery, look on your favorite sites for email updates. Most sites send out email periodically letting you know what's on sale or what's really hot.

And speaking of really hot - if you are looking for Halloween invitations, look no further than Invitation Box. They have all of the hottest Halloween cards (ours, of course!) with matching stampers and return address labels. And don't forget, the return address labels can be used for treat bags for the kids or for your friends and co-workers.

Thanks to all of our vendors who work so hard at getting our products out there in the world. We really appreciate all your hard work!

And if you have been wondering why I haven't blogged much lateley, it's because I have been working so hard at getting our products out there into the world for the holiday season!

Happy weekend everyone.

Halloween Party Supplies

The catalogs with Halloween goodies have started arriving at my door and I'm ready for the season. There are just so many great ideas out there for Halloween decorating that I don't know where to start (well, actually I started making elixir and potion labels this weekend - email me if you'd like a jpg to create your own "potion cabinet")

This Halloween invite is perfect for a middle of the road Halloween party - not too cutesy and not too spooky. But you could go either way with it if you wanted to. So I pulled out a few of my favorite items from the catalogs to go with the invite.

Enjoy!


For those of you who are considering a Halloween party this year, I say "GO FOR IT!" Halloween is on a Friday night and what better time to have a ghostly time. Today, I have created an inspiration board with lots of links to make your home spooktacular.

Row 1: a. Send an invitation with silhouettes of scary pumpkins and a tree on the left side of the card. A faded orange damask design adorns the orange background.
b. Wrap your bottles with medical gauze and label them. This great idea is courtesy of www.marthastewart.com
c. Carve up a ghoulish table setting - also from www.marthastewart.com

Row 2: a. This entire tableau is available for purchase from Grandin Road.
b. These stylish owls will grace your table. Available at Ballard Designs.
c. Paint an old frame black and set up a photography spot in your home.

Row 3: a. Candy buffets are all the rage now and what better time to have one than the most popular candy day of the year - Halloween!
b. Love these! I'm thinking about picking up a few for my front yard. Or if I'm feeling really crafty, I may try to make some out of foam. These are available from Grandin Road.
c. Carve up some spooky and stylish pumpkins for the front door.
d. Use these goblets with a little dry ice for a spectacular display. Available at Grandin Road.

Row 4: a. One more great display from Grandin Road - don't you just love this guy. It makes me wish I had a window seat in my home!
b. This one is a great and inexpensive one - drip som red candle wax on a white taper and voila - creepy candles! Thanks again to www.marthastewart.com
c. One more quick and easy trick from Martha Stewart - luminaries with a haunting feel. This one says "I'd turn back if I were you." but you could always use another such as "I'll get you my little pretty."

Oh! I almost forgot! These invitations also come with a matching stamper and matching return address labels.

A Fall Party/Thanksgiving

This entry is dedicated to my mom, who does Thanksgiving dinner for 24 at her home every year and she decorates to the nines and she loves every minute of it. Last year, my husband violated all of my mom's decorating rules by choosing a plate from one table and then sitting down at another table (each table is decorated differently and the rule is that you keep your plate at the table it belongs to!) My cousins and I snickered all through the meal, waiting for Mom to notice. However, since my husband is my mom's favorite (read: only) son-in-law and he's the turkey cooker, she let it slide. If it had been me, I'd have been dead meat (Thanksgiving pun intended)! I appreciated his disregard for the rules since he changed seats to sit beside me!



If you are interested in either of these cards or would like to see the other cards we have for the fall season, click here.

Halloween Invitation with Coordinating Personalized Self-Inking Stamper

If you are looking for a coordinated look with your Halloween invitations and treats, take a look at our Batty Brackets invitation and Bat Self-Inking Stamper. The opportunities for using a Halloween stamp are only limited to your imagination. Here, I've shown using the stamp as a return address, to make tags for treat boxes and to create labels for candy bar wrappers. You could make tags for your child's treat bags to take to school or if you have a small number of trick or treaters, why not put candy in a cellophane bag and tie up with a cute and crafty punched tag. If you think of other ideas to stamp, post a comment and let me know.

If you are interested in this card or would like to see other options we have for Halloween, click here.

If you really like coordinating items, then you will love our soon-to-be-released holiday line. We are including coordinating envelope liners, matching/coordinating self-inking stampers and matching return address labels for most of our new items. (And don't let anyone give you grief for insisting that your file folders coordinate with your other office decor or that all your wrapping paper coordinate under the tree - I understand the compulsion and I salute you!)

Halloween Party for the Kids

Children's parties are always so much fun. My daughter is 12 (going on 25) and she is WAY too cool now to have what she calls a kiddie party and I call a whole bunch of cute! I always like items that worked on different levels like the witches hats on the right. Just buy individual frosting in orange, green and purple, buys some candy for decorations, make or buy some chocolate cookies and buy some chocolate ice cream cones and you have both a craft and a snack.

For older children (the ones you can trust with the scissors), you can buy lots of large black paper and they can make the bats and decorate your foyer.

And my daughter may be way too cool for a kiddie Halloween party but she's still all about bobbing for apples. I on the other hand, prefer my Halloween apples candied with the hard red coating.

If you are interested in this card or would like to see other options we have for Halloween, click here.

A Halloween Party for the Adults

Way back when (for me that was the late 80's), I shared a condo with two other single girls. We wanted to live in Fourth Ward (uptown Charlotte, NC - not downtown!) and when we saw the ad for a condo with views of the park we were sold sight unseen. Upon arriving at the condo, we loved it. It was large and open and great for entertaining (something we did alot of). The "park" however, turned out to be a cemetary with graves dating from the 1770's to the 1850's. When I think of an upscale adult Halloween party, I can envision our condo overlooking the graveyard as the perfect site!

For more information about this invitation or any of our other Halloween cards, click here.


This was our "view of the park." It wasn't a bad view even if it was a cemetary!

Holiday Part 2

So here are some more of the Halloween/Thanksgiving invites that we are presenting this year. I really enjoyed working on Halloween designs. The colors are vibrant and fun and I've always been fond of orange. Hope you like them!

Holiday Part 1

Okay, so I've been working like a maniac for months now and ignoring my blog. And today is no different than the last 100 work days . . . there is production work to do, design work to do and administrative work to do. But I am going to take the time to blog because there is always other stuff to do and it will always be there waiting for me.

So today I am going to start showing off the new Holiday designs. In the interest of full disclosure, some of these designs were done by my co-worker, Jen. We really work as a team and you probably won't be able to tell which ones are hers and which ones are mine. And sometimes, we both worked on a card at different times.

I will begin the Holiday display with Halloween invites. We've never really done Halloween before so I am interested to see how this goes. Halloween is on a Friday night this year which translates to two things . . . the obvious is that there will be more Halloween parties (start planning yours now!) and the other is that there will be rehearsal dinners taking place on Halloween. In honor of that, I tried to design some invites that were elegant and yet Halloween-ish at the same time. Let me know what you think!