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!

Independence Day in my family means heading to the mountains of North Carolina for a family get together at my Aunt 'Nette and Uncle Davy's home. They have a home on a golf course and we all drag chairs out onto the tee box and watch the fireworks that night. This photo is one of my favorite family photos. My grandmother (in the center with the light blue shirt) and my father (on the right with a red shirt) both recently passed away so this photo is especially dear to me even if I no longer look anything like I do in this photo (I'm the one on the front row with the short brown hair).

July 4th Invitations

My blogging career has been sporadic at best. I get so busy at work that I forget to blog and my life at home has been a roller coaster ride for the last 6 months. I am, once again, trying to get back to blogging. It always helps when I have new products that I am excited about.

We have just released a new group of invitations for the summer so I have started with a July 4th patriotic themed inspiration board for your enjoyment. The beautiful children in the hammock are my nephew, Will and my daughter Aubrey from Independence Day 2004. My how they grow so quickly!

The invitation, called "Fireworks at Night" can be purchased from Invitation Box, by clicking here.

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!)

Just a quickie post to give a shout out to Invitation Consultants for their recent blog entry promoting the oh-so-hip MP3 invitation. On a personal note, my daughter requested these invites for her upcoming birthday party.

To see the entire article, click here.

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.

My Favorite Things - Fonts

Okay, I will admit it . . . I am crazy about typefaces. I have more than 10,000 and I add more all the time. For those of you who are having issues managing alot of fonts, look into Suitcase. This entry is about the typefaces that deserve to be in my personal Wall of Fame. Shown above are the all stars (for now - they change all the time). Reading from left to right, top to bottom are in no particular order:

1. Burgues . . . when you need to say it with a flourish. This typeface is just fabulously decadent and extravagant.
Alejandro Paul’s ode to 19th-century American calligrapher Louis Madarasz will sweep you away.

2. Stephanie Marie . . . A lively, brush-style script font, named after a dear friend of the designer. This one is a favorite of Susan's (boss/fearless art director). Created by Jukebox.

3. Bauer Bodoni . . . Based on designs by Giambattista Bodoni (Italy 1740-1813), an Italian punchcutter, typefounder and printer who led in the development of the letterform we call ‘modern or didone, in the last years of the eighteenth century. Jen, my office-mate turned me on to this one again. I love the clean lines and extremes of the thin and thick parts.

4. Helvetica Neue . . . If I had to pick just one, this would be it. My personal faves are 25 and 43. Typography just doesn't get any better than this. I don't know of any other font that has a documentary about it. You can download the whole film to your ipod - go to http://www.helveticafilm.com/ for more information.

5. Ministry Script . . . Alejandro Paul designed Ministry Script to be “A time capsule that marks both the American ad art of the 1920s, and the current new-millennium acrobatics of digital type.” The idea was to make as many possible variants of each letter as he could possibly handle. Ole Alejandro is my hero! I love fonts with alternate characters!

6. Feel Script . . . Current script favorite by Alejandro also. See my previous blog regarding Feel love.

7. Mrs. Eaves . . . Here's a little bit of typography trivia for today (as if this entire entry isn't) - This typeface is named after Sarah Eaves, the woman who became John Baskerville’s wife. As Baskerville was setting up his printing and type business, Mrs. Eaves moved in with him as a live-in housekeeper, eventually becoming his wife after the death of her first husband, Mr. Eaves. Like the widows of Caslon, Bodoni, and the daughters of Fournier, Sarah similarly completed the printing of the unfinished volumes that John Baskerville left upon his death.

8. Engravers Gothic . . . I know I use this one too much but it works so well on invitations. IMO, it MUST BE IN ALL CAPS and typeset rather small to maintain its' elegance.



As I typed the above, I thought of those left behind . . . Bickham Script, Futura (especially light), Fling, Trajan. I'm sure there are more that I haven't remembered but I can only spend so much time on type.



So, if you are still interested in looking at type after all this, here are some of my favorite sites:

http://typographica.org/
http://www.typophile.com/
http://tackorama.net/ - Free 50's, 60's and 70's fonts
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ - What The Font is the best font identifier I've ever seen. Upload a sample and it will recognize it or send it to a forum of super font freaks (said with love) who generally can tell you what it is and where to find it.
http://www.dafont.com/ - This site will get you into trouble. Fonts are free and I usually walk away with at least half a dozen.
http://ilovetypography.com/ - play the font game if you dare!
http://www.typography.com/ Hoeffler & Frere Jones - beautiful typefaces
http://www.wordsarepictures.co.uk/ - beautiful typesetting artwork

There are more but I am tired. Let me know what your favorite fonts and sites are.

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!

I'm Inspired!

So I was thrilled this week when Kati, over at The Finer Things and Rebecca at Tastefully Entertaining used one of my cards to create an inspiration board for a Halloween wedding. (Thanks so much for the mention!)

I was so inspired, I decided to try it myself. I went for a different card than they used just to mix it up a little bit. To see the entire Halloween collection, or to purchase, click here.

What fun it was to look for elegant Halloween wedding ideas. I totally love the dress (Ralph Lauren). It has an Eliza Doolitle feel to it but could totally be used as a wedding dress.

I enjoyed doing the inspiration board so much, I have decided to try it with some of my other invitations.

Hope you like it!

Holiday Part 4

So this is where the vintage sign series all started . . . Last year, when I had just begun designing stationery (literally, I was on the job for less than a month), we were about to wrap up the holiday offerings and my art director/boss/owner of the company asked for a couple of invitations that looked like vintage Vegas. We designed the top two and finished out our Holiday Release for 2007. They were digital invitations (which can have white text as well as many different colors of text on the same invitation) and they sold so well that we released a traditionally printed option that we can sell blank to stationery stores so that they can print them on site (the bottom two invites). We have also released an everyday version of each of these as well as other party invitations (see all Vintage Sign Series blog entries). We will be working on more for our January release so if you have an idea of a sign you would like to see, let me know!

Holiday Part 3

Having a holiday party and want a fun invitation that's not fussy at all? We have continued our vintage sign series of invitations to include holiday. From a champagne celebration to a tropical holiday party, the vintage signs are a whimsical way announce a less formal party.

More to come . . .

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!

Return Address Labels

Well, lately I've been working on the cutest thing . . . circular return address labels to match the designs that we released back in January. They look so nice on the back of the envelope. Around the office, we are thinking about using the invitations as note cards with just our name as the personalization just so we can use the return address labels. Sorry, these aren't for sale yet. They will probably be released in a month or so. You just get the sneak peek today!

. . . or maybe not . . . . I can't seem to get the images uploaded for some technical reason. I will try to get them uploaded as soon as I can. Gotta go design for now!

Personalized Stamps

Well, I haven't written in a while because I've been bogged down in stamps. I thought I was headed toward holiday cards but I veered off and created an entire line of stamps. We released them to vendors on Thursday and the response has been tremendous. There are 80 different designs and these are just a few of my favorites. These self inking stampers are great for making your own cards, creating wedding favors or rewarding a young child just learning how to spell their name. If you are interested in seeing the whole line of stamps and stampable note cards, click here.

Seaside Yard Sale

Just a note to anyone within driving distance of Seaside, Florida - they are having the semi-annual town yard sale this weekend. For those who don't know, Seaside is the town where "The Truman Show" was filmed and the yard sale is held in the big grassy area of what looked like "downtown" in the movie. If you've never been there, it is worth the trip, no matter how far you must travel to get there.

Noteworthy will be there with some great sales on products that we no longer carry but are still really cute. It's a great time to pick up some really inexpensive stationery as well as who knows what else!

For those who go - have a great time and say hi to Susan and John, my bosses.

Sugar & Spice or Snips & Snails

Here are two more of the baby digital photocards that were just released recently. I must confess that I do have favorites of the cards that I have designed. They don't come along often for me, but I just love the snips and snails one. I especially like the "waggly" tail of the dog. And here's the thing that pushed me from happiness at a job well done to all-time favorite - the pattern around the edge. . . it's houndstooth. Corny, I know, but it makes me smile when I think about my little goofy design joke on this card.

Why is that boys get to be a tail of a dog, while girls are everything nice? It just makes me glad to be female!