Believe Notes - Featured in WellWed Magazine

In all of the hustle and bustle lately, I have fallen behind in sharing some exciting things that have happened for Believe Notes! Better late than never, right?!

This past fall I had the pleasure of working with WellWed Hamptons for some styled shoots in their Fall/Winter magazines. There was a bit of a delay in the magazine hitting stands, due to Hurricane Sandy, but it was worth the wait! The samples arrived to me a few weeks ago, and I am so excited about seeing my work in print!

I created custom gold embossed escort cards, which have been a huge part of the inspiration behind some of the new invitation suites you'll see when I launch my new business. WellWed also featured my iPad covers. Unfortunately the timing of that wasn't perfect, since I no longer sell them. But hey, they look great in the magazine!

I'll also be a part of their upcoming Spring/Summer edition, and I can't wait to see what beautiful inspiration they've cooked up!

Custom Recap: Davis Family Branding

A few months ago I had the pleasure of working with a a member of my extended family, Gayle, who is my uncles mother, to create some really beautiful stationery for her and her husband, Ron. This past year, Ron and Gayle officially entered retirement, and decided to sell their home near Boston and split their year between a home in Florida and a home in Maine. Gayle was looking for a way to let family and friends know about their move, and how/where to contact them throughout the year.

The more Gayle and I chatted, the more I thought the project was along the lines of a family branding - so I went to work creating a style that we could use for calling cards, folded stationery and flat note cards. I came up with the idea of "Pine to Palm" since their year was spent half in the pines of Maine, and half in the palms of Florida.

I absolutely love the way everything turned out - the soft neutral colors, the gingham backer pattern and the blue envelope pull all of the different pieces together perfectly.

On their first drive down from Maine to Florida, Gayle spent a good portion of the multi-day drive writing notes to friends and family on her new folded cards - letting them know about the move.

She also keeps a stack of calling cards with her at all times, so that she can quickly give them to friends when they ask for her contact information. These cards might be my favorite part of the project, they are just so perfectly compact and pack a huge amount of information. These little cards clearly communicate what time of the year Ron and Gayle will be in Maine, and when they will be in Florida, plus their phone numbers and addresses for each location. What a great idea!

And the last element of the set is the flat stationery, which Gayle plans on using for special notes and correspondence. I love the idea of having an entire theme throughout all of the stationery you use, it's something that brands and businesses do - and I hope the trend catches on for families. It's such an organized, sophisticated way to represent yourself.

If you love the idea of family branding as much as I do, I would love to work with you and create your perfect set of stationery to represent all of the different aspect of your unique life. Contact me to start talking about making your ideas a reality.

Custom Recap - 80's Themed 30th Birthday Invitations

Back in October of 2012, Danielle, the photographer behind Danfredo Photography, reached out to me with an awesomely awesome and super secret party collaboration. Danielle had gotten married a year before (on her birthday), but her wedding didn't exactly live up to her expectations. So for her one year anniversary (and her 30th birthday), she was looking to throw a huge 30th birthday celebration that would double as a top secret vow renewal. She told all of her guests to wear their best 80's attire and she provided the glow sticks, spin art (yes, spin art), neon colors, confetti and ballons. Just when guests thought things couldn't get wilder, Danielle and her husband surprised everybody with a rooftop vow renewal. The rest of the evening was spent singing, dancing, celebrating and getting paint splatter everywhere (ok, that's what spin art does!).

I had so much fun working on these invitations, and I think I perfectly married (ahem, pun, ahem) the crazy 80's theme with my own sophisticated style and typography. Here are the invitations I created for her special day.

To view an adorable video from their wedding day, please visit the Danfredo Rivera blog.

Custom Recap - Brklyn View Gold Confetti Holiday Cards

One of the hardest things for me, when it comes to growing my business, has been networking and making time to be able to meet new people. But when I saw Brklyn View Photography, I knew I had to reach out to Jainé!  I am so glad I did because we've become good friends and awesome collaborators - take for example, Jainé's holiday cards.

Jainé loves all things confetti and gold, as you can see in her custom stationery I shared a few months back. So for her holiday cards, we decided to stick with the theme, but make it perfectly celebratory for the season. We went with square cards that feature confetti around red and green typography. We also made a tiny circle stamp, so that we could stamp gold bits of confetti for extra glitz and glam. I love how festive and classic these look, perfect for a holiday greeting!

Custom Recap - Baby Cruz's Birth Announcements

Today I'm sharing with you a really fun project that I worked on back in late 2012. There definitely seems to be a bit of a baby boom lately, and there isn't anything I enjoy more than helping first time parents announce their newest little addition!

I first met Mel when I became a Hand Pick Vendor for the Wedding Chicks. Mel and I were exchanging emails and small talk practically every day, and then, one day, I got an out-of-office reply from her that she had her baby! YAY! I quickly sent her another email to congratulate her and before I knew it we were talking birth announcements for her new baby boy, Cruz.

When I asked Mel for some inspiration - as I always do on custom projects - she sent me these gorgeous photos of Cruz's nursery. A neutral palette with bright pops of green and fun patterns - I was in designer inspiration heaven!

How awesome is his nursery! I love the clean lines, pops of color, and sophisticated neutrals. It was so easy to start designing on the birth announcements - I drew on all of the room elements, the colors, patterns, and lines, to create this modern, yet sophisticated announcement.

How adorable is baby Cruz?! And how perfectly do these announcements coordinate with his Nursery?! I loved the announcements so much, that I actually submitted a similar design into a recent Minted challenge, and it won and editor's pick! So now you can get your very own Cruz inspired announcement.

The Inline Announcement, below, is available in a variety of die cut shapes and paper options.

If you'd like to see more pictures of adorable baby Cruz and his nursery, head on over to On To Baby, where a sweet feature was posted.

Jackie and Mike's 2012 Holiday Card

Before the holidays are too far behind us, I wanted to share the cards I sent to friends and family this past year. With Designers Care and my busiest Believe Notes holiday season ever, there were a few weeks there that I just didn't think I'd be able to send cards at all. Luckily, inspiration struck and not only did I get to send cards, but I absolutely love the way they came out. I've been trying to practice my hand lettering lately, so I thought the holiday cards would be the perfect opportunity to test out my new skills.

I like for our cards to be really meaningful. but still fun and good-looking. Since a huge part of 2012 turned out to be Designers Care, I decided to go with a clean black and white design, and the backer pattern has a "stamped" effect. Something else that I do every year is create a pattern that features objects that were important to us throughout the year. Since this year marked the year of renovation (we did all of our floors plus the kitchen over) I decided to include hammers and stoves, along with paw prints (for Miss Juliet) an NYPD shield (for Mike's job) and apples since my husband and I are die hard Mac lovers.

I had my heart set on black envelopes, and since the only way to write/print addresses on them is either by hand (with a white, silver, or gold marker) or with an address label. I'm not typically a fan of address labels - they make me thing of those God-aweful ones that people print at home and then slap on cards. Since I was too lazy to hand write each address, I knew I needed labels, and so I though some round labels with hand lettering would spruce things up and turn them into an added design element. They also shaved a ton of time off, which was awesome, because these cards went out late. The labels were placed a little off-centered, which is exactly how I wanted them, and I love the way they came out! The finishing touch was the gold stamped return address (I used this stamp) and a little gold washi tape.The cards themselves were printed on super thick recycled stock with rounded corners.

The photo was taken by the super talented Jainé, of Brklyn View Photography, during my head shots for Believe Notes. Mike was there to help me keep Juliet out of the way, and Jainé was kind enough to snap this super fast family shot. I love the way the lighting fades off, and the beautiful NYC sky line in the background makes it even better.

I know it's a little late, but from my family to yours, I hope you had a great holiday & are off to a wonderful start in 2013!

Danfredo Photography + Believe Notes

I'm one of those people that absolutely loves pictures - when I travel I bring more memory cards than I do socks. The past few months have been so much fun for me, as I've had the chance to work with a few really fabulous photographers. Photography just makes my heart sing, so you can imagine how excited I am to be able to feature gorgeous pictures in all of my holiday cards this year!

Danielle Rivera, the photographer behind Danfredo Photography, is a kick-ass lady in all sorts of ways, and she is also the pro behind the pictures in my holiday line! Yippie!

Not only am I super excited to have her photos be a part of my design work, I'm stoked about having had the chance to meet and get to know such an awesome person. You'll be hearing a lot more about Danielle and Danfredo Photography in the future, as I'm pretty sure you'll want to see our recent collaboration, which I'll be sharing on the blog in the future.

In the meantime, how awesome do her pictures work with my designs??

Head on over to the shop and get 5% off your holiday order, this week only, with coupon code HAPPIESTHOLIDAYS and you'll be on your way to seeing how amazing your photos look in these designs! 

Custom Recap + Brklyn View Photography

One of my goals for this year is to network more and send heartfelt notes to people I really admire.  Jainé, the photographer behind Brklyn View Photography, is one of those people. I had been following her blog for a while, and when I saw her get published on Style Me Pretty I was so darn excited that I finally decided to email her and introduce myself. After exchanging a few emails (and enjoying really awesome burgers and drinks together) we decided to collaborate on some stationery and head shots. Turns out that Jainé is a paper junkie, and I'm a picture nut, so we were like a match made in heaven!

Jainé loves all things pink and fun, so we decided to create two stationery looks for her. One features lively confetti with her logo on the back, and the other has a hand embossed "thank you" on the front in gold, with bright pink and red stripes on the back. Sounds awesome, right?! I've been playing around with hand-embossing lately and loved that Jainé was on board.

I know, I know, these cards are totally awesome. The icing on the cake is that both sets of cards were paired with hot pink envelopes and gold envelope liners! And I'm not going to lie, I think I'm in love with hand embossing, it's such a beautiful way to add an extra element to designs. Labor intensive, yes, but so very worth it!

Minted Perfect Match Wedding Voting is Open!

I've been so busy lately that I haven't been participating as much as I'd like to in the Minted challenges, but I absolutely HAD to participate in their Perfect Match Wedding Invitation Challenge. When it comes to the Minted challenges, I try to stretch my comfort zone and test out some new things - whether it's patterns, typography or hand-drawn details, you'll see some things from me for Minted that are really different from my normal day-to-day items. That's what's so fun about Minted, having the opportunity to stretch and grow.

So here are my submissions for the wedding challenge, voting is open, so please go vote!

 

 

1. Blushful 2. Florals on Sapphire 3. Merriment 4. Pearlescent 5. Ombre Names 6. Sweetness 7. Infinite Class 7. Subtle Mosaic 8. Vine Knot

New Stamp Available!

Stamps have been my obsession lately, I've probably got at least four myself, and I find they make a great gift for just about any occasion - from birthdays, to engagements, to weddings, to house warming and everything in-between. And by the way the stamps have been selling in the Believe Notes shop, it seems other people like them as much as I do!

So, I've added a new stamp design, now available for purchase. It's a mix of modern calligraphy and bold typography and is dubbed "City Life" since the layout is perfect for somebody with an apartment and unit number.

If you want to get your hands on the new "City Life" stamp, head on over to the Believe Notes shop and grab it for just $35 as a wood handle stamp.

Now For Sale at Minted: Handy Thank You Cards

Head on over to Minted to purchase my latest design, Handy Thank You Cards.

This Handy design was so much fun to work on - it features hand drawn elements and fun typography! It was one of the first times I submitted a design to Minted that featured hand drawing. I've been trying to do a little more drawing for my designs, so be on the lookout!

Custom Recap: Summer Butterfly Engagement Invitations

These invitations are perfect for a summer engagement party! I created them for my cousin - who loves the beach, butterflies, and summer - and I think we nailed all three on just one piece of paper! I'm so thrilled for her and her fiancé - we're so lucky to have them as cousins and friends!

If you love these invitations, they are now for sale in the Etsy shop!