I’ve always had a soft spot for bold brush strokes and illustrations. Add in a few sweet sentiments, and you’ve basically created my ideal greeting card. I’m loving these sweet and simple cards from new-to-me line Butter Paper Co. – some of them even feature hand painted details! The cat birthday card below was basically made for me, and how pretty is the floral birthday card below? So many great options!
Lots more from Butter Paper Co. right here!
Whenever I look at a wedding invitation, I always look for that one special detail that stands out from everything else. Sometimes it’s hand lettering or calligraphy. Sometimes it’s the carefully chosen vintage stamps. In the case of these gorgeous aquamarine watercolor and letterpress wedding invitations from Shana of Iris and Marie Letterpress, it’s the beautiful and ethereal hand painted details that Shana added to each invitation. So perfect for an oceanside wedding!
From Shana: Abbey’s July wedding in Florence, South Carolina was hot, but these cool ocean blues and greens gave her guests a breath of fresh air before the big day. Each invitation and reply card was hand painted with acrylic paint using a special water technique. The design was letterpress printed on a 1920s Chandler & Price letterpress using Crane Lettra cotton paper for the invitation and Cards & Pockets Aquamarine envelopes for the reply envelopes. Three colors were used throughout the suite: medium dusty teal, dark dusty teal & grey-green.
The reply card and envelope featured the darker teal of the suite, where as the invitation and outer envelope featured the medium dusty teal that Abbey picked out. The dusty teal used matched her bridesmaids’ dresses perfectly! To go along with her chill vibe, the grey-green was used on the text of the invitation to compliment the blues going on everywhere else.
At the bottom of each invitation is the hazy water painting created uniquely for each invitation with subtle hints of a bright green. The grey-green ink really helped pull those bright greens out & made the invitation colors flow together. The really cool thing about hand painting each piece of paper is that each guest gets a different suite which in turn makes each invitation feel like its own art piece.
Abbey definitely was excited to see each suite come together and see how every invitation was different than the next. She also wanted to add a floral element, but didn’t want them to overpower the hand painted details. So we printed floral illustrations on top of the painted piece to add extra texture.
Can you spot the other little floral element peeking out from the stamp? Instead of having a plain corner of her reply envelope where a stamp would go, we opted to have a cute little flower coming out of the stamp for some extra personality. Flowers were also added to the outer envelopes by being printed to bleed off the envelope flap to give guests a little insight to what is inside.
There are so many fun elements going on in this one suite that you might think that this wedding definitely does not have a “relaxed” vibe. Heck yes it does! Don’t the blue-greens make you want to sit by the ocean? If I were to give this wedding a new theme it would be: relaxed by the ocean with a flower in one hand and sea glass in the other.
Thanks Shana!
Design and printing: Iris and Marie Letterpress
Envelopes: Cards & Pockets
Looking for more wedding invitation inspiration? Visit our wedding invitations archive for more custom wedding invitation ideas!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Samsung SmartThings Wi-Fi. All content and opinions are my own. Check out Samsung SmartThings Wi-Fi and download the Plume app in the App Store!
As a busy mom running my own business, I’m all about doing things that make life just a little bit easier. A thermostat that I can control from my phone? Done. Smart outlets and light bulbs that I can control even when we’re traveling out of town? Yes, please. I love the idea of being able to set timers for morning coffee, build a grocery list in my refrigerator, or even set the lights to turn on as the sun is going down or as we’re coming home in the evening. All of these little things mean that I can devote my mental energy to the bigger important things, like being present with my children and focusing on growing my business. Now if only I could figure out how to make my laundry do itself…
Last year, I worked with Samsung to make sure we had even Wi-Fi coverage throughout our home. Our home is pretty small at around 1200 square feet (although SmartThings covers homes up to 4500 square feet), but our brick and plaster walls previously made it a challenge to ensure even coverage from our living room to our upstairs bedrooms. This year, Samsung totally upped the game with their brand new SmartThings Wi-Fi: a whole home Wi-Fi system and smart home hub that combines the power of mesh network technology and home automation. SmartThings Wi-Fi even works with the new Plume app, which uses AI to optimize the Wi-Fi signal throughout your home. What?!?
Let’s talk about the Wi-Fi and these gorgeous hubs. Not only do they ensure Wi-Fi signal throughout your home, but they’re beautifully designed and visually unobtrusive. The new SmartThings Wi-Fi replaced our traditional router, so goodbye ugly black box in the middle of our living room! Our modem is located in the built-in shelves in our living room. The big bulky router always made styling this shelf kind of impossible, so I was super excited to replace it with these sleek new hubs. Maybe a little too excited, because I forgot to take a true before picture, but trust me, it wasn’t good. Here’s the old black box that I replaced:
And here’s the new setup!
So much better, right? I also placed additional mesh hubs in our bedroom upstairs and the back room of our house (aka our playroom/craft room/laundry room). This means we now have Wi-Fi coverage in our backyard, so I can even work outside if the weather is good!
The whole set up process couldn’t be easier. Just plug the main unit into your modem, then open the Samsung SmartThings app and follow the directions for linking the different hubs. Easy peasy, and now we have even Wi-Fi signal without having ugly routers and signal boosters all over the house. Oh, and you can even connect other smart devices through the Samsung SmartThings app, like a thermostat, light bulbs, doorbell or camera, appliances, and so much more.
But I think my favorite thing about the new Samsung SmartThings is the integration with the brand new Plume app. Plume allows you to create guest passwords for visitors, monitor individual usage, and gives you total control over all of your home devices – you can even cut off Wi-Fi access for a particular device! My girls aren’t old enough to have their own tablets and devices just yet, but I can totally imagine using the Plume app to limit their Wi-Fi time at home. You can even see the actual speed of your data network and how much data individual devices are using, which has been QUITE eye opening for me. And the AI component in Plume monitors your usage throughout your home, optimizing the network and allocating capacity to the rooms and devices that you use most so that you’ll always have a smooth signal.
The other fun thing about SmartThings Wi-Fi is that you can create custom automations using the built-in SmartThings Hub for particular scenarios (called “scenes” in the SmartThings app), like turning the lights to a particular level at dusk or turning the lights on for you when you’re coming home at night. I’ve been meaning to install an outdoor light next to our back door, which is where we usually come in since that’s the door closest to our detached garage. I’d LOVE to set up a scene that automatically turns that light on when one of us comes home, along with a few other lights on the first floor. My brain is spinning with possibilities for all the different scenes we could create to help manage our home and make our lives just a little bit easier.
Okay, so tell me! What are your favorite tricks when it comes to your smart home appliances? I’d love to hear your experiences!
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Samsung SmartThings Wi-Fi. All content and opinions are my own. Check out Samsung SmartThings Wi-Fi and download the Plume app in the App Store now!
Photo Credits: Meghan Marie Photography and Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper
I love companies that create well-made products for everyday life. And when those companies team up with some of my very favorite designers? EVEN BETTER. If you don’t already know about Mixbook, they make beautiful custom products that are easy to create, completely customizable, and of course rooted in beautiful design! Need photo books and calendars? Wedding invitations and custom stationery? Home décor and photo prints? Yep, you can get all of those with Mixbook, customized with your photos, graphics, and text!
I first fell in love with Mixbook for their fabulous photo books, which make the absolute BEST holiday gifts for grandparents and far-away family members. I love that they offer cover designs for a range of purposes, including wedding photo books, travel photo books, and year-in-review photo books. They also offer custom photo home décor, including canvas wrapped prints, acrylic prints, metal prints, and poster prints – we collaborated with Mixbook to create a gorgeous gallery wall at the Paper Party back in May!
Okay, so now let’s focus on the design. Mixbook has collaborated with some of the very best designers and illustrators – including 1canoe2, Hello!Lucky, Lily & Val, Amy Tangerine, and Black Lamb Studio – to offer on-trend handmade wedding and stationery designs, custom calendars, and photo book themes. You’ll find beautiful tropical foliage, colorful watercolor washes, vibrant colors and patterns, romantic floral illustrations, and whimsical hand lettering.
Here are a few favorites from the Mixbook designer collections – but you should totally check them out for yourself, I had so much trouble narrowing it down to just a few choices!
Fun Times Calendar by Black Lamb Studio
Go Get ‘Em Tiger Graduation Announcements by Hello!Lucky
Rainbow Stationery Address Labels by Black Lamb Studio
Winter Florals Wedding Save the Date by Hello!Lucky
Girl Power Cards by Hello!Lucky
Everyday Memories Photo Book by 1canoe2
Holiday Happy Happy Joy Joy Photo Cards by Amy Tangerine
Illustrated Frame Holiday Photo Cards by Lily & Val
Hand Drawn Wedding Florals Save the Date by Lily & Val
Love is Love Friendship Cards by Hello! Lucky
So cute, right? I love those rainbow address labels and I’m definitely bookmarking a few graduation announcements for the future! Check out more of the Mixbook Designer Collections right here!
This post was created in partnership with Mixbook. All content and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that make Oh So Beautiful Paper possible!
For those of you who celebrate Cinco de Mayo or the Kentucky Derby, you’re going to want to go ahead and save/pin/bookmark these adorable Derby de Mayo party invitations from Lauren Chism Fine Papers for future inspiration! Lauren and her husband host an annual Kentucky Derby party (you can see some past examples here), and she faced a wee bit of a design challenge when the Kentucky Derby fell on Cinco de Mayo earlier this year. The resulting papel picado-inspired invitations are super cute – take a look!
From Lauren: As our annual derby party comes around each year, the (self-imposed) pressure mounts – how do I keep designing something new for the same party, year after year? It’s always a challenge, but this year, the universe threw me a bone and the Kentucky Derby fell another celebratory day, Cinco De Mayo! The excitement mounted… Fascinators and Sombreros? Mint Juleps and Margaritas? Southern Snacks and Tex Mex Treats? Yes please! So just like that, Derby De Mayo was born!*
*(Side note: I then googled it, and being that the derby is the first weekend in May, this turned out to not be the most unique idea in the world, but whatever, it was a new original theme for us!)
Apparently, all I need is a good theme to kick-start my creativity, because from there, the ideas were flowing. I really wanted to do some kind of papel picado inspired design, but I wanted to make it reasonably affordable (I can get carried away sometimes), so I found a way!
The ‘flags’ are just A2 cards, digitally printed and die-cut with the scallop shape that my printer offers. To make them more realistic, I went through and punched holes in every scallop… one. by. one. My toddler even got in on the action ‘pretending to help me’, so it was a family affair. It actually wasn’t that bad and made it more affordable than ordering a custom die.
I don’t typically design with a lot of color, but with the Derby Day invitations, I tend to get some practice and this was the ultimate color exercise. Over the years, we’ve made some reusable derby items, like napkins and koozies, so I picked our ‘signature’ green and blue and paired them with pink and orange. They are bright, fun and festive. I love how they turned out and our guests seem to love them, too!
Thanks Lauren!
Photo Credits: Lauren Chism Fine Papers