Featured Vendor: Tiger Lily Floral

My good friend Tanya Cole owns Tiger Lily Floral in Albuquerque, and she recently made some HUGE changes to her shop. She used to be located on Central near the Frontier Restaurant, but made a move home in order to focus on some different projects that she has in the works including more events and weddings. If you've seen her work, I am sure you'll agree that she is absolutely amazing! If you have a chance check out her revamped website. In addition to adding a ton of new pics to her gallery, she also has a page that can help you with your planning by showing photographs of popular flowers that you may not know the names of... check it out here!

Do you know what these are? The first one to answer correctly gets a box of Thank You cards!

Postage Rate Increase

In case you haven't heard, the US Postal Service raised their first class stamp rates to $ 0.44. If you bought a stash of the Forever stamps with the bells on them, your in luck - they are still good to use.

This leads me into a series of Frequently Asked Questions about invitations that I have been dying to answer!

How much is it going to cost to send out our invitations?
This can really only be answered by an aficionado at the post office. More than likely they will cost more than an average letter or greeting card because of size and weight.
I would suggest that once you have your invitation suite in hand, to have it weighed and measured so that you are not in shock when you are ready for mailing. Since your invitations are more delicate than most other mailings, I would suggest that you splurge and have them hand canceled instead of having then sent through the post office machinery. Some post office won't even charge you extra.

Do I have to put a stamp on my rsvp envelope?

You don't have to do anything BUT if you are expecting your guests to actually send them back a stamp is a good idea. Since this card is generally smaller than the actual invitation, using a standard first class stamp should do the trick.

Where can I buy cool stamps?

Here a couple of places that I usually recommend:

http://www.zazzle.com/

http://www.everafterpostage.com/

http://www.championstamp.com/

For more on invitation FAQ's, as well as other general wedding category check out the New Mexico Wedding Professional official blog here!

New Fonts

Check out these new fonts that I just got in!

Custom Wedding Monogram

Recently I worked with local wedding planner extrodiare, Bentley Clark of Savoir-Faire Events, to create a custom wedding monogram for her upcoming July wedding. She was so easy to work with! In fact, I think that we just exchanged a few emails and she gave a me quick vision a I came up these ideas:

My favorite was the first one, but Bentley chose the second one. Check out these super cool Save the Dates that Seth and Desiree at Jones Photo Art made with it using some of their engagement photos. Love them! (The pics scanned in crooked, they cards were perfect)

Do you need a custom monogram? Contact me for pricing! info@elvamariesfinepaper.com

Cool Blogs

I just posted a link to some of coolest blogs!

First, I found Felt and Wire by Strathmore Writing and Script. This will surely impress you if you are as addicted to paper as I am! Right now they are featuring a sampling of cool circus themed letterpressed pieces...Sigh, letterpress! Where are you in NM?

Second, Karen from Celebrations! Wedding and Events has just started her blog to talk about some of the weddings that she's recently worked on. Right now there is a princess wedding featured - that I was fortunate to work on with her.

And finally, there is Midori Ribbon's blog that I just love for love's sake. Midori Ribbon is the best ribbon out there, and I sure have been buying a lot of it lately!

Uh-oh!

This is how it all begins....

Love this photo! Check out the website and blog of local photographer Monique Duke for more...

In the Studio

It's been a crazy crazy past few weeks, and I finally have proof that I have been working! Take a look at some of the jobs orders that I have finished recently...

Veronica and Simon are having a sophisticated wedding set with coppers, creams, and indigo. We came up with the most beautiful Save the Date, and it was hard to come up with an invitation idea that would compliment it but not be exactly the same. We came up with this beautiful pocket fold invitaton with Midori ribbon and Swaroski crstal accents. Love it!

Molly and Josh are having an outdoors wedding at the stunning Bishop's Lodge in Santa Fe. Molly definatley wanted to stick with a sunflower motiff, as this will be the 'theme' that is carried throughout the wedding. Her colors are clover and white, and together we came up with this simple, but elegant invitation to match.

My first quincenera invitation was for Evelynn, whe is turning 15 in May. I was excited to take on this job for 2 reasons; 1. It's the first quincenera that I've done from start to finish and 2. because the family of from a small town called Socorro, New Mexico and I was excited to branch into new territory in the state. Anyway, Evelynn is a girl who knows what she likes and she loved this turquiose pocketfold invitation white linen inserts and thermo ink. On the cover we choose to use a hot pink border and a Swaroski crystal accent.

Estella and I met in our College of Santa Fe days, and she is having a Black and White Ball to celebrate her upcoming MBA graduation. This piece is sooo totally different than the standard issued college gradation invite! I love it! It also gave me the chance to show of some super cool fonts that I recently purchased. Congrats Stella! I still haven't decided if I'll be walking the line with you all...

Betty and Larry are an older couple who wanted something simple, but elegant. I think that these ecru linen and teal invitations fit the bill. We used thermo ink in black and teal and then attached the invitation facecard to another teal layer of cardstock.

There are even more to come so keep looking out!