Vintage Stamps

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One of my newest obsessions :: Vintage Stamps. Yesterday, I got the greatest little package in the mail from a fantastic stamp retailer called Champion Stamp out of NYC. Oh how I wish I'd known about them when I was there in July! They have an online catalog in PDF format that you can look through, note item numbers and quantities you'd like (great photos of the stamps are included as well as [great] prices for each) and email them off an order. My stamps arrived about a week later.

Vintage stamps are a great way to give personality to invitations or even personal stationery. I've always collected the "cool" stamps the Post Office issues every year to use with the right letter or thank you note... but the vintage stamps are so pretty! You can mix and match to add up to the right postage needed.

The Goodpaper website will feature about 30 personalized stationery options. For the product photos, each will be paired with a kraft envelope (another new obsession... colored envelopes will be available also) adorned with different "Southern" vintage stamps(including the charming ones above!)

Photo from 100 Layer Cake

Sleep... now... please!

I've been staring at this for about 14 hours straight... and that's just today. Really exciting things are happening... I'm finalizing the "product" lines for ELP and working on website copy for Hi Design. They sent over the finished homepage screenshot on Friday and I immediately fell in love. It captures the Southern style and sweet charm that ELP represents so well. I'm exhausted and off to bed... but the photo above is a screenshot of the new ELP invitations (and coordinating save the dates, thank you cards, menus, programs, enclosure cards, and response cards that aren't in the photo) that will debut with the new site!

Movin & Shakin!

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is official! I’ve just signed the contract to start the building of a brand spankin’ new Emily Ley Paper website. I knew since I started this adventure that a strong web presence that really represented ELP and my style would be very, very important. I’ve been using Squarespace for my website (a wonderful resource for any of you that are looking for an easy-to-use interface at a reasonable price) and have learned more about HTML than I ever needed/wanted to know. But it’s time to take my website up a notch.

I also knew that websites aren’t cheap, so I contacted a couple of web designers to get quotes and ideas from all of them. They all came back fantastic and it was really hard choosing which to go with. In the long run, I decided to work with the ladies of Hi Design House in Los Angeles. The girls are so great and they’re from Florida also! Their previous work (Urbanic and Vie are really great) really reflects an edgy but simple style that I’d really like ELP to evolve into.

It’s going to be a busy few months because I’ll have to force myself to finalize and photograph some products for the ecommerce side and photos of some custom work for the portfolio side. But I’m really excited to get started. Kendra, my contact there, told me yesterday that we’ll start with brand definition to create a filter through which all of their design work, styling, etc will be put through. It’ll be a long process and we’re going to work through this in phases (so that the website grows as ELP grows) but I plan to update regularly on the blog to let you guys know what’s happening. I’ve loved reading other blogs written by small business owners with insight and advice into how the process works… and the growing pains and milestones achieved along the way.

Cheers! Emily