Click here to download a hi-res version for printing out on your printer. Happy New Year!

We are loving the ikat trend. This pattern would be perfect for a beach photo!

Whitney English 2011 Holiday shipped last week! This week, we’re doing a sneak peek of patterns availabile in tons of new gifts items: recipe cards, candles, plates, placemats, gift stickers and enclosure cards!

To start, Smocked Clothing Co. needed business cards. We then designed a large sticker for them to use on packaging for shipping orders, and a graphic to be used for a rubber stamp for invoices. A final small sticker will be great to have on hand to stick on things around their new office.

While you’re clicking around, head over to Smocked Clothing Co. on Facebook and give them a friendly “like”. They offer fabulous custom smocked goods at fabulous prices!

We rather adore these pumpkin decorations. Not only are they modern and whimsical, they’re a perfect craft project for little kiddos! Available at the MonsterMache boutique at etsy.

At this point, we can’t help but wonder what other sorts of ‘Maches the Monster might come up with for other holiday decorations. Santa has a ‘Mache. Surely there is something kids can decorate with Santa’s ‘Mache.

The branding process is always fascinating to me, so I thought I would share a bit of how we came to this design. It all started with an inspiration board:

For those of you who have followed the Whitney English brand, you’ll know that I love the crisp, classic of black and white, paired with pink, a little bit of Tiffany blue. For this round of inspiration, I paired those shades with a warm orange (can you tell I’m ready for fall?), and a green I called “old green”. (Green is one of those colors that has an old soul, you know what I mean?)

It’s beginning to look a lot like…FALL! And not fast enough to satisfy us, darlings! We want colder days for cozier fires and comfier cocoa!

Since traditionally, the rehearsal dinner is hosted by the groom’s family, it is very often that a bride’s future mother-in-law will be ordering the rehearsal dinner invitations. Here are a few tips that will keep both sides happy.

Tips for the future Mother-In-Law:

• Keep the bride happy. Ask her if she’d like to be involved in the planning of invitations. Very often the invitations are kept in a scrapbook or planning journal, and help a bride round out her collection of mementos. It would be nice if all the paper pieces were in keeping with the bride’s tastes, and had the same look and feel.
• If you are having a themed rehearsal dinner (BBQ or Fiesta theme are both popular for rehearsal dinner), and it just seems horrific to try to figure out how to put blush and bashful on a BBQ invitation, think about hiring a custom designer. Many local designers can offer unique options, and any good designer can make red, brown, blush, and bashful work beautifully together for your BBQ invites.
• If your future daughter-in-law is “impossible”, opt to use wedding colors on the invitation.

Tips for the Bride-to-be:

• Remember humility. This is your future mother-in-law’s only option to plan something in the entire wedding. Be willing to let it be about her, and not you, for just that night.
• Don’t nose your way into rehearsal dinner planning. If your future mother-in-law invites you to participate, thank her profusely and be grateful.
• If your future mother-in-law has horrific taste, ask her to stick to your wedding colors as a theme. This can be mentioned casually, in an off-hand way, “I think it would be great to just use blush and bashful as the primary two colors on the rehearsal dinner invitations.”
• If your future mother-in-law is choosing to not plan or host the rehearsal dinner, which sometimes happens, tell her in the early wedding stages that you’d like to get her opinions, if she wants to be involved. This is a great opportunity to give her something to look forward to in planning.

Here is a Rehearsal Dinner Invitation by Whitney English that would be beautiful for an elegant, but comfortable, rehearsal event. (Frankly, all rehearsal dinner events should be comfortable–who wants to don a tux two days in a row?) In this invite, the place setting element adds a charming touch, and the ever-popular monogram needs to reflect the groom’s family’s last name, since they would be hosting the event. Also a fun feature when you order from English Paper Company: our color change options. This invite could be modified to have a green background, brown background, etc, for a look that uniquely reflects the event.

Monograms can be confusing. Here are a few basic tips to remember:

• If the center initial is larger, use your Last Initial in the center, First Initial on the left side, and Middle Initial on the right side.
• If the center initial is the same size as all other letters, list your initials as First, Middle, Last.
• Technically, since a MONOgram represents ONE person, “combined” monograms are on Emily Post’s no-no list. If you want to do a combined monogram, remember to always put the man’s name first. If the couple’s names are William and Sarah Edwards, the combined monogram would be W for the First Initial, E for the Last Initial, and S for the Middle Initial.

Before a wedding, you are technically not supposed to use a combined monogram. If you really want to, go ahead! It’s your wedding! But a better strategy would be to do the following:

• For the Rehearsal Dinner Invitations, use the Groom’s family name.
• For the Wedding Invitations, use the Bride’s family monogram (her parent’s combined monogram is an option, or her maiden monogram is an option).
• For the Wedding Programs, continue to use the Bride’s family monogram, or her maiden monogram.
• For cocktail napkins at the wedding reception, use your new combined monogram.
• For favors at the wedding reception, use your new combined monogram.

The above Rugby Stripe stationery design is available in a variety of colors.

I don’t even know where to begin this story, much in the same way that I can’t find the words to explain how full my heart is right now. But the story starts sometime back in 2010, when Emily went to a Making Things Happen session and then came home to blog about it. I’d been following Emily on twitter, took the link to her post, and started reading, or watching (I think she was video-blogging!) and then, I did something I rarely do: I emailed a complete stranger out of the blue.

And that was the beginning of Emily and Whitney. She had some questions, I had some answers. She had a vision for her authentic brand, and helping her grow that brand fired me up. We met officially at the National Stationery Show in 2010, where she shared a part of our English Paper Company booth and sold the heck out of her gorgeous wedding album.

And then, at some point in time, one or the other, or both of us, said, “We should start something. Something that answers questions about the invitation industry. Something that clears up myths. Something gives people direction.” And the Stationery Academy was born.

I’ll be honest, in the weeks that led up to the event, I was in total panic. I thought we weren’t going to have enough content. Then I thought we’d put in too much. And then it wasn’t organized enough. And then it was over-planned. And was this Lara Casey chick even going to like me? And who the heck were all these people, who wanted to listen to Emily and I blab about our stationery industry experiences for two days? I tend to be a more private person, so being stuck in a room for two days and having to be the one to talk, well, it just flat freaked me out.

Then, all of a sudden, I was standing in a reception room in Pensacola, Florida, welcoming attendees with our signature PinkINKtinis. (Which were delicious, by the way.) And then, the next day, we were talking about branding and authenticity, and strategic planning, and I started to relax a little bit. And on the next day, I hit my stride. We were talking about the industry that I LOVE, that I’ve known and followed and obsessed over since the day I started working at a paper store in 1994. (Yep, that’s 18 years.)

Emily had been challenging me for weeks to uncover my fears, and tell my story, and I’ll admit, I was dragging my feet. I was trying to figure out how to get out of it. But at the very end, we had a few minutes left, and everyone said they wanted to hear it, so I decided to spill it. And I cried. No, I bawled. As I talked about the people who had believed in me along the way, and had given me the courage to jump off the cliffs. The funny thing about those people is that sometimes they didn’t give me what I thought I needed. Sometimes they just gave me encouragement. But sometimes, that’s all we all really need.

Going forward, the Stationery Academy will be an integral part of that story. The women I met, who probably came to find inspiration and encouragement from me, left me with THEIR inspiration and encouragement. The visions and dreams exchanged and discussed in that room gave us all a newfound sense of mission, purpose, ambition, and possibility. I am proud to now be able to call each of them dear friends, and am beyond thrilled to see where they take it from here.

(Above photo: Stationery Academy speakers and leaders: Lara Casey, Whitney English Kolb, Emily Ley and Natalie Chang.)