Weekends

Hi lovelies. It's been a busy Spring around here! How have you been? Well, I hope.

It's the thick of wedding season in the stationery world, so the blog is a bit quiet while I focus on working with my fabulous customers on some exciting projects. There are some custom designs that I can't wait to share with you in a few months, after the weddings have passed. Seriously, I'm dying to show you!

Despite being quite busy, I've been sneaking in some baking on weekends to keep myself sane. It's my meditation. Here is a cake I completed recently. It's the carrot layer cake from the Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook, and it required no fewer than 5 separate sub-recipes and 3 specialty baking tools to create. According to my honey, it was worth the effort.

Those layers are: carrot cake, liquid cheesecake, graham cracker crust frosting, milk crumbs, and a milk soak. Yum!

Have a sweet week!

A custom project for a Hawaiian wedding

This weekend I am catching up on updating my photos in my Etsy shop. Wowzers, some of the photos are the original pics I posted when I first opened my shop! Some of them were a little rough. It's fun to see how much my photos have improved with a better camera and lots of practice. It will probably take me a few weeks to get through all the listings, but so far I've updated the Chloe and Annabelle suites. What do you think? An improvement, no?

As I was taking photos, I also took a few of some custom projects from late 2010, early 2011 that I've been meaning to share for a looooooong time. Here is one that was a lot of fun . . . the couple got married in Hawaii, and they wanted to have a fun welcome letter in the guests' rooms when they arrived at the hotel. I came up with this tri-fold design that incorporated some tropical imagery, their wedding colors, and all the important details about the wedding weekend events.

The letter was placed into a customized envelope with the guests' names. There was a velcro dot closing the envelope so that they could reuse it over and over.

There was also a little pull tab around the letter, so as the guests pulled the tab up, the letter came with it. Side note: remember those childrens' books with the pull tabs? You would pull a little cardboard tab, and then something would move on the page? Weren't those the best? They rate up there with Lisa Frank stickers, I'll tell you what.

And then, there it is! (I'm purposefully leaving out parts of the bottom panel that have personal details, please pardon the mystery.)

These pretty colors coordinated with the panel fan programs that I created for them, and I'll show you those another day. This was a fun little project that brings a smile to my face when I look at it, all this time later. It's the little extra special personal touches that you put on your wedding day that make it "you", and I love working with you to bring those ideas to life. It's always a collaborative process--for example, the bride thought of the velcro dot idea here, and what a fabulous idea that was!--and I love the process as much as the finished product.

I hope you all are having a great weekend!

The hardworking papers of Green Quince

I would like to introduce you to a few of my friends. Nine of them to be exact. These are the fabulous and hard-working 9 stock papers of Green Quince. After years of testing out countless different cardstock types on my various printers and presses, I eventually narrowed down my top paper choices to these 9 that I keep in stock at all times. For special projects I'll bring in a few other special order papers, but these 9 are the ones I count on and turn to day in and day out for their reliable performance and unique characteristics.

Without further ado . . . the Green Quince stock papers:

1. My very favorite cardstock is this linen textured stock. The surface texture is amazing, it takes ink beautifully, it folds cleanly, and it is 100% post consumer recycled. The post-consumer part is key because it means that recycled paper is taken out of consumers' recycling bins and processed into new paper. Some recycled papers are made with commercial waste, which is great, but a high post-consumer content is the ultimate ideal for us green geeks.

This stock is 80 lb cover weight, and I stock it in bright white and off-white (almost an ecru color--really lovely).

(click on the photos to enlarge for an up-close peek at the textures)

2. For photo cards, I turn to a special ultra-smooth cardstock that provides crisp, clear photo representation. This paper is ultra bright white, so it is a blank untinted canvas for whatever photos I print on it. I call this my "hi-res" paper.

This stock is 100 lb weight and comes in ultra bright white, super smooth surface.

3. For those clients who prefer a really thick stock, I love this 110 lb wove cardstock in bright or off-white. This is a bristol board with a nice heft to it. This cardstock isn't recycled, but it is green e-certified, carbon neutral, and produced by wind power. I'm still on the lookout for an ultra thick 100% recycled stock to take its place, but I haven't found one in this thickness that meets my high quality standards, so I'm keeping this gorgeous paper on the team. I like to pair it with recycled envelopes to increase the "green" score if the project allows.

The following stocks are premium papers that cost a little bit more and add something special . . .

4. This felt texture paper is a recent addition to the Green Quince paper family, and it is fast becoming a favorite. In either bright or off-white, this 100 lb eggshell texture cardstock adds dimension and softness to your invitations. The surface feels luxe and soft to the touch, and it's 100% post-consumer recycled as well.

5. Sometimes what you really want is a little sparkle. That's why I love this 111 lb shimmer paper with a healthy helping of shimmery gold sparkles throughout. This cardstock also comes in a few variations with silver shimmer and/or brighter white background, and those options are available at your request. It's a 100% recycled cardstock which is so rare for shimmers. Sheen is hard to capture in photos, so please ask for a swatch if you are interested in this beauty.

6. Last, but not least, is our house letterpress paper: Crane's Lettra in 110 lb pearl white. When it comes to letterpress, you want a paper that has a buttery softness that will showcase the letterpress impression well. Crane's Lettra is the Rolls Royce of cotton papers. I stock this particular color because of its elegant softness, but bright white and ecru are also available by special order. For those who crave an ultra thick letterpress invitation, I can also provide this paper in the 220lb luxe thickness.

Lettra is made from cotton scraps that are leftover from clothing construction, so it's 100% recycled.

Just for fun, here is the paper line-up from another angle:

Most of the time, one of these papers is the perfect fit for a project, but every once in a while, a custom design will call for something different. There are a number of other stocks that I might recommend in those situations. I'm always open to your custom paper requests as well. Would you like to see some swatches? Visit my site: www.greenquince.com and click on the "Contact" link to send me a message.

Happy Thursday!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Whether you are engaged or married, happily single or seriously searching, long-distance dating or personals perusing, blissfully attached or comfortably familiar, a combination of the above or a category all your own, I hope that Valentine's Day brings you time with someone(s) you love unconditionally and without reservation, be it family, friend, or soul mate. 

xoxo

Sweet Mexican Embroidery Pendant by Jennifer Morris Beads on Etsy

Turntable Kitchen

I've been cooking up some good things in the Green Quince studio lately, and one of them was a surprise that was sooo hard to keep! This month I am very pleased to contribute a custom letterpress card as a little Valentine's treat for subscriber's to Turntable Kitchen's Pairings Box. Have you heard about the Pairings Box from TK? The box is sent monthly to subscribers, and it contains exclusive recipes for a yummy meal, a premium ingredient to use in the recipes, and a record with carefully selected tunes to pair with the meal. It was started by an awesome local couple that I had the pleasure of working with a couple of years ago when they hired me to create their wedding stationery. This month, in honor of Valentine's Day, subscribers have received a letterpress card hot off the Green Quince press. Here's what it looks like:

You can check out the Pairings Box and subscribe for future boxes here. I also have a few letterpress cards left, so if you subscribe to the box for future months, shoot me an e-mail, and I'll send you a card so you don't miss out.

What do you have planned for Valentine's day? Will you share a special dinner with your honey?

Wedding Favor Cuteness

These little bottles of matches are pitch-perfect wedding favors. Who can resist? These are from Etsy shop Tortoise Loves Donkey where you can also find mini terrariums and fabulous air plants galore that would also be great wedding favors.

adorable perfect match wedding favors

Have a lovely day!

My Weekend

Bananas are delicious. I always like to have a bunch at the ready, but sometimes life happens, and a banana or two (or three, ahem) gets a little overly ripe before it's eaten. Of course, yummy recipes like banana bread are perfect in these situations, but for some reason the recipe I want to make almost never equals the exact number of overly ripe bananas I have on hand. Recently we started peeling them, wrapping them in plastic wrap, and freezing them in a Ziploc. Now we can add to the frozen banana stash until there are enough to bake something. (Why didn't I think of this sooner?!)

After seeing a photo of a banana cake with salted caramel frosting recently, I became fascinated with the sound of the flavor combination and decided to try to recreate it with our frozen banana supply. So, I scoured the interwebs for recipes and settled upon the combo of the banana cupcake recipe from Baked and the salted caramel frosting from Baked Bree. (but with this vanilla bean salted caramel instead, and I added in about 1.5 T of butter at the very end to thicken the caramel sauce a tad). 

Um, hello heaven! This was the most amazing combination. To serve, I sprinkled some gold sprinkles (just like Bree) and swirled more of the salted caramel on top. I'm not usually a fan of cream cheese icing, but this icing is perfection. I think it's the caramel that makes it so great. The combos of banana and caramel, sweet and salty are made for each other. This recipe combo is going into our favorite treat file, and I look forward to the next time we have four overripe bananas, so I can make it again.

Cupcake liners from Layer Cake Shop, cake plate from Crate & Barrel

What did you do this weekend? I hope it was sweet.