handsome prints

Just something I'm working on lately, thought you might like to see what I'm up to. Not sure what these are for yet, but I'm really digging making them. Obviously they are still a bit rough, but I'll see where the wind blows before I finish them up! Love to hear feedback!

sneak peak... los angeles

A sneak peek at our new Los Angeles wedding invitation design, which will be released next week on the Kenzie Kate site. I'm super proud of this one! The casual feel, the colors... everything about it screams "FUN WEDDING, GREAT COUPLE!" to me. I love the lack of fussiness, it's just so... relaxed. Like a happy couple!
I was so excited after getting these samples built that I had to share them right away, just a couple quick snaps with the camera phone and thru the magic of the internet... there you have it! You saw it here first!

new york weddings!

This summer I was all excited about this interview, but couldn't tell you guys about it. Now it's out and I can finally spill the beans! I went to New York for the day and did a photoshoot and an interview with New York Magazine for their Fall/Winter Weddings edition. I was chosen to be their stationery expert for this edition. So exciting! I am really happy with the end result, especially since both the writer and the photographer did a fantastic job conveying the relaxed yet professional spirit at Kenzie Kate (and my purple dress looks sassy in print!) This totally made my week.

menagerie

Placecards shaped like animals from JonNi. The horses are my favorite, because they appear to be galloping when you look at it from an angle. There's also peacocks, french bulldogs, butterflies, elephants and a menagerie of other creatures.

Introducing Marietta

Inspired by county fairs, swiss dot, seersucker, peaches and long afternoons on the porch, "The Marietta" is the newest addition to Kenzie Kate's collection. Contact me if you're interested, it's not up on the site yet. About $1875 for 100 sets (everything pictured is included).

catching up on your correspondence?

I'm so excited to announce the newest addition to the Kenzie Kate collection! Our bran' spankin' new Correspondence Sets! We've custom made these amazing limited edition wooden boxes and filled them with all our favorite note cards and a rainbow of envelopes. There's a total of 50 notecards and 50 envelopes in there! The ultimate desk accessory, if you will...
I'm so proud of this set, it's truly something I would love to give and (especially) GET as a gift. I couldn't be more excited to show it to you guys! I really hope you like it! You can check them out more closely here.

vintage stamps!

People always ask me where they can get vintage stamps (a la all the Martha Stewart Weddings invitation layouts). They can be tricky to find, especially in the right quantities and in nice combinations. That said... I give you Verde Studio. Specializing in just this sort of thing for wedding invitations, announcements or other special post. Have fun searching the amazing inventory!

fresh for '10!

Once a year I get to design new invitations for Kenzie Kate. It is by far my favorite time of year because I can dig thru my inspiration files and go crazy with fonts and patterns. This year I managed to complete three new invites that I'm really proud of. So please pardon me while I toot my own horn a little and share a little of my design work with you!


The St. Augustine is all hand drawn, each flower and pine cone started out as a doodle in my sketchbook. I scanned everything in and created a repeating pattern for the folder and used bits and pieces of the pattern for each individual piece of the set. I love this set for outdoor weddings. It's romantic and quirky and cheerful all at the same time and I love that it takes on a totally different feel in different color schemes (check out the "More Colors" button at the bottom of this page).


The Miami has been on the drawing board for two years now. I wanted to create a sleek, retro-inspired invite that looked like something out of Dean Martin's scrapbook but would still be modern enough to incorporate the great colors and extra enclosures that come with a modern wedding. I had the pattern made, but the perfect script font evaded me until this year, but now that I've found it I'm so glad I waited.


The Copenhagen is one of those designs that just came very easily. I believe they call it "flow". The pattern, colors, and bird drawings sort of fell into place really neatly one day. This one looks great in a million different color schemes and fills a casual, folksy niche without being too "country kitchen". I love the combination of the big bold bird drawings with the small scale pattern on the folder. I also really dig that it's got a different lovebird on each piece of the set. Very romantic.

I hope you like them!

Need help on invitation wording?

There are so many decisions to make when planning a wedding it can really become overwhelming, even for the most organized of brides. Sometimes the most basic details surrounding your wedding can cause the largest headaches. One such detail is wedding invitation wording. Designing and creating the invitations is the fun part, but just trying to figure out a way to put it all into words and to make it personal to you ,can take lots of researching, writing and rewriting. The good news is, we just discovered a way to simplify the process. The Wedding Wording Wizard (say that 10 times fast!) is a tool developed by a company called Optimal Print. We love how it helps brides determine their invitation wording and only takes a few minutes to do!

When you go to the site, you fill out a mini questionnaire about bridal style, personal taste, reception plans etc., which allows you to customize the invite (names, your date, venue, time etc.). Then based on your answers it gives you the most fitting invitation wording to match your personality. Pretty cool, huh? Even if you don't do the exact wording it offers you, it's a great jumping off point, and will definitely help you get started...and we are big fans of anything that will make it easier on the bride and the decision making process.

To determine your wedding wording style go here!

invitation above by Inkylivie via etsy

nice package

Happy Friday everyone! I'm elbow deep in ribbon this afternoon, so I thought I'd post a great source for trimmings and such. Nice Package (don't you love the name?) sells gift tags, twine, ribbon, pendants, and all sorts of creative paraphenalia for making... a nice package! Check them out and have a great weekend!

Primele

Gorgeous, creative calligraphy from Primele. I love the details, it's all about the details!

neither snow...

Free-spirited calligraphy is my favorite. Don't get me wrong, there's a place in my heart for fussy script, but I just love the casual quality of the lettering by Neither Snow (as in "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.", I presume?). Via Oh Joy!
Have a great weekend everyone! Dell and I are celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary this weekend with my first real sushi dinner since finding out I was pregnant last January. I'm so looking forward to putting on pants with a lycra content of less than 80%, that do not come up to my boobs! Yay for regular-person pants, raw fish, and awesome husbands!

the girl and the boy together

I will leave you for a stormy weekend with this awesome set of invites spotted over at Brooklyn Bride. You can click here to read the full story, but basically, Andrew wrote a sweet little story when he was 6 about a boy and a girl (together). His mom saved it all these years (!), then he and his fiance Jami interlaced it with photos and the story of how they met and turned it into the ultimate engagement party invitation. Pretty cool, huh? Go here to see the full booklet.

ta daaaa!

The Notting Hill


The Metropolis


The Woodstock

They're up! You guys are the first to see these, I really hope you like them! Your comments were so nice on the drawings, I was encouraged to get them up sooner!
We drove up to Montreal yesterday in the midst of a mammoth Nor'Easter stretching from Providence to Albany straight thru to Montreal. We arrived safely last night after about 8 hours of white knuckle driving. We're here for the week, all cozy underneath about a foot and a half of snow. I'm so excited to settle into a white Christmas and to see my family. I'll be back to regular blogging on the second of January, with plenty of new ideas and an entirely new blog design! Have a cheerful, safe and happy holiday and we'll see you in the new year!

i went thru 6 erasers for these.

So I promised you a preview of next year's new designs, and here it is! I was really into drawing patterns these past few months, and really wanted to do all hand-drawn stuff for this year's new designs. I had a really great time doing the patterns for the folders, and then designing around them to create slightly whimsical, modern invites with a real hand-made feel. Above is the drawing I made for the "Woodstock" folder. It's actually a perfectly repeating pattern, (something I am very proud of). If you tile it with itself, it's seamless, and the trees just go on for ever and ever... I'm thinking of wallpapering my office with it. Either that, or the pattern for the "Metropolis" which is below. Also a perfectly repeating pattern, only this time the city goes on and on forever. This one took me so long to finish, but I'm really happy with the way it turned out.


The last one was a study in patience for me, although not a perfectly repeating pattern, it's also hand drawn. The concept behind this one was to take two lines, integrate and twist them up with lots and lots of other lines, then color the original two with a bright hue and the rest with a neutral. The two bright lines travel together thru the tangle of other lines, kind of like how two people committed to each other travel together thru life (my idea never sounded as dorky as it did just then). Eventually the lines come together on the invites and form a knot.


The final products are not up on the website yet, so I don't want to spoil the surprise, but you guys will be the first to know when they go up! Let me know what you all think.

kenzie kate's etsy adventure

I've been harboring a secret! We have been very industrious lately over at Kenzie Kate making holiday cards and gift tags for a new Etsy store! Pause for dramatic effect...
It's been a little hobby as of late, something we've been trying out as a way to play with paper. We use patterns and illustrations from our existing wedding invitations but we're trying different color combinations, different sizes and formats, and of course, we're offering them in smaller quantities. Not that I don't still love wedding invitations. I DO, I do! (In fact, I'm working on several new ones, set to come out in January, more on that later.) I just wanted to spread out a little and stretch my creative legs. Then, after the holidays, we'll experiment with more new stuff. Never a dull day! I'm so looking forward to this project! Anyway, you heard it here first folks! I'd love to know what you think.
We will be adding more and more stuff over the next week or so, so check back often!

today!

Today! Today is the day Kenzie Kate Invitations will be featured on Today! All my friends and family with TiVo or DVR are under strict orders to record between the hours of 7 and 10 AM, just in case I happen to miss it. Although, I can't for the life of me imagine why I would miss it. It's The TODAY Show! I'm not missing it. I think they are going to feature the Palm Springs, but I guess I'll just have to tune in to find out!

a little help where you can get it

Beautiful collections of stamps from Martha that might make anyone's placecard making, menu decorating, envelope addressing, or favor tagging just as easy as you please.

again!?

So as many of you already know, the Post Office is raising rates AGAIN (to $.42) on May 12th of this year. This seems particularly annoying because the rates went up by 2 cents last year at this time, throwing all the brides at the height of wedding season into a tizzy because they couldn't get good stamps at the new rate. We will surely go thru the same awkward phase again where our only choice for postage will be the Liberty Bell and no doubt a commemorative set of Chewbacca portrait stamps or some such unattractive nonsense. To boot, it doesn't appear as though Zazzle is offering a $.42 option just yet... Arg! So where does this leave us? Had I the choice, I think I would go with The Bell. It's not horrible, it's nothing. It's neutral. It's better than Chewy. What is everyone doing to get around this?

dress up your notes

My mom sent me these, and I thought you might find them useful for writing little notes to your bridesmaids, wedding shower thank-yous, or as an adorable hostess gift for a soon-to-be bride. Each blank note card has an image of a designer Parisian wedding gown and the set is available at Crate and Barrel. Not where I usually expect to find stationery, but I'll take it where I can find it! I love that while these are very "bridal" they aren't too cutesy.