KevinGraham – Page 3 – custompaper.com/blog

January 2, 2015

End of the year recap – Looking forward to 2015

This time of year always has us scrambling; rushing to pack and ship orders in time for the holidays, rushing to get gifts wrapped for friends and family, rushing to complete our end of year inventory, rushing up and down I-5 to visit our loved ones.

Now that the new year has begun the next rush is on. Our annual local bridal show begins next weekend at the Washington State Convention center which was built right over I-5 where it passes through the center of downtown Seattle. We have new designs to add to our existing line of plantable invitations. We have new equipment going into this bridal season that we bought at last year’s Stationery Show in NY. We have just 7 more days to put the finishing touches on the invitations that we hope resonate with our Seattle customers.

Once that show is over we begin building a new (sturdier) crate for the NY Gift Show that runs Jan 31 – Feb 4 at the Javits center. At the end of February we are excited to be participating for the first time in the largest show of its kind in the nation: The SewExpo http://www.sewexpo.com/. We are excited to be part of the show and look forward to meeting many of you there.

We are excited to see what these next few months bring but want to give a quick shout out to a couple of our 2014 customers who shared their photos with us.

Here is a photo of our Earth Silk ribbon that Heather Edgar sent.

She runs her own business: Evergreen Flower Co. of Columbus, Ohio and was kind enough to send these beautiful photographs. Thanks Heather!

One thing we love about the Seattle Wedding Show is the special connections we make with our local brides. We met Rebecca and Thomas at last year’s wedding show along with Rebecca’s mom. They were that couple you meet who you can see married forever, their shared energy and enthusiasm were infectious. We had a great time working with them on all of their wedding plans, this pair was doing it all! They loved that we offered so many do it yourself options as they were planning to do just as much as they could (including making their own rings). After their event they shared their wedding web site with us (which is where this photo is from). You should take a look!

Seattle couple assembles Of The Earth invitations at home.

Lastly we were excited to work on these holiday cards with a great creative team from Darien, Connecticut. Thanks for letting us share your project Jim! GW Hoffman

November 15, 2014

Earth Silk Hand Dyed Sash Wedding Gown Success!

We are so fortunate to have such wonderful customers! We recently were contacted by a customer who celebrated a fall 2014 wedding who just wanted to say “Thanks” for our contribution to her wedding day. We had worked with her to find the right silk color for her wedding, not realizing until receiving the photos just how prominent our Earth Silk ribbon would be on display on her big day. It was so wonderful to have a window into her event and see the happiness on display. Thank you so much for sharing! We love how beautiful you made our silk ribbon look!

Earth Silk ribbon in beautiful fall tones. — The beautiful bride wearing a hand dyed Earth Silk ribbon sash of her own construction.

Hand dyed silk ribbon ties bride and wedding together — Earth Silk sash ties autumn wedding details together.

Wedding gown with an Earth Silk Sash — Earth Silk hand dyed ribbon sash on a wedding gown.

Photographer: R.T. Photography, Louisville, KY
Alterationist: Heather Brown Alteration, Louisville, KY
Flowers: By the Bride, Erin Tims

October 28, 2014

Pocket folds are finally here! DIY invitation pocket folders in Lotka handmade paper

Handmade paper pocket fold invitation — Lotka pocket fold invitation

Lotka pocket fold invitation 13 x 7 — Handmade Lotka pocket fold invitation

We are loving our new die cut machine and all of the wonderful dies that we have to experiment with. For our 2015 bridal season we hope to stun the brides with these unique, highly customizable, earth friendly invitation suite holders. These are currently being made in all of our card weight stocks. Both the cotton and the lotka handmade papers display wonderfully. Pictured here are the lotka fibers. We offer the seeded papers too!

Lotka pocket fold invitation — Lotka paper pocket fold invitation

Currently we have them sold only as single pieces. Coming soon will be full invitation suites with reply cards, custom printed invitations and envelopes. We will also be adding options for you to embellish these and make them more personalized with matching ribbon, belly bands and hand dip dyed edges.

You can find the new pocket folds here, invitation_pocket_fold order your sample or set today.

October 23, 2014

Earth Silk Sample Cards – At long last; longer lengths!

Silk ribbon sample set — Hand dyed silk ribbon sample set

Since we started our silk dying studio in 2010, we have known there was a need for this, now we have finally made it happen. The Earth Silk Sample Set gives you a look at our 90 blends in a new way. The 1 inch wide lengths will let you see how the dyes interact with the material in a more informative way than our 5/8″ swatches can. The eight yard lengths allow you to see how the patterns that form on some of our blends, repeat. Unlike the swatch card where the silk is grouped in numerical order, on the silk sample cards we have arranged them by color.

Earth silk sample sets — Hand dyed silk ribbon sample cards

You can find these sets on our samples page here custompaper.com/samplesets.

We have numbered them on both sides, with the silk overlapping by a half inch. You will notice that the ribbon’s number is centered on the correct color. You can also use the web site as a quick reference if you are unsure.

October 20, 2014

The gift that keeps on giving

I love giving a beautifully packaged gift but struggle with the potential waste produced by feeding my pleasure in that. Being a paper maker and ribbon artists I am surrounded by beautiful products and ever expanding combinations of colors, flowers and materials. This year I have some new items to add to my packaging arsenal. Plantable gift tags printed with beautiful water color designs. Not only are they functional but they will biodegrade and produce an array of wildflowers.

These tiny seed paper tags are printed with a watercolor reproduction of four of the flowers that will sprout from this paper. Three each of the four prints are included in each package for a total of 12 cards priced at $3.50 a set. They measure 2.25″ tall by 1.25″ wide, and look lovely attached to a wrapped gift, bundle of bake goods or tucked into a bouquet of flowers being delivered to a friend.

October 8, 2014

Love blooms!

The staff at Of The Earth have been having a great time creating new products with our recently purchased dye cut machine. One of our new favorite items are these plantable hearts.

They come in plain or printed seeded white cotton paper (shown above) as well as seeded pink or purple larkspur paper . Packaged in sets of 50 they retail for $11.00 a pack ($15.00 if printed).

All of our paper is tree free and produced in our studio in Seattle, Washington. You can buy them here: heart_shapes and on Etsy www.etsy.com/shop/flowerseedpaper

August 25, 2014

Hand dyed earth silk flower pin – Seattle Bridal magazine feature

Featured in a Seattle Bridal magazine our Earth Silk ribbon adorns the model's dress. — Earth Silk flower pin by Sashaco

Earlier this year we mentioned our involvement with Sachaco, a Kirkland, Washington small business that uses our hand dyed Earth Silk line of ribbon to create stunning silk flowers used as pins and hair decorations. This great shot was from the Seattle Bride magazine where you can see our silk on the model’s hip.

Soon we will have images from Sashaco’s newest design – a Seattle Seahawks inspired flower so you can show your team spirit at work without a bulky sweatshirt.

June 13, 2014

How to Make 100 Ribbon Embellishments

We were thrilled to receive news of our inclusion in the latest book by the talented Elaine Schmidt: How to Make 100 Ribbon Embellishments: Trims, rosettes, sculptures, and baubles for fashion, decor, and crafts.

“Create amazing trims, butterflies, flowers and more with How to Make 100 Ribbon Embellishments. With clever techniques and a huge selection of ribbon styles to choose from, the timeless art of making ribbon embellishments is better than ever. Let author Elaine Schmidt take you through 100 ribbon designs, offering helpful hints and tips to help you make beautiful accessories to place anywhere.”

This is the second time Elaine has used our products, the first was in her second book The Complete Photo Guide To Ribbon Crafts. The tutorial using our silk ribbon is featured below.

This is actually not our first foray into the publishing world. Our products have also been included in Green Wedding, It’s Easy Being Green and The Everything Green Wedding Book.

Thank you, Elaine – and congrats on yet another lovely publication!

May 27, 2014

New York Stationery Show 2014

We just returned from a whirlwind adventure to attend the New York Stationery Show where we launched many new items (including show favorite – our hand dipped cards which are remnant pieces that soak up the remaining dye bath from our silk work). It was a long awaited trip, as this is the largest wholesale trade show in the United States.

Of The Earth booth display at national stationery show 2014 — NSS booth display

“Now in its 68th year, the National Stationery Show® is the world’s most comprehensive marketplace for greeting cards, stationery and related lifestyle products. No other trade fair in the U.S. matches the depth and caliber of stationery selection at the NSS—or serves as the launching pad for so many young, creative businesses each year.”

Silk ribbon and handmade paper booth display — Booth display – silk and paper

It is always a pleasure to connect and draw inspiration from other creatives in our market. In the past we have been intimidated by the quality of art and artist on display at this show which prevented our exhibiting, there are just stunning levels of creativity and craftsmanship on display. We have since realized that while we may not be at the top of the pack or offering the latest trends, we have unique and creative art to contribute and in turn have our place among industry leaders.

Of The Earth paper and silk display — Silk ribbon and handmade papers at NSS 2014

A fun highlight was seeing our Seattle neighbor and sometimes silk collaborator Real Card Company at the show, and finally meeting the principals in our other longtime Seattle stationer Silberman/Brown. It was a fantastic (albeit exhausting) trip and we are already looking forward to attending next year!

May 11, 2014

The trouble with online reviews – How do you decide who to listen to?

A close friend of mine just had one of the worst weeks a small business owner can have. There are many challenges we face and overcome from every angle you can imagine but one of the toughest is from difficult people. He had to fire an employee this week that may end up dragging out into much drama over the next several months (or even years if it goes all courtroom). I think the hardest part for him were the very personal attacks that this employee threw around like so many dangerous, virulent seeds. These squeaky wheels get so much more attention than they deserve and as the one under attack, we often feel that there must be some truth to their accusations, otherwise they wouldn’t be saying those hurtful things right? Not so. Some people are only happy when they are stepping on other people. We need to be able to filter those people out.

With that in mind I have found a way to address an unhappy individual that I dealt with last November. I wanted to respond to her Yelp review, I wanted to find her own Yelp business page and leave her a few choice comments, I wanted to scream and throw a tantrum, but I chose to not dignify her comments with a response. And then today we received a lovely email from a customer and this is how I have decided to address the issue; by speaking about it here on our own blog.

Thanks for reading and understand that in our very connected world your every action has the ability to ripple into far greater lengths than ever before, so be nice!

Hi Kevin!

I happened to go on Yelp today and noticed that you have two Of The Earth pages on Yelp…and the more current one has only one review, a repeat of the one negative review from your original page. I wrote my own review with five stars, but combined with that other one you still only have a 3-star average.

If you didn’t create that Yelp page you can probably claim it and delete it — it’s better not to have two, so you should be able to just update the address on your original one, I’m not sure about that though. Let me know if you do delete that one and I’ll be happy to put my review on your other page.

Thanks again for the invitations — they are amazing!
Anna

Anna,

Thank you for your message. I am very glad that you are happy with your invitations.

Thanks for the gift of your time in leaving a public review for us. We really do appreciate it. I think Yelp can be a helpful tool (I have used it to find out about yoga studios close to home) but I have a bit of a beef with them (as you might guess) for more than just the Of The Earth listing but also from our many business owner friends who have spoken of their feelings of extortion when dealing with Yelp sales people.

We moved our business last July (and five years prior to that move). When we moved in 2008, our one five star review (at the time) moved with us. When we moved in 2013 to our dismay we discovered that our Yelp page was not going to move with us. Yelp had changed their policies and we had to rebuild, with new images and data our Yelp page for our new location. None of our reviews moved with us.

In December of last year we received our first review on Yelp in our new location. In Yelp’s business plan it made sense to them to ensure that that review was posted on both locations. You see, if we pay Yelp $1000 a month (no joke I talked to them at length) they ensure that any bad reviews are pushed to the bottom of the stack, perhaps even get lost on a back page, as long as the payments keep coming.

In life you have to take a few lumps, so we have put pictures and data and our hours of operation on Yelp but we don’t have to pay them or support them in any way. We also don’t have to tolerate extortion from potential customers, even if that means facing an unpleasant public statement of questionable veracity.

I am excited to read your review and again thank you for taking your time to let folks (on the interwebs) know that you were happy with your experience with us.

Wishing you the best,
Kevin

Kevin Graham
kevin@custompaper.com
www.custompaper.com
Of The Earth
7706 Aurora Avenue North
Seattle WA 98103
1.888.294.1526