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Be-leaf in yourself! Die Cut Seed Paper Shapes with messages you will Fall for.

Plant Me Leaf 60S
Printed Seed Paper Leaf Shape in 60S

Washington might be the Evergreen State, but we are definitely starting to see some autumn colors here in Seattle! Fall is one of the most beautiful times of the year in so much of the country. If you love autumn leaves as much as we do, here are some of our products that would be perfect for a fall wedding or event.

Maple Leaves
Pressed Japanese Maple Leaves

The crafting possibilities are endless with these pressed red Japanese Maple leaves. Attach them to paper goods for decorations or use them in resin art. We also offer custom invitations with pressed leaves added to create a unique and memorable invitation for your wedding or other event!

Red Japanese Maple Leaf invitation
Custom invitation with Maple Leaves
Maple Leaf Accent Invitation
Custom Lotka Invitation with Maple Leaf

We also have a whimsical leaf die cut shape, which is available in a variety of our seeded papers in printed and blank options. The leaf shown below is made of our handmade, #12S seeded paper which contains kenaf fibers.

#12S Leaf
Seed Paper Leaf Die Cut in #12S

 

You can also get creative this fall with our pressed oak leaves, available below:

Oak Leaves
Pressed Oak Leaves

Does autumn inspire you to stay in and get crafty as the weather gets cooler? Show us your projects or contact us with ideas for custom printed items!

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Summer 2019 Of The Earth customers showing off their many talents with our handmade seed paper and hand dyed silks.

hand holding a jute wrapped dishtowel with a green gift tag

Of The Earth customers had a busy summer. Here are some images that they shared recently of how they used our products.  They include wedding invitations, delicate jewelry, custom art, seeded goods and more!

Wedding Suites:

image of candle, wax seal and a card
photo: A. Brauer

Customized seeded wedding card

pink toned wedding invitation with sweet peas and ribbon
photo: Kristin Paige

Blush toned Earth Silk

purple colored gift wrapping
photo: Carrie Anne Fox

Purple Earth Silk

Gift Giving:

hand holding a jute wrapped dishtowel with a green gift tag
photo: Amelia Reddick

Green Seeded Lotka gift tags

three lavender flower pots on a glass table with dirt in plastic bags and flower seed paper butterflies attached
photo: Jen Noguez

Little seeded butterflies with blue larkspur

Artwork:

picture of orange flowers printed on white paper
photo: Marissa Kay

Printed on lotka paper

close up of botanical pendant
photo: srod2448

Queen Anne’s lace blossom used as flowering tree design

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Fairy Glen and Handfasting Wedding Ceremony and Celebration Traditions

printed hand dyed silk ribbon
Hand dyed silk ribbon with hand lettering
Studio Chavelli hand lettering on silk ribbon

At the end of winter, a petite curly haired woman came into our shop looking for special paper to print her friend’s painting onto. It was an image of Fairy Glen in Scotland. She planned to use the image in her wedding invitation.

Hand dyed silk ribbon with black print
Printed silk ribbon

While she found our lotka seeded cardstock to be perfect for her project, she was also enchanted by the idea of using our hand dyed ribbons for a #handfasting ceremony. I told her that we can even print her and her fiance’s names on the ribbon. I hope we see her in the shop again soon because that would be a fun project.

Printed silk ribbon with white lettering
Hand dyed silk satin ribbon with holiday message

The green and gold ribbon image was posted in Pinterest by Studio Chavelli, one of our customers. It features hand-calligraphy for a bouquet. The pink and red images are printed here in our shop. So you can get a custom message printed in black or white.

You are welcome to come visit our shop in Seattle and find inspiration for your next celebration.

Here are some links to details about #FairyGlen and #Handfastings.
Handfasting
Fairy Glen

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Of The Earth Silk Ribbon and Seed Paper Goods

It is long past time to be sharing these photos that have been inspirational to our brides.

We have had the great fortune of having our paper and ribbon goods featured on many talented designers, artists and photographers Instagram feeds.  While we have our own feeds (ote_seattle, and of_the_earth) they really don’t hold a candle to the creative skills shown in the photos we have seen.

What we have planned here is to share with you the many photos with proper attribution.

If you do end up sharing these with your friends and family, please be sure to give the appropriate nod or mention of the original group of skilled individuals so their work is not in vain.

Lotka Seed Paper Invitation
Lotka Seed Paper Invitation – Letter and Line Studio

Styling: @bixbayandpine Photo: @toniechristine  Original post: @letterandlinestudio

Moelleux Events Floral Design
Florals: Moelleux Events

Silk Ribbon: Of The Earth    Florals: @moelleux_events    Photographer: @alyssaryanphotography

Hand Dyed Silk Ribbon on a Floral Bouquet
Floral design by Smashing Petals Hand dyed silk ribbon by Of The Earth

Coordination: @krisannaelizabeth  Silk Ribbon: @ote_seattle  Photo: @dandyfineparty  Florals: @smashingpetals

 

Hand made seed paper birthday invitation
Custom printed hand made paper invitation.

Design: @celestecclark, Photo: @wilsonwife, Paper and Printing: Of The Earth

 

Hand dyed silk ribbon on custom vow books
Krisanna Elizabeth

Photo and design: @krisannelizabeth, Silk Ribbon: Of The Earth

 

Hand dyed silk ribbon
Erika Paige

Photo: erikapaige_sea, Hand Dyed Silk Ribbon: Of The Earth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Wedding Experts! That’s what they called us!

The Seattle Bride Magazine just shared a link on Facebook that talks about an article we contributed to, and they called us “experts”.

Ha! We fooled them, didn’t we?

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Of-The-Earth/

Here’s a direct link to the article.

http://seattlebridemag.com/expert-wedding-advice

We come off sounding pretty good actually.  The quote is taken from a larger message they asked us to contribute last year.  You can find the complete message here on our blog if you do some digging.

 

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Seattle Bride Feature – A question of etiquette for the modern couple

Seattle Bride Magazine Cover

As a wedding professional with 20 years experience, I am regularly consulted on proper etiquette.  I always reply with two things in mind; what I already know about the event in question and what would kindness dictate?

In most answers I attempt to influence my customer with kindness as the guiding principal.  Should we include everyone’s name on the invitation or just the bride’s parents if they are issuing the invitation?  If you risk hurting someone’s feelings, choose kindness.  Should we send thank you notes to every guest that attended or only ones that brought gifts?  Were you happy that they attended?  Send them a note to express your thanks.  Choose kindness.  Should we include information about our gift registry on our invitation?  Do you want your guest to feel like a gift is their admission ticket to your wedding?  Don’t mention gifts with your invitation.  Having your family and friends witness your wedding vows has nothing to do with loot and everything to do with supporting the new couple from the very beginning of the sometimes rocky journey that is a marriage.  Choose kindness.  Don’t cheapen your ceremony with the slightest impression of greed.

If someone is asking their invitation guy for advice; they are either trying to find out quickly without doing their own research or they are checking to see if their mom is really right.  In most cases, mom is right so listen to her first.  She represents half of the invited guests and knows what is common or appropriate for those guests.  You may need to temper what mom offers up as there are two families being joined and they may have different ideas of what is proper.  This can be based on cultural or regional etiquette that is best to work out with the families involved.  What this becomes is a learning moment for the bride and groom, one of many in the planning of the event.  You need to ask the question of each other “Is it important to you that we are formal or casual in our planning and execution for our event?  Once you agree on the tone you can ensure that you follow the etiquette that represents the proper level of formality.

To ensure that you follow proper etiquette for your event you really have to have a conversation (or several) with your parents, with your bride or groom to be, with your wedding planner, and even with your invitation guy.  Once you have gathered the myriad opinions I suggest you make your decision based on kindness.  There really are a million ways you can plan your special day and once you have decided what is proper for your event, there will be opinions contrary to yours.  If you do choose kindness, it will never be the wrong answer.

Kevin Graham

January 14, 2015

Of The Earth

A quote from this article was published on page 50 in the January 2015 edition of the Seattle Bride Magazine.

 

 

 

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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.

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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

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Hand addressing envelopes – how to stand out from the junk mail.

Calligraphy sample from Long Village Lettering
How to stand out in the mail

In this incredibly busy week as we gear up for the new bridal season and work on last minute plans for tomorrow’s flight to New York to set up our booth at the National Gift Show in Manhattan I was stopped for a moment, long enough to sit down even to enjoy a piece of mail that the dripping wet postman just delivered.  It was a hand written thank you note from a woman in North Carolina who runs her own Calligraphy business.  She sent us one of our own seed embedded envelopes back in the mail with beautiful hand lettering on the front and a business card and note on the inside.

I think this can stand as a clear testament to the power of the personalized mailing.  I know everyone is busy, I know I am busy, and yet this simple act of handwriting really can stop someone in their tracks for a few moments and draw their attention to the message you are sending.

For all of you brides out their considering printing your guest’s names instead of hand writing them, don’t.  Just take the extra time to let the people (you care enough about to invite to one of the most exciting days of your life) know that you really care.  You really want them there and your own handwriting spells it out for them.  It is that personal touch missing from so many areas of our lives today.  Your extra effort will be noticed and appreciated.  It really does make a difference.

Okay so clearly we don’t all have amazing handwriting like the image above, but still you have family you can enlist to help, you can pick up a book or watch a video demo for pointers and tips on improving your own handwriting.  Start early and it will be manageable, and worth it.