seattle – custompaper.com/blog

March 19, 2020

Watch your love grow with personalized wedding favors!

One of the most common questions that we hear at Of The Earth is whether we can print a personal message on our handmade seed paper goods. We do accommodate all kinds of custom orders, and we love these requests.

We are introducing more products that help streamline these requests, by using customizable templates. This allows the favors to ship more quickly, within three days, and eliminates proofing costs.

Personalized Seed Paper Circles

These personalized seed paper circles have room for both the bride and groom’s name (or, of course, both brides or grooms!) as well as the wedding date.

Customized seed paper favors

For a simpler favor, we also have seed paper circles available in three colors with custom initials. These favors are also extremely affordable, starting at just $0.58 apiece.

Customized Seed Paper with Initials

Another option for personalized favors with initials are these cute 2″ seed paper squares with a frame of watercolor branches. These are printed on the back with planting instructions.

Customized Hexagon Favors

These customized seed paper hexagons pair our handmade seed paper with a modern calligraphy font. They can also be printed with a variety of font styles.

Personalized Seed Paper Hearts for Wedding Favors

This is our newest customizable design for seed paper hearts. The botanical print has several options, as does the font used for the names of the bride and groom. These can be ordered with or without the planting instructions on the reverse side.

The best feature of all of these favors is that your guests can plant them afterward to sprout wildflowers, and watch your love grow and bloom.

Seed paper sprouting

September 25, 2019

Rainy Days – Seattle weather inspires paper and silk artists to create “mood goods”

Seed paper cloud 34S — Seed paper cloud in paper 34S

It’s officially fall, and here in Seattle that means the rain and clouds are back after a warm, dry summer. Here at Of The Earth, we’re experiencing the rainy day blues in a more positive way – inspiration!

“Into each life some rain must fall.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

This collection of our lotka paper, handmade in Nepal, fits right in with the mood and weather we’re having. This is a lightweight paper with many decorative and artistic uses, including wrapping gifts.

Seattle Blues Lotka paper collection

Any discussion of color and mood would be incomplete without mentioning our Earth Silk Ribbon. These hand dyed, rich colors pull me right into a relaxed, rainy-day attitude.

Our seed paper cloud shapes are available in a variety of our seeded and petal papers, with or without printing. You can also create a custom design to be printed on them for your business or event.

Seed Paper Cloud 04S — Seed paper cloud in paper 04S

Stay dry out there!

June 4, 2019June 4, 2019

SeaTac Airport Seattle Made Store Opening!

The SeaTac Airport C Gate could be renamed the “C is for Craft” Gate. In May 2019 a new shop opened there in partnership with Seattle Made that offers locally-made products for travelers.

Only in C Gate will you find Of The Earth seeded paper cards featuring photos taken by our own Kevin Graham.

card rack — Seed paper goods in Sea-Tac Seattle Made shop

Of The Earth is a member of Seattle Made, a group who work together to grow their production businesses. The mission is “to grow and support a diverse ecosystem of urban manufacturers and producers that expand opportunities for local ownership and meaningful employment, build our region’s long-term resiliency, and celebrate Seattle’s unique cultural identity.” Of The Earth’s business aligns perfectly with this effort and we are fortunate to have our products featured in the airport store.

Next time you travel by air via SeaTac’s C Gate, stop by the Seattle Made shop to buy a card, or other locally made gifts, and take us with you!

May 1, 2019May 1, 2019

Green Babies Seed Paper Onesie Plant Me Wildflower Shapes

We’re having fun with our new shape: a onesie that can be printed and personalized on many of our handmade seeded papers. Ideal for a #babyshower, #namingceremony or a #birthannouncement.

When choosing favors for your next party, keep future celebrations in mind. We want to ensure that the next generation of babies have plenty of wildflowers and nature to enjoy during their precious #mudpie making years.

Of The Earth strives to leave only baby-sized carbon footprints.

April 2, 2019

Cherry Blossoms Arrive

When I was young and the cherry trees would spring into their glorious pink, we used to singsong: “popcorn popping on the apricot tree.” I still don’t know why.

But it popped into my head last week when I first started to see those trees blush. Here are some papers at Of The Earth that put in me mind of the cherry trees now blooming in Seattle.

It also made me think of our blossom wrapping papers and our handmade pink larkspur paper and pink larkspur stickers which look like cherry blossoms as in these images:

pink larkspur seeded paper heart

March 22, 2019

Of The Earth: New Employee

Of The Earth Seattle - Ribbon and Paper shop

Hello, my name is Ardis and I’m the newest staff member making fabulous things for you here at Of The Earth. A lifelong crafter, I consider this my “unicorn job:” being surrounded by rainbows of silk ribbons, luscious and soft handmade paper, and bright graphic printed papers from Asia. I began training here in October and am excited to see what this Spring’s “wedding season” will bring. Owners Kevin and Lori promise it will be a whirlwind ride – and we’re ready for it! I look forward to helping fiancés and their families find the perfect combination of sustainable and beautiful items to celebrate their special days.

The ribbon I’m holding is my current favorite, 076. It makes me think of city lights at night, a fast roadway, and dramas set in downtown Chicago.

August 6, 2015

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.

January 14, 2015

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

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.

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

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.