Presenting…. Cellar Door Craft Company!

I recently took about a month off from invitations for a few reasons.

1. I needed a break. I still work full time, so when I come home from my day job I am exhausted – and still have another 8 hours of work to do. I barely sleep! This is a good and a bad thing – I love what I do (and I love all of you brides and grooms out there), so that helps to keep it enjoyable… but my mood suffers from time to time and I barely have time to do laundry =)

2. Holidays. Wow. What a frenzy November 24th-ish til January 2nd is. I decided to make a bunch of Christmas gifts this year instead of just buying buying buying. And that was a blast! But took up a lot of extra time. As Christmas was fast approaching, I knew I would never get it all done if I didn’t put the brakes on the invites for a while.

3. …and this is the most exciting part… I opened up a THIRD Etsy shop! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a while – it’s not just invitations that I like to make, but lots of little craft projects. Over the holiday prepping period as my sister and I were making our gifts, she finally said out loud that she wanted to start a shop for realsies. And then our friend Megan jumped on board. And then we all went crazy with ideas and plans!

So we opened up The Cellar Door Craft Company on January 14th and it has been a crazy last couple weeks!

We are handmaking a variety of items for yourself or your home, or as small gifts for anyone you know. Things like jewelry, refrigerator magnets, coasters, hand warmers, wreaths, and many more new items to come. Here is a peek:

 

        

Since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, we are having a sale of 20% off your entire order from now til February 14th by using coupon code VDAY2013 at checkout!

Check out everything in our shop here, like us on Facebook here, follow our blog here, or follow us on twitter here.  And, of course, on Pinterest here. We also have an Instagram page (cellardoorcraft) that we are continually updating with photos of the new items going into the shop.

We will also be offering giveaways from time to time so stay tuned for that!

I will be back in the invitation business shortly and hope to have some new designs put together in the next couple weeks – as soon as I get some sleep.

 

Pinterest – DO IT!

I’ll try to keep this one short and sweet. Just a few words about Pinterest.

For those of you who have been living under a rock, Pinterest is this new website (well, maybe not entirely new anymore, but still kind of exclusive – you need to be invited to join (this sounds a lot more hoity-toity than it really is – if you need an invite, just ask)) where you can keep collections of items you find anywhere online. You post these items onto a “pinboard” – sort of like an old-fashioned cork board you used to have in your bedroom growing up (mine had a gold star chart, probably pictures of unicorns and all things sparkly, and the random Highlights magazine article).  Let me explain how it works:

So you’re obsessed with, say, giraffes. You’re cruising the internet highway in search of the perfect giraffe tattoo. When lo and behold, you come upon this:

 

It’s perfect. It’s just the tattoo you’ve always talked about since you were a little girl (when connect the dots was the epitome of “art”). But before you commit to it, you see this one:

This one suits your adult personality a lot better and you think it would go over a lot better at work and with your parents. Plus you wouldn’t have to worry about your kids drawing all over your legs while you’re asleep. Well with Pinterest, you can not only store them together in one place (thereby not cluttering precious hard drive space with scattered giraffe images), but you can also share those images with others – and FIND images from others who share your interests. Hence – Pinterest.

This is a PERFECT resource for someone planning a wedding and trying to organize the various themes they’re considering. Or a place to gather inspiration if they are feeling overwhelmed or stressed out. It’s also perfect when you’re thinking about reorganization, crafting, redecorating, traveling, or if you just like art, fashion, cool stuff, photography, animals… which I would hope covers most people. If you don’t find yourself included in any of those categories, then you may as well stop reading right now and crawl back under that rock.

So how it works is this: you sign up (email, password, the usual). Then you can link your twitter and Facebook accounts and find your friends. Then you and all your friends can “follow” each other’s pinboards (and the boards of anyone else whose collection you come upon and notice that they have the same exquisite taste in giraffes as you do). You can create as many boards as you’d like. You can pin as many things to each board as you’d like. You can re-pin things that others have pinned. Plus, each time you log in, you are brought to a homepage where you can see what your friends and those you are following have recently pinned. I’m not going to go into further detail because I’m assuming that by now you’re either a) already signed up or b) in the process of sending me an email requesting an invite.

You can follow me by clicking on this link. I have a bunch of boards dedicated to wedding stuff (and peacocks) because those are the things that I find myself obsessed about the most. I’ve also started a cross promotion with the EtsyWeddingTeam where a new theme is featured each week (this week it’s Vintage Weddings) so if you follow me (or any of us) you may find yourself inspired by a variety of items that would work for your wedding or someone you know.

Happy pinning!

Pin(terest)stripes!

Ok, so I’ve finally gone and joined Pinterest. When I first signed up, I got this message saying that you have to receive an invitation in order to join, and that I had been put on the waiting list. I’m sorry, what?? Annoyed, I forgot all about it. Until 20 minutes later when I got another email that said I had received my invitation to join. Ok, not so annoying.

Then something wonderful happened. I signed in with facebook, and it AUTOMATICALLY linked me to my facebook friends so that I was following their Pinterest boards (for those of you that aren’t cool enough to have received your invitation yet, basically how it works is you just browse through all sorts of collections of things that other people have found, liked, and “pinned” to a virtual bulletin board. See something you like? Re-pin it to your own board (and you can create an exponential number of boards).

Hint – this can be very useful if you’re planning a party, a wedding, or compiling ideas for gifts you can make (or buy) for the upcoming holidays and need a place to stash all your ideas for sorting through later on.

Downside? It gets addicting. Quick. One click here leads you down a virtual rabbit hole of lovely things, and before you know it, you forgot what you had originally been searching for. Upside? In the meantime your brain has exploded with new creative ideas!

So I came across this photo:

 

…and I fell in LOVE with the stripey bridesmaid dresses! How original and fun, but notice how it still looks very modern, traditional, and vintage all at the same time?? Totally awesome. This got me thinking about using STRIPES as your wedding color! Pick a shade (in this case I stuck with black because of this photo, but you could really do any color stripe) and run with it! Check out my collection of beautiful items for your stripey wedding!

Printable Place Cards by ThePoshEvent
(incidentally, all of Brigitte’s items are printable, and they are also all extremely affordable and fabulous!)

Striped Tie by MeandMatilda

Wedding Invitation by fullydesigned

Ring Pillow by daniellehensley

Paper Pom Decoration by pomtree

Clutch by thesocialseam

Striped Wedding Band by AdziasJewelryAtelier

Striped Napkin by comfyheaventabledeco

Paper Straws by isakayboutique

Chevron Invitations by breavie

Striped Dress by pavlinadadakova

Cupcake Picks by DarlinglovesDapper

Favor Bags by ThePartyFairy

Bridesmaid Clutch Set by ao3designs

So there you have it. Perfect striped wedding. Enjoy! I hope to see some of you on Pinterest because I can tell you that’s where I’ll be spending oodles of time over the next couple days!