Etsy Twitter Team: Bridal Daze Is Here!

Reposted from my original post at: Etsy Twitter Team: Bridal Daze Is Here!


In an effort to cure brides, grooms, and their families and friends of the impending "Bridal Daze" that usually occurs during wedding planning, the Etsy Twitter Team is embarking on a week-long journey to help all those affected by that “glazed over” expression when faced with so many choices.

On our blog this week you will find everything from handmade “Save the Date” cards and invitations, jewelry for the bride and attendants, candles, guest books, scrapbooks, gifts, a little food to tide you over, and thank you and note cards. It’s the one-stop-shopping location you dreamed of when you were a little girl dreaming about your wedding. (Ha! Like all of us girls did that, right?!)

After you have chosen your location and date for the wedding you will need two things: “Save the Date” cards and invitations to the big day. Here are some really great ideas for going handmade for your paper goods!!

Purple Lemon Designs

This shop has many choices for the handmade wedding. They carry personal stationery and handmade invitations as well as "Save the Date" stamps to create your own cards.

Check out Purple Lemon Designs' Wedding Stamps and Stationery shop section.

Glitzy Events

Glitzy Events specializes in customized wedding invitations. They offer a creative and affordable alternative for your special day.

Special offer: 5% off any full invitation order, must mention "Etsy Twitter" to qualify. Refund to be issued via PayPal.

Invites by Jen

This shop specializes in paper goods for your whole event, from "Save the Date" cards to programs for the ceremony.

All couples that place their deposit in June to book their wedding stationery for their future date will receive an additional 10% off their entire order. Mention "Etsy Twitter" to receive the discount. This special is on top of all the regular discounts she offers: if you order 150+ invitation sets you receive 10% off your invitation order and if you order your invitations through her you receive 10% off all additional stationery such as menus and programs.

A GRAND GIVEAWAY!!

In addition to the invaluable wedding information you will find this week on the Etsy Twitter Team blog, we are having a contest for all of you! Our team members have put together a lovely prize basket that one lucky commenter will win at the end of the week. Some of the prizes include stunning jewelry, a coffee cozy, and shop discount coupons!

In order to enter you must leave a comment on the blog about Bridal Daze. That comment must include a way to get a hold of you either through your user name link to your blog profile page or if you don’t have a blog you can email your info to etsytwitterteam@gmail.com. (Please be sure to include your comment in the email.) You may enter once per day. No Etsy Twitter Team members are allowed to win. At the end of the week I will draw a random winner from all the comments. If you know someone who is getting married soon, tell him or her about this contest so they can get in on the action! Good luck!

The Wedding Gift

OK, I’m going to bear a little shame publicly today. My best friend of over 20 years, Joolie, got married this year in March. I could not decide what to get her or what to make her. So I waited until my brain gave me an answer to take care of this. But it never did and months have passed. But do not worry for our friendship. We’re the types who get around to sending Christmas gifts in May with no hard feelings. It’s becoming comical at this point.

So I finally figured out what to send when I saw Patricia Hecker’s TattooDreams shop on Etsy. Her work fits my friends’ artistic aesthetics very well. The boxes seem so personal and yet so “made for anyone” at the same time. They talk to you and allow you to have your own dialogue with them. Plus Patricia’s eye for composition and layout is impeccable. I’ll let her pictures speak for themselves.

(images © Patricia Hecker)

More about Patricia: “I've made art since I was a child. I know I was born to be one! Making art has provided me with a career for the last 21 years, but it's more than that. It's what makes me complete. I travel the country with my husband of 23 years selling my work at juried fine art shows.

I've been selling on Etsy less than a year and am beginning to see repeat collectors buying my work. I find this exciting as the holidays approach. I've met wonderful people here on Etsy and really love having this marketplace to sell my TattooDreams body of work. The work I show here on Etsy is not what has funded my life, but a separate body of work that lets me play and explore. Both necessary ingredients to any artist.

I believe the imagery I use in my Tattoo Dream work to be translations from our dream state. The lasting visuals and fragments of thoughts and images are facets of our everyday life. These resonate into what we dream and they frolic in our subconscious. They are then born into the sharp contrast of black on wood.

To surround oneself with objects that are handmade is to surround oneself with the energy of the artist who made them.”

She also has a fine art line of work that she has done for the last 24 years, which can be found on her website: http://www.heckerdesign.com. You should also check out her blog.

Here is the card I made for Joolie and Eric.

(image and design © In My Head Studios)

If you are interested in a card, I can customize it with any color to match the wedding colors of your bride and groom! They’re just $5.00 plus shipping.

So since my gift was about six months late it also served as a six-month anniversary gift, too! Double bonus!

Thank you to Paticia Hecker for allowing me to reproduce her copyrighted material and to promote her shop.

There and Back Again

My trip to Texas was so much fun that I want to return immediately. It was so good to see my best friend of 21 years and all her friends and family. Thank you, Joolie and Eric, for a splendid week I really needed.

Joolie and I met in middle school in Plano, TX. Then my family moved in 1989 because of my father’s job. We stay in touch constantly. Both of us travel to visit each other at least every 2 years. To travel to be there for her wedding was divine. She has married a wonderful guy named Eric. We both have “Erik/Erics”! Joolie is the most talented writer I know and is funnier than 10 comedians put together. She is also an artist who likes to make lino prints too. We sometimes get the chance to do that together. But not this trip. This was The Wedding Trip.

We ran wedding errands, ate Mexican food, drank margaritas, and ate more food. We like fun and food. This was interspersed with family arriving from in and out of state, laughing so much my face still hurts, and hanging out with friends. Austin is a fantastic place to live, although I am afraid to drive there. But I want to move there. Texas still feels like home to me. Joolie’s friends and family feel like my own.

click me for more pictures!!

The wedding was sublime. I am socially awkward and I had fun so there is something to that. I was a bridesmaid. Since the ceremony lasted all of five minutes I did not get a chance to cry. Tears welled up but had no time to fall. We were all up and back in seven minutes. Make no delay for partying!

Small world coincidence: one of Joolie’s family friends from Plano has ties to where I live in Rochester, NY. She keeps in touch with our news so we commiserated about the downfall of the Ferry and jobs in general. Then she asked our last names. Mine rang no bell, but my sister’s married name did. Valerie is a Schaubroeck, of the world-famous House of Guitars (to which I would include a link but they are too cool to even have a website). This woman knows that family well and named off a bunch of my sister’s in-laws! We laughed so much about it. Very cool!

And now I am home, and it is cold and snowy. Ho-hum. But I have more stories and pictures to show and tell over the next few days. Stay tuned.