Kate was a joy to work with. She had a very clear idea as to what she wanted when we discussed her wedding invitations. She wanted a design that was simple and elegant. We came up with several designs but she ended up with an elegant script font design that we letterpress printed into a thick 220lb soft white cotton paper. The invitation suite featured a gorgeous navy & silver damask envelope liner and curved edges on both the invite & rsvp. I especially love her save the dates. We did a water color painting of the venue that she is getting married in and turned it into a postcard.

With all of our custom design clients, we provide a 3-4 initial designs taking in their wedding theme & style. The designs that were not selected are now available in our letterpress collection on the design bar. Take a look at a couple of our newest designs.

Hepburn Letterpress Invitation Suite

Galleria Letterpress Invitation Suite

Be the first to purchase these designs and get one ink color free. That’s a $200 savings.

I loved designing this invitation suite for Sara + Michael.  They wanted to keep their invitations tropical as they are getting married at a beautiful beach resort in Florida but wanted to keep everything really elegant. We hand drew an orchid for their invitation suite and pressed it into our finest cranes lettra cotton paper. We incorporated more of their color palette through the use of paper layering. {Paper Tip: a great way to incorporate your color palette when printing with one or two colors.} We added a lokta gold paper and layers of aqua and chartreuse to give the ultimate tropical yet keeping with an elegant feel. They opted for a pearl pocket-fold to hold all their paper pieces. We carried the design onto the outer envelopes leaving enough space for the calligrapher to write the addresses. I just love how these invitations turned out. More of these images will be in our wedding gallery shortly. I can’t wait to share with you their day of stationery!

We have been busy drawing lots of custom maps for brides using them as their save the dates. I just love creating these maps they are so personal. Guests really get a glimpse of the couples personality , the location of the wedding and all the bride and grooms favorite places. I love adding all the details like the kissing fish, where they got engaged, and favorite restaurants. If you got one of these bad boys in the mail wouldn’t you just start planning your mini vacation in your head.. the outfits, the places you want to see.. I know I would!

photo by Caroline & Evan Photography

To get to know us is to get to know our company so I came up with a couple random questions for both myself and Pat so that you could get a glimpse into our lives.

Where were you born?
A- Hartford, CT
P- Miami, FL

How many siblings do you have?
A- 1 brother
P- 3 brothers / 2 sisters

Where did you go to college?
A- UCF
P- UF

What made you move to the Tampa Bay area?
A- I am from the area and wanted to be close to my family.
P- Alicia made me. Haha. Just kidding. Because we figured whats the point of living in FL if you don’t live near the beach.

What is your favorite past time?
A- going antiquing and going to the beach
P- surfing and building things

What are your current obsessions?
A- vintage globes and bassett hound puppies
P- antique printing equipment and single fin longboards

What is your all time favorite food?
A- hmm close one.. it’s a three way tie between Mexican, sushi, and Italian
P- NY style cheese pizza

Favorite movie?
A- National Lampoons Christmas Vacation & Tombstone
P- National Lampoons Christmas Vacation

What is your favorite place you travelled to?
A- Greece – Santorini
P- Greece – Paros

If you had all the money in the world what would you do first?
A- break out my calendar and start planning all the trips I want to take
P- rid the ocean of all the plastic debris

What are you currently listening to on Pandora?
A – I am alternating between Thievery Corporation & Keith Urban
P – The Pixies

What are you all doing this Friday evening and weekend. Pat and I had our first official date on Friday the 13^th 6 years ago today {wow!}. I remember being so nervous that we were going to “jinks” our first date. It turned out to be the best first date ever and I would marry that man 3 short years later. Our first date was in Gainesville, where Pat was living at the time.  I remember driving to Gainesville with his sister, Laura – my best friend from college, feeling so sick to my stomach nervous. She dropped me off at his place and we went for sushi and laughed and talked and smiled and realized we had a lot in common. The nervous butterflies left and the in-love butterflies appeared. The rest was history…

Have a wonderful weekend & safe weekend. Check back next week as we start featuring some pretty paper goods we have been working on as well as new designs going up on the Design Bar.

Happy 2012 everyone. This year has already been off to a wonderfully busy start. Launching the A&P Designs brand and website and preparing for our first bridal show as A&P Designs has been quite a whirlwind. Did you have a chance to take a look around the website? We kept the overall design close to the same as Seaside Invitations but tweaked it with our new logo and navigation bar. Thank you so much to my web developer Chris at Synergy Web Productions. He is a joy to work with and puts up with all of my crazy emails at the random times in the day.  And of course a huge thank you to Caroline and Evan for hours they spent shooting our products and for letting us borrow there awesome ampersand. We still have a little more tweaks to do but overall its finished. What do you all think?

The Design Bar has been moving and shaking and we are getting lots of orders in. Please check it out as lots of designs are still on sale with free ink upgrades, a huge $200 savings perfect for right after the holidays.

We have been so blessed to work with some really amazing brides the past couple of months and have designed some really gorgeous invitations, which means more designs to come up on the Design Bar and go on sale. So be sure to check back to be the first to get these beauties on sale.

We had an amazing time at the Perfect Wedding Guide bridal show this past weekend. We brought Lola our table-top press out to the show and allowed everyone to press their own thank you cards. It was a great success. We got to meet so many newly engaged brides with smiles from ear to ear, meet new industry peeps and connect with friends at the show. Overall it was a huge success. My feet are still soar and my voice has not yet returned but we are looking forward to the next one. We have a special discount for all those pretty brides we met so brides check your emails soon! Here is a little photo recap of the show. Enjoy!

2012 is here!! I hope you all had a safe and fun New Years. On our 2.5-hour drive back from an amazing weekend spent with family I had a bit of time to reflect on the upcoming year. I have always been one for making resolutions and setting some pretty ambitious goals. This year, instead of coming up with resolutions, I picked one word to represent 2012 and that word is growth.

2012 will be the year I grow. There are many aspects in my life I want growth. I want to grow personally and become a better me, I want to grow spiritually and I want to grow A&P Designs. In 2012 I will…

Experience spiritual growth. I have always been a faith loving Christian but never really listened. Last year I listened and wow. This year I want to continue to grow in my spirituality.

Encourage & set time for creative growth. Being a creative person and a designer I continuously see inspiration everywhere I go and I am always coming up with new ideas of things I want to try. This year, I want to spend one day each week solely dedicated to creative growth. Whether it’s a new style of watercolor painting or attending a new gallery exhibit or exploring a new part of the city for inspiration.

Continue to grow A&P Designs into a business that is full of love, passion and purpose. I could go on and on about all of my goals and ideas for A&P Designs but ultimately I want every step we take and every decision we make grounded by love, passion and purpose.

Reflect on my personal growth every day. I admit that I often get too busy with life. I am a do it all, be it all, and have it all kind of gal. I am usually going in about 20 different directions and my life is a constant balancing act. And honestly, I love being that way. I actually flourish when I have a lot on my plate. But I find myself always focusing on the end result and not stopping to enjoy the journey. Life is a journey, plain and simple. If I focus on the end result, I will miss the little things in life that mean so much. In 2012, I will stop and make time each day to reflect on the day and enjoy every moment.

This may sound silly but I truly believe we were put on this earth to do something great. To be our greatest, best self. I am still not sure what my “great” thing is but I will find it. I am ready to grow into those big girl entrepreneurial, spiritual, stationer, printer, wifey shoes that I was put on this earth to wear! 2012 I am ready to grow!

A&P Designs is official.. we are just waiting on the finishing touches of our website (it is still growing). The new website will be up in the next couple days. Please check back soon as we unveil our new logo and look. Can’t wait to show it to you!! You can now reach me on my new email Alicia@apdesignco.com.

Happy New Years Eve! How are you celebrating the last day of 2011? We are spending today much like our entire year has been – working, travelling, spending time with friends and family, partying, and taking time for reflection.

As we enter into 2012 with a new brand and company name, we can’t help but take time to reflect on 2011 and all the blessings and hardships that have come into our lives. We are so grateful for all of our amazing clients, the wonderful and talented vendors that we have had the pleasure to work with and befriend, and the opportunity to live each day with passion.  We are so forever grateful.

2011 year was the year we were open: open to being our authentic self, open to friendships and opportunities. Opening our hearts to our true passions and listening to our hearts. 2012 will be the year for growth. We will focus on what matters most as we commit to living our life and growing our business with passion and purpose.

Cheers to 2011 and welcome to 2012. We are ready to move mountains and make really big things happen. We will see you in the New Year as A&P Designs. May 2012 bring you happiness, laughter, love and success.

The A&P Designs Facebook page is up. We would love for you to mosey on over and like us. As a thank you for liking us, we will be hosting a weekly giveaway. One luck winner will win a set of 12 letterpress thank you cards. Heres how it works. You “like” us on Facebook, your name is entered into our giveaway each week. One winner will be pulled every Friday. If you win, you get to pick your ink color and your envelope color. You can also follow us on twitter: @aliciarohan

When you follow along our journey we will stay up to date with studio happenings and see sneak peeks of our current projects, inspiration boards with amazing color combinations, and specials and giveaways.

Thanks for journeying along with us!

]]> http://www.apdesignco.com/ap-designs-goes-social/feed/ 0 http://www.apdesignco.com/black-and-taupe-feature/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=black-and-taupe-feature http://www.apdesignco.com/black-and-taupe-feature/#comments Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:54:56 +0000 Alicia http://www.seasideinvitations.com/?p=3405

We had the pleasure of being a part of an inspiration shoot for Eco-Beautiful Weddings for their Etsy Love Challenge in their Winter Issue. Lauren Grove of Every Last Detail contacted us and asked us to participate in the challenge. Of course we jumped at the chance. The challenge was to keep everything complete eco-friendly. Lauren presented us with this inspiration board of blacks and taupes and told us she wanted to do a modern take on eco-friendly.

And this is what we came up with

We designed the invitation suite using a modern mix of typography and a damask pattern. We kept everything eco-friendly by letterpressing the suite using soy based inks and 100% cotton tree free paper. We used recycled kraft paper for the envelopes and belly band. The menu card doubled as a menu card and place card. We created a circular tag for the place card and attached it to the menu card with recycled twine. We created a tri-fold program, this is a great way to save on cost and paper when you have a lot of information to include in your program.

Make sure to check out the Eco-Beautiful Wedding, Winter Issue and for more photos of the amazing dress, jewelry and all the details check out Every Last Details blog post. All photos are by the always amazing Jason Mize. This invitation suite is now available on the Design Bar. Be the first to purchase this suite and get one ink color for free.

Next up a little weekend recap on our fun-filled weekend.