Carrie signs in

Hello.
I am the trusty assistant and self described "arbiter of all things good taste."

I truly believe it was fate that lead me here to Lisa and Bella Carta Studio. I am originally from here, in Rochester, New York. But I've spent almost 25 years away, chasing the dream of big time graphic design all over the northeast. I returned here in March of 2007, to be with my family again. And I had walked away from design.

Until I got bored and needed something to distract me from the family. Scanning the local Craigslist, I found Lisa's post for help. Upon meeting her and seeing the wonderful work she was doing in invitation design, I was lured back to help make these beautiful creations.

I am the person that makes the invitations by hand. Cutting, taping, folding, tying. Sometimes hundreds a week. And I love it.

Also, I do lots of other things here in the studio. For example, today I am painting our ribbon cabinet a clean eggshell. We take great pride in the appearance of our showroom and want to create a lovely environment for our local clients and to display the invitations and other items we create.

After this introductory post, I will be making paper "kimonos" as we are calling them for a bride who chose cute fair-trade bookmarks as her wedding favors. Her mom brought one in and wondered how they could be presented to their guests. This was after searching all over for an appropriate container that worked with both the item and the color scheme of the reception. After folding some "french roast" paper that is being used in her other wedding day stationary, we came up with a wrap that does indeed look like a kimono! These will be finished with a organza green ribbon tied around them.

I will be making 170 of these to start, all by hand. There is my afternoon.

Again, I love it.

Got to go do some work...
- Carrie

We're here! Thanks for having us!!!

Yes, thank you…we’re finally joining the blogosphere! So now you get to listen to not only my ramblings about the fabulous (if I do say so myself) invitations and whatnot we create every day, but my trusty sidekick Carrie’s ramblings, too! So a little about us and who we are, blah, blah, blah…

I’m Lisa. I own this whole shindig and am the principal designer. A long and winding road brought me to this incredible job…everything from an advertising degree with a graphic design concentration, to graduate degrees in interior design and education (yup, even a Ph.D…you can call me Dr. Frey if you want). I taught interior design at a major university for several years, and then was drawn back across this great country to Rochester, NY when I met and married my husband. Then what was I going to do? Well, after being talked into designing our own invitations and all the wedding day stationery for our wedding (yes, he seriously had to talk me into it…I was dubious), and after receiving such support and praise for it, Bella Carta Studio was born.

So we started small, out of my house. My husband evicted the business after 6 months and we’ve moved twice since then. Now we’re in a gorgeous mansion-turned-professional building in The Neighborhood of the Arts in Rochester. We’ve got two big museums within a block from us, art galleries all around us and a great shopping and dining district within walking distance. We love our new space and plan to stay a while! We have a great showroom…oh, here are some pictures so you can all see our space...

What do we do here at Bella Carta Studio (or BCS for short, I suppose)? Well, mostly invitations and announcements, but also all the wedding day items you can imagine…menus, programs, escort cards, water bottle labels…you name it, we can design it. We work mostly in the wedding industry, but we’ve also done birth announcements and shower invitations, corporate work, invitations for some NBA folks (Dwyane Wade!!) and hope soon to get further into party invitations…we’d be GREAT for Bar and Bat Mitzvahs!!

So you’re asking, ‘what are we going to talk about in this blog?’ We’re going to showcase our work and talk about the thought process behind it. The website is great (and will be even better with the redesign coming soon!), but it’s sort of static. The blog will be a place where we speak regularly to what we do every day and where you can see how we think and more importantly DO!

I’ll let Carrie introduce herself in the next couple of posts, but let me say that I couldn’t run this studio without her. She is an integral part of my staff and really gets the job done…any job that needs to be done! She’s awesome!