Party at Bella Carta!

Hi Everyone!

Lisa is on vacation for a couple of days and I am whooping it up here at the studio.

Actually, I'm not. I've been pretty busy and I wanted to share a couple of things I've done.

First, we did these gorgeous letterpressed invitations for one of our brides with a fall theme, as she is getting married the first weekend of October. They are VERY subtle, but totally luxurious, with this yummy thick white cotton paper that just begs to be touched.

As the date is fast approaching, I put together 115 programs for her ceremony. They simply feature their names, the date and the fall icons that were used throughout the set. They are painstakingly tied together with a elegant satin ribbon, the shine of which contrasts nicely with nubbly cotton cardstock. (Yes, pain! TINY holes, TINY ribbon, TINY knots! I have BIG fingers. Not that I'm complaining...) And I have to include a picture of the finished lot, carefully tucked into a box for now. I love the look of all the pretty ribbons.


Then, I lined envelopes for another client who has very refined taste. He wants social stationary that was functional, yet simple and masculine. Lisa is having the substantial cardstock printed with thermography as I line the matching envelopes with a subtle pinstripe, done in black and white. The lining gives the envelope an obvious heft and makes an immediate impression on any recipient. Just spectacular, but not "in your face."


Just now, I layed down a cozy oriental rug that I brought in for the workroom. The floors in here are a marble chip and are cool, literally. With the arrival of fall, cold weather is inevitable here in Rochester, NY. The rug is an attempt to keep myself warmer as I stand and assemble our beautiful items. The rubber pad that is on the rug is supposed to cushion my spine and does indeed work as I can happily stand for hours, gluing or folding (or holepunching or tying...)

It is again friday afternoon and I want to get a jump on some of the stuff that we are doing for a BIG job next week. As usual, I'll keep you posted.

The trusty assistant,
Carrie

PS: Don't think it's ALL work for me while Lisa is away - I did manage to take a break from tying knots yesterday (a neccessity, finger fatigue!) and buy some new fuzzy lined Minnetonka slippers, again for the cool tile floors of my apartment. Lisa, they will probably get here monday.

PSS: Lisa did check in with this great picture from her vacation in Monteray, CA. Her message: "I took this pic from my phone today. He landed on one of those viewing binocular thingys on the observation deck about a foot away from me. I was talking on the phone at the time and had to stop to take this picture. Doesn’t he have a cute look on his face?"

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!