Lindeman Carte Valentine's Lettering Workshop

Teaming up with Rachel (girl boss who owns Lindeman Carte) is always a favorite because she doesn't just put on a workshop, she makes it a full experience. From the place cards to the place mats to the food, everything has that extra touch. I tried my best to capture all the little details! Helped that the lighting in the store was perfect yesterday.

Let's start with the place settings. Rachel always has a vision of some sort and galentine's was on her mind! For the place mats, she hand drew dalmatian spots - you read that correctly, hand drew, on 12 place mats. They turned out fabulous! Next up and equally over the top amazing, her place cards. She and her father cut small acrylic place cards. She then painted them, so the white names she wrote out would pop. She always makes the place cards a fun keepsake for the attendees! Her workbook was snazzed up this time with a holographic foil finish on the cover, clipped with a heart paper clip for the holiday. For the additional practice pieces, she made some love notes for the attendees to use and gave them a great chalkboard. She definitely makes her workshops worth the cost! In addition to all of the great paper products, she also feeds everyone with delicious food and drinks...

To show attendees where they can use their newly learned writing skills, she incorporated her handwriting into many aspects of the food setup. Wine bottles were dressed up with handwritten wine types instead of typical labels. On the cheese tray, she used chalk to list the cheese types. She also incorporated the acrylic by writing out the menu and tips for the cheese boards. For dessert, she ordered some delicious mini cupcakes from September Moon Cupcakery here in Wichita. Cara attended her workshop back in December and it was fun seeing them work together!

One of the best features to her setup? The festive garland she hung across the top of our event space! This crazy creative girl, took plastic table clothes and cut them into strips. She then tied them on string that we measured to go across from my loft to my shelves. Turned out so colorful and gorgeous! This girl, she is ambitious and crazy and it is so fun! The heart background was leftover from the other Valentine events I had hosted this weekend and it coordinated great with the event.

Feel like you missed out on a fun event? Don't worry, we have some open spots left on Thursday evening that we are trying to fill! You will have the best time and learn some very useful handwriting skills. Plus, sips and treats always make an event worthwhile! Grab some friends and reserve your spots here.

Thank you Rachel for putting on another fabulous workshop at my shop!

Lots of Love,

Be Mine, Valentine

Pink, hearts, pretty cards - I adore Valentine's Day! One of my wonderfully talented friends, Sally Cavanaugh, took some pictures of the Valentine setup at the store. They captured the spirit of the holiday so well, I had to share! We can be your one stop shop for cards, party supplies and unique gifts your Valentine will love.

Valentine's Day calls for fun parties and girls' nights. The supplies are so pretty, sparkly and shiny. You can mix with solids or patterns and the different shades of pink add fun dimensions to a party table. I tried to find a fun mix of products that can be used for littles and adults. I also loved mixing in everyday partyware. The shiny pink heart items and foil straws are my favorite. Those pink foil heart plates are gorgeous! I have some fun ideas for those beauties in upcoming events and parties.

School Valentines - we have you covered! I was able to order in lots of different styles. Some are just notes and some come with a little extra. I love the ones with the tattoos because it gives you something besides candy to handout. The others you could easily add a fun snack, stickers or hand them out as is. They are all so cute and I love watching kids pick out their favorite!

Needing a card for that special someone? Aka, your secret crush, girl/boyfriend, husband, wife, family or fab friends...we have so many fun cards for you to choose from! I personally love the old fashioned card styles because they remind me of the Valentines my grandma used to send me. COme in and pick your favorites, we have something for everyone.

Need a gift to go with your pretty card? We have you covered! We have lots of adorable accessories for girls from hair clips to necklaces. Plus, lots of card games and art supplies that are great for the kids. The bath bombs are a cute, non-food way to say something sweet. The match boxes are a sassy add on to a candle and I'm in love with our new Sugarfina candy boxes. They are a perfect hostess gift for your Valentine parties. You could pair a box with a bottle of wine you put into one of our fun "XOXO" wine bags. Definitely lots to choose from, so pop in to check everything out!

Thanks again to Sally for capturing all of our products! She always does a great job and I'm very excited to host an event with her this weekend.

Lots of Love,

New Year, New (Cleaned Up) Work Space!

Pictures via Sally Cavanaugh

I don't think I could have started the new year off with a better goal - cleanup my work space at the shop! It had been driving me crazy and I was quite frankly so embarrassed by it when customers would pop back there. In the back of my shop, I have a storage area and upstairs I have an office. Both are great work spots, but both were definitely neglected when we were getting the shop up and running. My main priority was getting the shop ready for customers, so the back area was left dark dingy, and unorganized. We cleaned everything out and here is what the space looks like empty before:

Very uninspiring and basically the opposite of my cheerful shop space. Not pictured, the dark cubes stuffed, boxes everywhere and tools from our original shop setup. It was a mess and it was stressful. Up the stairs, my office had good bones since it is an open loft to the store (aka the wallpaper makes it pretty), but it needed cleaning up and organizing. Plus, I had purchased a great desk to use and was ready to set it up.

I went back and forth on the colors I wanted to use for the storage area. At first I was thinking about doing blush pink walls. Floor wise, I was thinking I'd have to stick with a gray or some kind of neutral because of limited cement paint colors. After looking at some inspiration, my mom got the bold idea to paint my stairs pink (my mother, who loves black, suggested pink!). I loved it. I then decided to paint the walls white to let the stairs pop. I was still stuck on the floors. I had considered navy, but it wouldn't really go with the style of my store. I went into Sherwin Williams and when they said I could do the cement paint in any color, the indecisiveness set in. I left with lots of swatches and some samples of pinks. Bella Pink  won for the stairs. After staring at a bunch of boring neutrals, my mom and I painted some pink on the floor. Why not? Where else could I have a pink floor? I mean I've painted stripes on a ceiling before, I wasn't afraid of a paint risk.

I loved it! Thank goodness because I had to paint the whole area to see if it would work or not. Hard to judge a crazy floor color without covering a large area. Once the painting was finished, we had to organize the back stock, packaging materials and supplies. To keep things light, I decided to ditch the dark cubes that were back there when we took over the space and we purchased white ones from Target. Dustin added a back "bar" on the top of a row of cubes and I love it for customers to use during events and for quick storage during photo shoots of products. It is so nice have a bright, happy storage area!

Need to come up with a way to hide that big electrical box.

Photos via Sally Cavanaugh

Not perfect, but that door looks so much better white!

Now up the new pink stairs to my office! Like I mentioned before, this was more about organizing, throwing out the mountains of paper and setting up my new desk. Having a clean work space makes the office work I need to do a lot more fun and definitely less stressful! Love that the wallpaper is in my office space and I love the white Sugar Paper desk I scored from Target a while back. To accessorize my desk I pulled some of my favorite items we offer in the store: lucite ruler, gold stapler, legal pads, floral file folders, gold scissors and lucite tape dispenser.

Photos via Sally Cavanaugh

Thank you to my mom for the color inspiration and for helping me paint (not a fun task when there are so many edges!). Thank you to Lily and Olivia for all their help organizing and cleaning. Thank you to my husband for setting up my office and putting together the six cube shelves he had to go to Derby to pickup. Thank you to Sally for taking fabulous pictures for me. Lastly, thank you to my customers for letting me close the shop for a week to make all of this happen!

Lots of Love,