The spring of 2014 was a whirlwind of weddings of close friends, including my own! Just a few short weeks after celebrating our nuptials, we had the honor of throwing down with our dear friends Katey and Michael in a backyard wedding that was absolutely perfect. From a sunny ceremony under the big tree on the polo field behind the Rich’s house where we used to play growing up, to late night jumps in the pool at the end of a ridiculously perfect wedding day day, the event was full of fuzzy memories old and new.
I was honored to help Katey & Michael design all of their wedding stationery, and of course throw some Liddabits about their classic yet casual small-town soiree. Here’s a peek at some of the goodies, captured by the brilliant Kaitie Bryant.
And about the cat faces… well K&M live in NYC and their sweet cat Miles couldn’t make the trip South with them, so we brought Miles to Aiken via paper. Liddabits has since taken on a swarm of faces on sticks for many clients that want their pets, or in a few cases some celebrities, to attend their wedding and/or photo booth. If you have a special sign you’d like made, please shoot us an email!
Who:
Danielle Calhoun, co-founder of Black Sheep Bride, a vendor community that inspires brides that care about giving back through their weddings and connects them to wedding vendors that give back through time, money or service.
We hope that wedding industry professionals in the Atlanta area will join us for this networking meet-up! We’ll be providing tea and scones, and taking donations for Dr. Bombay’s Underwater Tea Party’s partner charity The Learning Tea. You’ll get to expand your network and hear from Danielle about Black Sheep Bride and how to be profitable with purpose in your business. Tea and scones will be provided, and if the conversation gets really good, we can hop over to Fellini’s and grab a slice of pizza for lunch together!
I’m not gonna lie… I hesitated sharing this video with the world directly. It’s one of those moments where you think you sound weird because you’re not used to hearing yourself. But I’m so excited about the process that it made me go through — it’s one of the most important self-prescribed challenges I’ve ever tackled for my life and my business. I consolidated my passion and direction for my business into a 90-second speedy speech that I’m honestly pretty impressed I pulled off. Take a look if you’d like!
This video is my application for a scholarship to Marie Forleo’s B-School. Marie is an amazing online resource for entrepreneurs – she has amazing insights, advice and just is the best. After discovering her through some friendors (Amanda Ready of Beck & Bloom, I’m talking about you!), I became obsessed with MarieTV and watched as many of her FREE videos as I could. I quickly learned about B-School and have been eagerly anticipating it’s 2015 session. You can learn more about B-School and see why I’m so excited here.
Before making this video, I had been struggling with my why? for my business. Yes, I know what I do well and I know what I should make. But doing pretty things and solving business problems didn’t really feel like enough to get me out of bed lately. So, while my hubs was at work, I put on a pot of tea and dug in to what the heck I wanted to do with my future success. Once I hit some basic financial freedom goals, what was my work going to look like? Who do I want to help? What are my values? All of these things I had noodled on a little bit here and there, but I knew I needed to get some clarity before I recorded my video so that I would truly believe in and feel confident with what I was saying.
It was an amazing and powerful few hours that truly culminated all of the small chunks of thinking, brainstorming and journaling I’d been doing for the last 6 months since I first started watching Marie’s videos. It was so valuable to me that I’ve decided I want to share it with you through a bit of a series on how I found my why. Check back here over the next three weeks as I share with you my strategy for really analyzing my business and my direction, and share with you the tools I used this year, as well as some tools I’m excited to try out in the future.
Liddabits is proud to celebrate ALL forms of love! Here to highlight our support of marriage equality just in time for Valentine’s Day is a beautiful bride and bride photo shoot from Six Hearts Photography.
We collaborated with an amazing group of vendors for a groovy sunflower field picnic elopement shoot with a mix of Liddabits products from our collection as well as a few custom pieces to coordinate with the VW bus, colorful wildflower bouquets from Wrennwood Design, spectacular eye makeup from Vigilante Cosmetics, and of course the vibrant King of Pops umbrella! Enjoy and celebrate love with us!
Thanks to these spectacular vendors including us in such a fun and colorful shoot!
It’s February, ya’ll! Love is in the air this time of year, and even more so if you recently got engaged and are starting that roller coaster called wedding planning. The first big step of any engagement is picking a venue and a date.
Once you have that date, it’s hard not to shout it to everyone from the rooftops! If you’re looking for a more subtle, colorful and fun way to share the good news, you can use one of our awesome Save the Date photo props! They’re totally customizable, will add a fun colorful pop to your engagement shoot, and you can use the photos for your Save the Date Announcements!
So, in honor of St. Valentine, Liddabits is giving away a free Save the Date photo prop to one lucky bride-to-be!
To enter to win, just follow us on Facebook, like the post “Save the Date Valentine’s Giveaway” and write your wedding date in the comments! And feel free to enter for your friends if you’re not the one engaged Be sure to enter by Friday, February 13 at midnight! We’ll announce the winner on Valentine’s Day and again on Monday, February 16 incase you miss it.
Down… Set… Hike! It’s about that time to put the chili on, grab some cold drinks, and hoot and holler with your closets MVPs. That’s right… it’s Super Bowl time! Whether you’re cheering for the Patriots or the Seahawks, there’s no doubt your fans will gather around the big game and, let’s be honest, the food! We thought with all this football jargon in the air, we’d share this fun football-themed birthday party from last year. The event was planned and styled by the super-talented Amanda Ready of Atlanta Event Studio and photographed by Whitney Huynh at Tulle & Grace.
Our favorite items from this custom Raven’s-themed first birthday party for little Jack are highlighted below!
Number Cake Topper – Click on the Picture to Buy Now on Etsy!
Hey ya’ll! We are so excited to share with you a WAY overdue recap of our National Stationery Show experience, along with an announcement that we’ll be heading back to NYC in May 2015 to do it all again! Here is a post about what the experience was like for us. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or advice, or if you’re interested in our products be sure to drop Liz a note at liddabits@gmail.com.
Photo Credit Oh So Beautiful Paper
Well, after 8 months of planning amidst the biggest year of our lives (so far), we can proudly say we have exhibited at the National Stationery Show in New York City – realizing a dream I’ve had since college graduation when my mom took me to the show as a graduation present in 2007.
I knew as soon as I wrote that first check that this was going to be the biggest and most difficult challenge I’d ever tackled, but I felt very confident having walked the show the year before with an eye out for solid booth designs, lighting and flooring ideas, best show locations, and of course, my competition.
PREP
Luckily right when I decided to do the show I had also just hired my super-assistant, or as we have decided to name her officially “Production Director,” Fresca Rutherfurd. She not only helped me stay sane during the craziness of the holidays, the new year, planning my wedding, freelance orders and keeping up my normal etsy shop, but she helped us stay on top of our crazy task list for the show which included:
– Developing an entire new line specifically for wholesale
– Developing packaging for retail
– Developing a custom ordering album for brick-and-mortar stores
– Getting feedback from industry veterans and local shops
– Designing our booth
– Reaching out to stores with pre-show mailers
– Planning and planning again to make sure we don’t go broke spending a week in New York City
Here are some pictures of what getting ready looked like in my little Atlanta apartment:
Catalog Prepping!
Super crate! Built my super friend Stephen and shared with super neighbor and friendor Mattie!
That moment it got “real” – printing and assembling our booth number labels for the corners of our walls.
A boost for late-night prepping a few days before we left for the show.
Last day of the show (complete with last day hair – yikes!) #wedidit!
I’m proud to say (and kind of baffled, to be honest) that we did it and successfully completed our new line, developed a catalog, made our album, added a mini album, contacted stores before the show, designed our perfect booth, and headed off to New York in mid-May with relative confidence that all of our hard work would pay off.
Sadly I had lots of images of prepping for the show, but once we hit show site we did not stop. The best images I have are all from Oh So Beautiful Paper’s recap which included our booth! Woohoo! Check out the post here.
RESOURCES
I had read SO many resources including my first find and still favorite from Jen & Omar of These Are Things. They recapped their first show experience including everything they did to plan, everything they spent money on, and everything they learned. They even guest blogged about their show experience for the NSS website here. Although after reading it the first time I thought to myself “what have I gotten into!?” I quickly acknowledged the long-term and non-immediacy of the benefits that they gained from the show.
EXPECTATIONS
Even with this reality check, I still went in with a certain level of minimum expectations of how the show would go for us. After all, last year there was no one at the show selling exclusively what I sell. I thought I’d be “reasonable” to hope to place 10 orders over 4 days of selling and sell 5 albums. My greatest fear was that I would have so many orders I would be exhausted and not be able to get them all produced. Every resource I read warned me of the impending doom of accepting too large an order, and all of my nervous energy before the show stemmed from the one thought of “what if I can’t get it all made? what if I sell too much?”
DAY BY DAY
My expectations went day by day, paralleling with the experience Jen & Omar had at their first show. I thought Sunday would be busy but mostly people just making their first laps and getting the lay of the land. Monday would be the busiest day and the most exhausting. The big buyers would be out that day, and I would place most of my orders this day. Tuesday would be slow – at some points extremely slow, and Wednesday would basically be pointless, but not to wander around as someone may come by if you leave your booth completely empty.
ROI
Although I didn’t hit my goals at the end of the show, or really even come close to them, I can say in retrospect that the insight we gained about the types of people that will be there the next time we participate will totally be worth the *hopefully* brief period of financial stress we have been feeling the last few months as our ROI has crawled to us.
NEXT YEAR
We have committed to 2015 (Booth 1544!) and we are excited to apply all the insight we gained from last year with a new energy and cleaner plate than last time around!
There is nothing quite as fun as putting yourself in the mind of a soon-to-be thirteen year old girl and designing a party the way she’d want it. Hip patterns and colors prevailed when I worked on my dear friends’ daughter’s thirteenth a few months ago! The amazing Janelle Van Houw of JNelly Photography (and StyleUnder$40) captured all of the fun details we worked on for this club house / pool party for 40. And our “sweet” friend Lisa at The Sweet Trend helped us pull together an amazing candy/dessert bar that coordinated perfectly with the event. Check out pictures below!
Many of my amazing friendors have come from The NotWedding – an amazing bridal showcase that highlights vendors in their element and allows brides to participate in a big fake wedding as guests! I will talk more about The NotWedding VERY soon, but today I want to introduce one of my friendors from the first NotWedding NYC, NST Pictures. Lindsay and I met at the show last May, and recently we’ve partnered up for a promotion, since my adorable photo props are the perfect accent to their amazing Save the Date videos! You seriously have to take a look at some of their past videos here. Here is same-day the video they created for The NotWedding NYC – gorgeous stuff!
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/66834182]
Well, now they’re embracing “engagement season” and have a wonderful offer for brides-to-be in the New York and LA areas. You can enter to win an all-inclusive Photo & Video Wedding Collection, valued at over $5,000! To enter click here: http://nstpictures.com/enter-win-inclusive-photo-video-wedding-collection/
I hope to see more of NST in the future, especially since I’m planning my BIG TRIP to NYC this May for the National Stationery Show! More details to come on that too
Woohoo! We finally did it! After 8 years of dating (to the day) and a 16 month engagement preceeding it, Mr Liddabits and I finally tied the knot. It was absolutely magical, and every element was exactly what my super-amazing mother and I envisioned. And Danny too.
There to capture the perfect day — it was 75, mostly sunny, absolutely perfecto weather y’all — was none other than Whitney Huynh of Tulle & Grace Fine Art Photography. She gave us the idea for the triangle confetti at our engagement shoot and I basically ran full speed with it and slathered color on everything I could find. So here’s the gallery you’ve all been waiting for — how Liddabits would do (and did) our own wedding:
Ever since I started Liddabits I’ve wanted to have these yay flags at my wedding. I even made sure to encourage people to use them by writing directions in the program! It was the most magical moment of the wedding for me, and exactly as I envisioned, which brought me to tears as my dad walked me down the aisle.
These stunning florals for our ceremony were a collaborative concept with Juli Vaughn Designs, who also did the brilliant flowers below, and of course our bouquets and boutonnieres.
Our dear friends Andy & Augusta performed after the ceremony while we took family photos and after our first dance for a few songs… I couldn’t resist joining in.
My super-handy dad built the amazing dance floor, made the giant wooden ampersands, and even rebuilt the dock so we could use it for pictures, among a million other things!
It was very important to both Danny and I that we get to eat the amazing food we had selected. So we created a sweetheart table and made a bee-line for it right after our first dance. Cal Berry of Berry’s Catering did NOT disappoint. Everything was so delicious, especially the mac and cheese bar which was by far the best mac and cheese I’ve ever had. Ever.
We had one end of our shed as the dessert room. I love sweets and couldn’t commit to just one cake! So we had our dear friend Heather Ulmer make the most delicious hummingbird cake for the base tier and a strawberry spice cake for the top. The rest of the room contained a mixture of desserts made by my mother and some of her friends.
The milk glass plate wall was definitely the centerpiece of the dessert room, and one of my favorite funky little details of our wedding. It represents a little bit of traditional southern and a little bit of my crazy artistic impulsiveness.
The other side of the shed was the bar and lounge. We pulled my parents couches out from our sun room and I did my favorite piece of the whole wedding behind them – a beer and wine bottle installation. We saved the bottles we drank during our first year of engagement, decorated some of them and hung them with fishing line. My amazing mother did the decorating and tied 140 pieces of fishing line to a board filled with hooks. We screwed the board in and then I spent 5 hours hanging the bottles. It was exactly how I envisioned it in my head and truly represented both Danny and I.
Danny is very passionate about beer, so we also selected three craft brews and created a hanging information system for when people were ordering at the bar that included IBUs (how hoppy it is), ABVs (how alcoholic it is), name and location of the brewery and the style of beer. It was one of the most talked about details from the wedding!
Our amazing friends Allie & Jon Flaishans custom built a corn hole set for us as our wedding gift, which got lots of use in the beautiful weather!
Our cake maker and bridesmaid MVP Heather Ulmer also helped us make these delicious chocolate covered peanut butter ritz crackers. We used white dipping chocolate and gel food coloring to die them to match our palette.
Our photographer Whitney had the brilliant idea of the triangle confetti we used in our engagement photos, so we decided to incorporate by doing a geometric edge to all of our designs. We came up with gold shimmery cones for our guests to toss the confetti out of, and the result was pretty awesome!
We drove over to the neighbors where Whitney spotted this GORGEOUS tree. And some little purple flowers!
And of course, we had lots of Liddabits everywhere.
When Danny and I got in the car, I high-fived him and said “best wedding ever–accomplished!” — it really, really was.
When:
Be sure to enter by Friday, February 13 at midnight! We’ll announce the winner on Valentine’s Day and again on Monday, February 16 incase you miss it.
There is nothing quite as fun as putting yourself in the mind of a soon-to-be thirteen year old girl and designing a party the way she’d want it. Hip patterns and colors prevailed when I worked on my dear friends’ daughter’s thirteenth a few months ago! The amazing Janelle Van Houw of 
