Blush + mauve + cream + white inspiration board

We just recently worked with jade on her custom nautical invitation. Her initial idea was all white and cream but later on told us she had hints of pink in her flowers. After some research, we found some beautiful inspirational images from the theknot.com, eluckme.com, kellyoshiroevents.com and of course jade's nautical sand dollar invitations using blush, mauve, some cream and white wedding colors. These colors are hot, hot, hot this season, according to the knot! Enjoy!

Earth Day ~ Part I ~ Life

Besides Passion Paper, I wanted to introduce to you that we also have 2 adorable children, a 3 month old and a 3 year old. Honestly, besides recycling and trying not to be as wasteful as possible at our home and studio (that's another post), I, as an individual, haven't really been doing my research on sustainable, eco-friendly or organic products out there until now.
I guess it all started off when my husband and I started looking for a new mattress a couple of weeks ago. Honestly, I was just concerned about how comfortable the mattress would be. My husband, my ever loving one who is so much more aware about these things, started telling me about Keetsa. I just shrugged and didn't really care too much about it because I haven't heard about this company before. So off we went to San Francisco, almost going through a one way street the other way and finally found the place at ninth street. When I came in, it was a totally different experience from the Mancini's or sleep trains. Although the place was small and smelling of green tea, there were more people in there than any place we've been to.



As posted on their site, "A Better Matresss for You and the Environment" A third of your life is spent in bed trying to achieve renewal for tomorrow. Keetsa brings you eco-friendly sleep products designed to help you get the rest you need while not taking a bite out of your wallet or the environment."

I did some research on traditional mattresses and can you believe that we are inhaling carcinogenic substances such as benzene, methylene chloride, and formaldehyde from traditional mattresses out there? Also found in searchwarp.com, "Toxic substances in mattresses could also come from the fire-retardant component of the mattress. Some brands use generic fire retardants that have been found to consist of potentially inhalable carcinogenic agents such as antimony and boric acid."

So after much research, we are going with keetsa. The whole bed was even transported in a box that you can easily take home in your car or truck, no delivery trucks or anything! So what happened to our old mattress and bed? We sold it at Craigslist. Another couple wanted it for their guestroom. Thank goodness it's not in the dump somewhere and instead is being reused again :-)!

So after all this, I've been purchasing organic materials for our little babies. As for Passion Paper, we do limit coated/metallic papers and use either lokta, mulberry or banana papers...papers that are natural and recyclable. More on that in our next postings - Earth Day - Part II - Passion Paper Materials

Happy Earth Day/Week!

Fantastic Day!

Yay! we just received an email from Kara, from Bridal Crate Wedding News Magazine,
"Just a quick note to let you know that we consider your company Wedding Newsworthy! Congratulations...we love your work! We also gave you a 4 Crate Star, which means your website is Excellent-Outstanding! Here is the link to your personal article:

http://www.bridalcratemagazine.com/the-vendors-news/2010/4/13/passion-paper.html

We also just received a rave review from Diwata and Eric. We created their coral pink Coral themed invitations and save the dates.
Here's their review:

Hi Raquel,

We received our wedding invitations yesterday. We just want to say "THANK YOU!" We love how the inviations turned out. They are so beautiful and unique. The custom coral image you did was amazing. It puts a smile on my face everytime I open the invitation.

Thanks again Raquel! So glad I found you! I'll definately recommend you to all my family and friends.

Your happy customers,

Diwata & Erik


Have a fantastic day everyone!

What are we up to?

We've been quite busy these past couple of months. With the new addition to our family and the wedding season in full gear, life and business has been hectic. More than usual, people are requesting for more customized work. I am so happy and excited about these new creations! Here are a couple of ones that we just finished and shipped. I've included the client's inspirational images to give us a better view of their dream invitation. I've also included some other ones from our portfolio that's customized with their colors in mind. Enjoy!

Debbie's Palm Tree Inspired Invitations. Images on the left are ones she has sent us for inspiration.



Elise's Modern Tropical Stargazer Lily Invitations. Some of the images she has sent us for inspiration:


Loren's Simply Romantic Invitations. Her flowers were our inspiration for colors



Teresa's beautiful white and aqua with starfish invitations



Carol's 25th anniversary invitation - Palm Tree artwork inspired

Our New Arrival!

Hello all!

I haven't written for so long...it's because we've been busy with our newest arrival in the family, our little baby boy! He was 2 weeks and 1 day early and has kept us busy! We've also been busy finishing up work from our current clients, such as a custom sand/initials invitation for Lydia, small invitation starfish voyage bottles for Lissette, large invitation bottles (starfish voyage) for Tory, Ocean Union box or petal invitations for Esther, Francesca, and Victoria and Dominican Republic map invites for Karina! Phew! There are also more on our list!!

It's been an exhausting yet fulfilling month. We've had some sleepless nights, and we're also still trying to adjust to our schedule ...so please excuse us if we haven't gotten back to you or our replies are late! We are so blessed with so many clients and potential clients. Thank you all for being so supportive and patient with us at this time!

Also keep note, please submit your order early! Although we love to work with many of you, I (Raquel) can only do so much physically. All our invitations are created by hand and therefore is a time consuming process. I enjoy what I do and take time and love on all our projects! Anyways, hope all are doing well.

xoxo,
-r.

Seasonal Palette

Our studio is filled with autumn colors and silvery winter palettes! I love fall and winter! Although in California, the season doesn't get chilly until end of October or beginning of November. Right now, we're still in our Indian Summer. Last week, the temperature was about 90-100 degrees, while this week it's about 70-80. We're beginning to do more and more spring palette's such as blue's and turquoises, pinks and greens...but right now, our palettes are browns and beiges and white and silvers. You can see from our collection here: Leah's husband's 60th Birthday Roast, Megan's Old Mission in Idaho (I must say, I think is handsomely pretty, is that a phrase?), and Charlene's New Year's fuchsia stargazer lily.


We'll soon be working on lots and lots of Starfish designs - our most popular right now is Maritime Starfish, Starfish Voyage and Water Sailing! I will be adding some photos of those soon...

Please also view our new Specials for October. If you read the Special's page, one of the condition is to have your invites shipped before Dec. 15 or after Feb. 20th. Why so? Well, we'll be going on maternity leave around January. Our baby boy will be coming around then! As much as I'd love to work, I don't think I'll be much help when the baby arrives. I hope everyone understands. I will be posting a notice sometime in November, but just a heads up if you're reading this.

Happy October!

Love,
Raquel

Wax seals Everywhere!

Hi! We're finally done with the website. Phew! We have a great specials happening this month until...? That's still to be determined. Check out the specials page for more information!

Here are some images of what we've worked on for the past couple of days.

Enjoy!

New Designed Website!

I'm thrilled and exhausted to have finished our new website design. Doing it on my own is fairly a tiring task. I'm mostly a designer and not a programmer. The hardest part of all was the navigation and the logo design. I wanted to keep the red color for our banner because it represents "passion" for me and it's also one of my favorite colors and... to maintain most of what we had but just updating it and making it more intuitive for users. I know there's still more work to do, so in the next couple of weeks, you'll probably see more changes. I hope you'll enjoy it as much as we do for now!

Besides our website design, I'm also finishing up Erica's Modern Vineyard Boxed Invitations. I'm having so much fun putting them together. Also working on some Beach Lounges for Michelle and Lindsey. Our whole studio is smokey from doing all these wax seals!

Here are some images of Erica's Vineyard Designs. We took the designs from Melissa K (see her designs below) and incorporated graphic grapeleaves and grapes to give it that vineyard look. She also wanted something dimensional. After much brainstorm, we suggested used corks...used corks to give it more personality because each one will be unique on its own. (do you see some of them have actual wine stains?) I think this design will soon be part of our collection area. Another client wants to use this design for the holidays. I can't wait to get started on those!






The next couple of days, I'll be working on Coral Reef, Palm Fronds, Starfish Voyage Bottles, Tere's Old Hollywood Invites, just to name a few. You can see Tere's Invitations in our Projects section.

That's it for now. Til next time, -r.

Fall colors and what's happening in the studio

It's been a great week so far, busy and productive. I went to our printer's yesterday to get Erica's Vineyard cards printed. Andres will be picking them up today. After much trouble with the film, we finally got it printed beautifully. I'm extremely happy with the results! I can't wait to show you the final product!

Some things in our studio. Although I love vibrant colors, my favorite season is the fall. Andrés and I got married in October because we love all the fall colors and the weather! It's amazing that I don't have many fall pieces in our website. But I think, eventually, I'll get there. Many more people are asking about fall color combinations, so if you don't see anything that's in your color scheme, let me know! I'm happy that we do have some fall colored invites... Raline's Regal that we just finished, Megan's Cataldo Mission in North Idaho invitations (we're currently working on. you can see her process in our Projects page), and finally wrapping up Michelle's golden yellow beach lounge, and working on Cheri's custom invitations. I've attached some images here.

Megan's Golden Yellow Beach Lounge


Some other things are Cheri's Starfish Boxed Invitations. These are so popular lately that I will probably be adding them to the portfolio section. I love every color combination that people are using. Here are some images:




Besides studio work and trying to start and finish some more custom invitation inquiries, I'm also working on revamping/redesigning our passionpaper website. I did start off as a web designer and studied interactive design at school. I think the hardest job of being a designer is creating a website for yourself. That's why I still do not have an individual web presence. I did, but it's really old, like 2005. Passion Paper keeps me so busy (and having a 3 year old and pregnant) that I don't have the time to redesign anything, just update. But after much thought, it's time for a much needed redesign, especially the navigation. I'm working long hours trying to figure out the best possible solution on how people will navigate around the site, so hopefully, a new look will show sometime next week.

Anyways, I'll blog again later this week and keep you up to date on what's happening here at our studio... happy wednesday!!

New Projects in our Studio

Here are a couple of projects we've been working on in our studio. Lots of hand pressed wax seals and pops of color!

Mackenzie's Bougainvilla Flowers. Mackenzie wanted simple yet elegant invitations, but also wanted texture and pops of fuchsia and green colors.





1 of 3 Beach Lounges we're working on this week. Michelle's Golden Yellow Beach Lounge.





We've also finished Raline's Regal Invitations. She's getting married at the Crystal Plaza, stunning and elegant!


- Image by Crystal Plaza





Soon to view, Erica's Modern Vineyard Invitations and Tere's Hollywood Glamour Invitations.

Have a great weekend,
Raquel