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Woohoo! Today’s post is celebrating something that was a long time coming: a Paper & Honey website refresh!
When I hired Love-Inspired to design my site in 2013, we started from zero. The ground up. And we ended up with something that was exactly what I needed at the time. I LOVED my website because it was all mine! It meant my work finally had a web presence — it meant Paper & Honey was A Thing That Really Existed. It was a first giant step into becoming a business owner. It meant this dream of mine was solid and it was happening and it was real. And if that’s not the sweetest, most gratifying feeling in the world, I’m not sure what is.
But. In the process of building my site from scratch, I had very little tangible items to work with. I had barely any professional client work to show off. My “headshot” was a quick something my husband snapped on our honeymoon. All images of my work were taken in my dark office, hastily photographed just to have something done, with a DSLR camera I barely knew how to use.
All of that was perfect for the time being! It was a fantastic little launch for my baby business. But as I grew, as my skillset widened, as my hand lettering became more refined, and as my roster filled with amazing clients and their visions for beautiful stationery, I also outgrew my website. I was working on some seriously GORGEOUS projects, all letterpress and gold foil and calligraphied envelopes, and my homepage had a photo of a subpar wedding program “styled” with a leaf plucked from a bush in my front yard? (True story — you gotta fake it ’til you make it!)
But… that wasn’t good enough. I hold myself and my work to a very high standard and what was reflected on my website just wasn’t good enough anymore. I began to feel a little embarrassed when directing potential clients to my website — “You can find more information here, but please don’t look at the photos! Just close your eyes. My work is better than that, I promise!”
So! The first step to taking P&H to the next level — hiring an incredible photographer to help my brand and my work shine in a way I can’t. Enter Andrea Pesce Photography! Andrea has been an absolute godsend. Her photography is bright, airy, and effortless. I’m obsessed. As soon as I saw the results from her session with my friend Amy I was hooked! I remember sitting down, drinking a glass or two of wine, and just trying to find everything Andrea ever produced. With that liquid courage I shot her an 11pm fangirl email expressing my undying love. And the rest is history! Romantic, right? Get in line, Nicholas Sparks! Andrea has given me the gift of truly beautiful images that I am SO proud to show off.
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I’m most excited about my updated homepage. I got rid of the unimpressive photos and replaced them with some of Andrea’s magic as well as one shot from Emily Jane Photography, the latter still TBB — to be blogged 🙂 The two containers to the left went from being big coral and mint blocks to a design that’s cleaner, crisper, and lends more breathing room. It feels almost like my brand matured a little bit from a sassy teenager in Forever 21 to a chic, refined young lady with an affinity for Kate Spade.
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Another unexpected result from being in business for a year and a half: an expansion of services beyond wedding stationery! With help from photographer, designer, and coder extraordinaire Krista A. Jones (I swear, she can do everything!), we installed a menu under Services for web visitors to view my other offerings. From a purely organizational standpoint I am thrilled to be able to utilize these additional pages and have one cohesive place for all of my services, rather than have a potential client email me with, “Hey, I saw you did this thing on Instagram.” 🙂 These new pages cover my custom keepsake marriage certificates…
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…hand lettered logo and branding design for small businesses…
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…and one-on-one coaching for creative entrepreneurs!
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With this update FINALLY comes updated testimonials! This is a win for me personally as I am so so bad at asking for them. “Excuse me! Tell me how great I am, please.” Ha! Or at least that’s what it feels like. 🙂
Several of these are organic emails I received from incredible clients that I tagged as “love letters” in my inbox 🙂 I know brides are SO busy with all of the work it takes in planning your wedding day, so oftentimes when I send them their beautiful custom stationery and don’t hear a peep back, I’m not completely surprised. I know they’re going crazy trying to get those bad boys in the mail on top of everything else on their to-do lists! But that being said, brides: if you have a vendor that goes above and beyond for you, please take two minutes to let them know how much their hard work means to you! Even if it’s just a couple of sentences, it will make their DAY. Hearing that my art brings so much joy to my sweet clients and their families makes my heart come alive. It’s why I do what I do. I love my Paper & Honey brides!
Oh, and sidenote: can we also talk about that PERFECT stock image Andrea created for me?? The succulents! The little honey dipper! I die. I love it so so much.
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I’m also so happy to clean this blog up a bit by moving all of my blog buttons over to their own Press page. I’ve been contributing to styled shoots on and off the past year without paying much attention to the benefits (beautiful images! creative freedom! publicity! a fun button! the ability to say “my work was on Style Me Pretty!”) and it feels SO rewarding to have a spot for all of these fun projects I’ve had the pleasure of being involved with.
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Last but not least, the introduction of a brand new site credits page. Thank you, thank you, thank you to the amazing women that lent their kindness, talents, and beautiful work so I can make this site and MY work that much lovelier. You are so appreciated.
Thanks a bunch for reading along as I detailed all of these updates! Everything feels so fresh and so clean, clean. I can’t wait to reveal some of the very special stationery I created for some of my very special brides in this little updated home of mine.
Happy Friday! xo
