The Color Purple

Although I love the movie The Color Purple - this posting is not about the movie but the actual color purple! We love everything purple at Paper Works and Events. Our colors are now purple and grey and our new business cards and logo has incorporated the color purple. Recently Alison and I painted a wall in our studio a shade of purple called chambourd from Benjamin Moore's Aura collection - that's how much we love the color! I thought it would take 30 minutes and one small quart of paint to do a small wall - it took a couple of hours and 2 runs to the paint store to buy additional paint to cover a very small wall!

Pantone, the global authority on color and provider of professional color standards for the design industries, announced that purple is top 10 colors in the PANTONE® Fashion Color Report Fall 2009. From lilac to lavender and violet to plum, purple is coloring the world of fashion. This regal hue is making a splash everywhere from runways and Hollywood premiers to city streets and DEFINITELY invitations!













Purple is associated with both nobility and spirituality. Purple has a special, almost sacred place in nature: lavender, orchid, lilac, and violet flowers are often delicate and considered precious. Because purple is derived from the mixing of a strong warm and strong cool color it has both warm and cool properties.


Here are a few fun tidpits on the color purple:
Purple is the color of mourning for widows in Thailand.
Purple was the favorite color of Egypt's Cleopatra.
It has been traditionally associated with royalty in many cultures.
Purple dyes made from mollusks were so rare in Ancient Rome that only the very rich could afford them.
Purple robes have historically been worn by royalty and people of authority or high rank.
The Purple Heart is a prestigious U.S. Military decoration awarded to soldiers wounded or killed in action.
Purple was even a very popular color among hippies and was the favorite color of Jimi Hendrix who even named a song after it - purple haze.

And of course any loyal follower of the show Desperate Housewives knows that it takes place on Wisteria lane - named after a vine with beautiful purple flowers!


















What ever shade of purple lights the passion inside of you: Violet, plum, lavender, lilac, thistle, orchid, mauve, royal, amethyst, wine, eggplant, mulberry - we definitely recommend incorporating it into your event!

How I got started with Custom Invitation Design

Women are always asking my advice on how to start a business of their own. I always reply: do what you love, believe that you are the best, stay focused on it and you will succeed. Then this summer one of my face book friends posted the following quote from Will Rogers which said what I say even better: "If you want to be successful, it's just this simple: Know what you're doing. Love what you're doing. And believe in what you're doing."
I started my business 6 months after my daughter Daniela was born in 1992. Don't ask me how I came up with the idea, but I started designing birth announcements of my own and handing pregnant women in Central Park my business cards. Every birth announcement was printed in my apartment,layered, hand embellished and bowed. My husband pointed out at the rate I was going I was probably making 25 cents an hour. As much as I hated to admit it - he was right. So I stopped doing the work myself and I started selling other companies stationery and invitations. My business grew at the same rate my family did. After my fourth child Gabriela was born in 2002, it was getting harder to work out of my home studio. One night I was watching an episode of "The Apprentice" and Donald Trump fired a Harvard graduate just because he said he did not like to take risks. In that moment I decided it was time to take a risk and I open a small 350 sq ft. store front. My business grew within that first year beyond what I expected and I moved to my present studio which is 1000 square feet.
All these years I have been relentless in focusing on growing my business - loving what I do all the way. A natural extension to selling invitations was event planning, so that became a part of my business as well. I have taken many risks along the way and they have paid off. I now have a full time graphic designer extraordinaire on staff, Alison Leibowitz, which allows me to have full control of the design process for our clients from their invitations to their centerpieces! I have come full circle now and although I still sell invitations from over 60 companies I would say that 90% of my invitations are completely custom just like I was doing back in 1992 - the only difference is that I now hire someone to layer the papers and tie the bows!!