Have you ever wondered where to start when it comes to stationery, what Ottawa has to offer and all the options. Stationery is one of the most important aspect, as it's the first look into your special event. We have captured some of Ottawa's most popular stationery vendors all in one spot! We have worked hand and hand with these vendors and they come highly recommended. Continue reading as we get to know each vendor.
Meet Liz, she is originally from Calgary, but love brought her to Ottawa where she now lives with her husband and her airedale terrier, Bruce. When she's not tucked behind her computer, she likes to snowboard, travel and enjoy a glass of red wine. Liz began her business in 2014 and it's been a wild ride so far, but she is loving life as an entrepreneur!
Why stationery
Ever since I was a little girl, I have always been crafty. I was the one who had the birthday parties at the art store! Before I began this adventure with Ivy Stripe, and also before Etsy became super popular, I went through the process of finding invitations for my wedding. I found it to be one of the more challenging parts of wedding planning because I had a specific idea of what I wanted, but no one to help me make it a reality. I'm hoping that Ivy Stripe can be there for couples who want their invitations and stationery to reflect their vision. After all, the invitation is really what sets the initial tone for a wedding.
Describe your style
I love to create simple and modern designs printed on beautiful paper. My favourite styles often include calligraphy-inspired fonts, watercolours, florals, pastels, metallics and geometric patterns. I really enjoy working with couples to come up with a design that incorporates their personality and wedding style. There's no better feeling than seeing their faces light up when I deliver the printed stationery and it's exactly what they had envisioned.
Invite options
Invitation designs are available on my website and can be personalized in terms of the fonts, colours and wording. I also work with couples to create custom designs. I have two papers that I like to work with - a 130 lb matte white with an eggshell texture and a 137 lb white shimmer with a pearl finish. Also available is a handmade, hand torn paper upon special order. Embellishments can be added to neatly assemble the suite together including belly bands, ribbon and tags.
Envelope options
All invitations, response cards and thank you cards come with a matching white "A" envelope (the type with the square flap). Special colours can be custom ordered as well. I also offer envelope liners in different patterns to match the card design.
Your favourite design
On my website, my favourites are Grace, Eden, Savoy, Alloy & Fancy Flowers. I also have a number of favourite custom designs that you'll start to see pop up in photos on social media once they've been sent out!
Your favourite print colour
Champagne is one of my favourites these days - such a great neutral! The classics, gold and navy, are a given and will always make it to the top of my list. Shades of purple, such as lavender, mauve, orchid and eggplant (for the fall) are all lovely and quite popular too.
What makes your stationery unique
Attention to detail - the design, print and paper quality are all very important to me!
Do you do offer more then Wedding Stationery
Yes, I design + print invitations to bridal & baby showers, birthday parties and corporate events. Along the same lines, I produce matching paper goods for events/parties such as candy bags, signs, tent cards, cake toppers, favour tags/stickers and water bottle labels. I also create and print birth announcements and holiday photo cards. While you won't see these types of designs on my website, I love to work on all types of custom design and print projects upon request.
Price Range
Invitations from $1.75+; Suites from $3.50+; Custom design from $25.00+
Best method of contact:
Email: liz@ivystripe.com
Phone : 613.667.3067
A long list of titles; entrepreneur, graphic designer, wife & (new) mom. Krista is a lover of fancy coffees, creative food & travel adventures. Wishtree started back in 2009 with a friend and in 2014 Krista took over as sole proprietor. Designing pretty things is a wonderful escape from her daily grind.
Why stationery
The wedding industry was lacking unique, well designed invitations and stationery and with our talent, we were lucky enough to work with some wonderful brides who wanted to stand out from the rest. Creating invites that represent the couple and their wedding style and then bringing it through to the day-of stationery was key. It's all about unity and marrying the "sneak peek" with the grand reveal.
Describe your style
Our style is whatever the couple wants. We can go elaborately elegant or modern simplistic. Play with foils and letterpress, keep it purely typographic or illustrative and fun. The designs are endless when it comes to working with us.
Invite options
If you can think it up, we'll try our best to make it happen. The design can be whatever you like, but it's the paper (textured, layered, pocketfolds) and type of printing (letterpress, foil, digital) which reflects your budget.
Typically we do flat digital printing on a 5x7" card, paired with an RSVP postcard or card and sealed in a colourful envelope with our envelope wraps. That's our standard and most popular.
Envelope options
We always encourage our brides to go with a fun coloured envelope that reflects their wedding colours. It makes trekking out to get your mail that much more exciting when you see something colourful amongst all the bills. We can typically acquire any colour you want, and if not, there's always an alternative. Envelope liners are another fun surprise for guests. We also encourage our envelope wraps; saving the bride hours of writing addresses and hand cramps.
Your favourite design
It's so hard to choose! We have so many different designs that each one we work on becomes our next favourite. Currently, I'd say any designs with florals or even just simple typography. We're huge on type-play and love tweaking each letter so they fit beautifully among each other.
You favourite print colour
Love a rich navy on bright white cardstock. Paired with pinks and reds. So rich! Grey is also a colour we love to work with. It's soft and timeless.
What makes your stationery unique
We're designers. Legit graphic designers. With diplomas in Graphic Design and over 10 years of experience. We see things that many may not when it comes to invitations and stationery. Typography is a big one and if you can't read the pertinent information on an invite, no matter how pretty it looks, it's all for nothing. It's all in the details and it's being able to listen to the client and create something they're picturing, but better. Invitations are the first look into what the wedding is going to be like. So although we may not have a shop or carry every colour envelope out there, we focus on each and every bride as if they're our only client and do our best to wow them and their guests. If we can remove the stress from one thing on their list, we're doing our job right.
Do you offer more then wedding stationery
We don't stop at weddings, we design for birthdays, baptisms and showers. Anything worth celebrating, we can do it. We also offer design services for small businesses (logo branding, business cards, promo materials, etc) and events (tickets, posters, signage, etc).
Price range
Pricing is customized for each project. Our invite suite typically starts at $8.50/invite, but can be higher/lower depending on the paper and style of printing chosen. We try our best to work within our clients budget. There's also a DIY option where we do the design and the bride/client can then take the design and print it on their own, however many times they like, on whatever papers they like. We've found this to be quite popular. Especially for the crafty brides.
Best method of contact:
Email: info@wishtreeinvites.com
Website: www.wishtreeinvites.com
Facebook: /wishtreeinvites
Mrs. Megan is you're typical 28 year old momma and wife. Those things have always and will always come first in her life. She has the sweetest two year old little boy, who has personality for days and the greatest sense of humor and she is married to her high school sweetheart; their going on 14 years together, married for 3. Born and raised in Ottawa, ON, she graduated from Carleton University with a Bachelors degree, major in Law, and found herself with a growing career in the Recruitment and HR world. She has a huge love for creative design and all things pretty, Paper and Pearls started unexpectedly after creating prints for her son's nursery just over two years ago.
Why stationery
I truthfully believe it just all came together as fate. I have always had such a love for creating digital designs. I love the way certain fonts go together, I love mixing clean lines with romantic styles. For as long as I can remember, I've always been digitally talented...but I'll be honest, I can't draw for the life of me, and my writing is horrendous...I'm a lefty, and you can tell. Stationary just happened.
Describe your style
Clean, modern and custom. Every single order is completely custom; we do not use pre-made designs or templates and we never duplicate our work. Each of our items are designed solely around our clients ideas, concepts and the feel of their event. We work one-on-one with every single client, narrowing down even the slightest options, like font, placement, wording, colors, every last detail. It really does allow our clients to do the designing themselves, we just do the work. our style is modern, soft, romantic and elegant. Fancy, and sometimes even a bit edgy. I love to play around with color, water paint, soft florals, and really pretty fonts!
Invite options
Our Stationery options are all a-la-carte. This allows our clients to only select what they need, versus being forced to purchase a whole package if they, let's say, don't require an information or RSVP card. Everything is individually priced, and we are happy to offer discounts based on quantities.Standard 5x7 Custom Invitation with Envelope of Choice (White or Pearlescent Color) Single or Double Sided
Envelop options
We offer white, crisp flat envelopes for those who are hoping to invest the value of their invitations into the invitation itself and save a bit on the envelope side of things, or pearlescent cardstock envelopes that are priced a bit higher, but really do finish off the package with a "pop" when mailing out to guests and attendees. Both of these options are offered in all sizes. We offer our pearlescent envelopes in over 40 different colors, to match our cardstock used for belly bands, pocketfolds and laser cut designs.
Your favourite design
Tough question; I can't tell you how many times I've sent emails to our clients commending them for coming up with such a neat concept, because I have just LOVED working with it and designing it. We really do have some awesome clients with great taste! One of my many favorites would have had to have been this really cool charcoal grey and fushia design that we did for a client of ours.
You favourite print colour
I'm a monochrome kind of girl. I love black water colors, soft but dull pinks, greys...those are right up my alley. I'm a huge fan of "almost" black colors, sort of that dull matte black color.
What makes your stationery unique
I really try to ensure that we're always providing something that is up and coming, something that isn't you're standard invitation offering. We're all about standing out, being different and being completely custom is a huge part of that. You won't find our designs anywhere else, and everything is one of a kind, no templates, no pre-made stuff here. That is unique enough on it's own; but to add to that, our laser cut offerings are unique to us, and the possibilities for our laser cut designs are endless, as they are created based on our ideas.
Do you offer more then wedding stationery
Absolutely - We still do many print orders, a ton of birthday invitations, baptisms, anniversaries, any event you can think of, we work with it. In addition to that, we've done business cards, logo creations, everything right down to custom valentines day cards for little ones! We even released our first ever "Mom Life" Coffee Mug this year.
Price range
Our custom invitations start at just $2.80 per invite, plus envelope. The prices certainly depend on what kind of package our clients are looking for, what they need included, but we work with every type of budget. We will always provide the best and most cost effective option for our clients, based on their needs and value. We're pretty "discount happy" too...I don't remember the last time I put through an order for a client where I didn't provide them with a discount, even if it was small. Our return customers automatically get 10% off any order, and we have quantity discounts that start at a qty of 50 Invitations.
Best method of contact:
Email: paperandpearlsdesign@gmail.com
Instagram: Paper_and_Pearls
Website: www.paperandpearlsdesign.com
Kelsey is a wife who loves beautiful things and has gone through life always creating the things she wanted since she could never find what she loved or envisioned. Whether it was designing for her friends and families birthday cards or her own wedding invitations, she has never bought off the shelf. She is a designer at heart that believes you should exude high style, class and creativity in all aspects of your life. There is nothing wrong with standing out in a crowd and Kelsey believes if you’re going to do something, you should do it right the first time. She is inspired to create solutions that make her clients lives a little better, prettier and happier.
Why stationery
I grew up loving arts and crafts. Stationery and paper goods were something I loved when I was a kid; I have always made my own cards. Eventually, I realized stationery design was the perfect mix of graphic design and illustration that I was looking for and I fell in love; and thus Hashtag Paper evolved.
Describe your style
Stationery design is all about adapting to your clients personal style- so this would be variable. Your invitation plants the first seed for what's to come. Weddings today are all about creating your personal style and it all begins with the invitation design. Creating a personal theme or cohesive aesthetic is the best way to do that. We recommend to our clients to start by making a list of what excites you (and don’t be shy – write everything that comes to mind). Whether it be your wedding venue, location, an element that you love about the two of you, how you met, or the places you’ve traveled together, anything can create a theme. Once you have your list, think about how you can carry that through into all the details of your wedding day. For my own wedding, I loved glamour and my husband preferred a classic look, so we went with a traditional black tie event with just the right amount of sparkle. It was very much an intimate feast with family and friends, a dream come true.
Invite options
At Hashtag Paper we believe our invite options are endless. We start with a blank canvas and work with our clients in creating a complete custom invitation suite and to follow, all other wedding stationery. We offer many different options and colours of cardstock, laser cut pockets, thermography and foil printing, the options do really seem endless!
Envelope options
Envelopes are a part of your invitation that we believe should not be overlooked. Our envelopes vary from a beautiful cotton matte finish, a pearlescent shimmer or even textured wood grain. They come in an array of colours to make your invitation pop when your guests open their mail box! We also offer envelope addressing, which pairs your envelope and invitation fonts for that extra touch!
Your favourite design
I love art-inspired invitations using watercolor, also laser cut printing is incredible, elegant, and intricate. These options are both stunning.
What makes your stationery unique
You only have one chance to make the right impression with your invitations and I love making my clients look amazing on paper. Each invitation is custom designed for our client. It’s all about personalization, style and confidence. Three key components that make for great invitations! Pair it with thermography or foil printing, laser cut pocket and great graphic design and you are going to have one jaw dropping invitation!
Do you offer more then wedding stationery
I do! And that’s the best part about HashtagPaper, it’s bringing together a cohesive and branded stationery package for the couple. I love starting at the beginning with invitations and then moving forward to create matching table numbers, menus, wedding signage, seating charts, programs & place cards. Really, if you have an idea.. I want to help you design it! Whether it’s your wedding invitations, business cards, personal stationery, home décor it’s all part of your life’s brand image.
Price range
We always work with each client to suit their budget. There are so many options to help facilitate budgets, so no matter what your budget is, we promise to create a beautiful design and create something you will love. We also offer a DIY component for the creative brides; we simply supply the stationery or the design.
Best method of contact:
Our website is designed for our clients to get a feel for what we do. We have built a contact form for entry to give us a little bit of detail about what you are looking for and how we can help you!
Website: www.hashtagpaper.net
