Welcome to our paper and letterpress world!! We are so excited to give you another sneak peak into everyday life here at the studio and show you a few interesting items that we use to make your experience and your wedding invitations special and unique. Hopefully this will brighten up the start of your new week even more 🙂
(If you have not seen part I yet, click here to watch the video)
As you can see, our shop is in the glorious Sunshine State (hint, hint: Florida! :)) Our studio is located in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg, a.k.a. Downtown St Pete or the Burg for us locals. We are nestled into one of the remaining old buildings, from the 1920’s, in St. Pete and we are located on the third floor! We absolutely love coming to work and the almost daily experience of the sun shining through our seven huge windows as we work and do what we love: creating art and playing with all things paper!
Here at A&P Designs, we try to create a welcoming atmosphere in our shop by displaying a blend of creativity and professionalism. To accomplish this, we have a mini exhibit in our meeting area of many of our different wedding invitations. That way, each bride gets to see right away the quality and style of our work. I also love to give each bride the opportunity to meet one-on-one. This gives me the chance to learn about each bride’s personality, wedding style, and color palette. Then I use all of these things to create a design that will be unique and specially suited for her. Pat’s beautiful handmade table (above) is where everything starts!
This is where I spend most of time. This is my space and the place where I get to play with my ideas and create every design. Not to mention that this is the area where I communicate with the world by responding to all of the e-mails sent by brides, wedding planners, and everyone else involved in making things happen 🙂
The pictures above gives you an idea of Pat’s playground. He loves to play with paint and colors, so THIS is where everything really comes to life! Every letterpress invite is carefully crafted and printed by Pat. This awesome guy is truly blessed with the ability to work with his hands. There is no task to big for Pat! He can make almost anything a bride wishes to have in her invites. He is in charge of A LOT of things including printing, cutting, and assembling. Did I mention he does everything manually?!
And last but not least, our faithful printers, Lupe and Lola. Yes, we did give them names, and acquiring these beauties was the beginning of our love for letterpress. Lupe – the bigger press – has been around since 1916, and Lola – the small press – is from the late 1800s. These girls work like a charm, and this is where Pat prints every invitation, stationery or paper product one piece at a time and every bride, during their appointment with me, gets to see a glimpse of the process involved in making each invite.
I hope you enjoyed getting to know a little bit more about our work! Pat and I would love to have you over to our studio and help make your wedding invitations and paper goods a perfect piece of art! -A&P
Photos by our friends at Kismis Ink Photography and Esther Louise Photography