Tuesday Team Pick: Boyd!

In case you haven't been been introduced to Boyd, he's our Warehouse Manager and he does it all. He was voted our company MVP for the month of February. And we have this great photo of him (or, his hands, rather) in action, running our thermography press. So it makes sense that for Boyd's Team Pick, he wouldn't choose just one invitation. Instead, he said he enjoys the challenge that comes with running thermography invitations. There are so many factors that have to be just right for the invitation to come out looking perfect. Here are some examples of his handiwork:

Close-up of the raised, thermographic ink for an Anna Griffin Rehearsal Dinner invitation.



A traditional layout for an Anna Griffin thermography invitation.

Thermography on a Colonial White Deckled Reply Card.

If you really love the look of thermography invitations, you can read more about our process here. And of course, please check out our wonderful selection of invitations available for thermographic printing here.



The PaperStyle Blog is a Big Kid Now!

Five years ago today, The PaperStyle Blog was born, and we couldn’t be more proud of what it’s become. And while we certainly don’t have to worry about scraped knees or running late for kindergarten, this blog has definitely been a labor of love.

The PaperStyle Blog was created with the intent to give our customers a better look at what we’re all about as a company. Over the years, we’ve tried to use it as a platform to provide our customers with tips and tricks to make their PaperStyle experience the best it can be. We’ve also used it to highlight our awesome employees and the things they love, because we're proud to show our customers who we are.

In the past five years, The PaperStyle Blog has undergone some facelifts and introduced some new kinds of posts, like Wordless Wednesdays & Tuesday Team Picks. Take a look back at our first blog post, all the way back in 2008 (talk about an old picture. This is taking throwback Thursday to a whole new level).

Time really does fly when you’re having fun, and The PaperStyle Blog has certainly been a fun endeavor for our company. We hope that y’all have enjoyed reading our blog as much as we’ve enjoyed writing it.

Have some cake today in our honor. Because there's no such thing as too much birthday cake.

Michael Becomes a Citizen!

In case you missed it, back in April, we hired a great new TypeStylist named Michael. He's been doing a great job and we love having him around! Shortly after he started working here, Michael, who's originally from Colombia, was awarded his US citizenship! Here's what he had to say about it all:

Where are you from, originally?
I was born in Medellin, the second largest city in Colombia. Colombia is located in the northwestern part of South America, with a population of 46 million. Medellin is located in the mountains and it actually looks a lot like Atlanta, but it’s still a small city compared to any metropolitan area in the United States.

When and why did you first come to the United States?
My parents got divorced when I was very little, and my dad moved to Miami in the 90's. I used to go to Miami to spend my summer vacations with him and his new family after he re-married. My dad died, but my grandmother was still living in Miami, so I later came to her house after graduating from college, since I wanted to learn English before entering the "work force". I stayed for 6 months. I took English classes and came back to Medellin. Then, I fell in love and wanted to marry (my now wife), but I did not have the best job... so I figured that I could come back to the US one more time and try to find a better paying job that could also give me a work permit, and eventually a permanent residence status (green card). After doing odd jobs, I found a place that was willing to sponsor me. All this was around 2003. So, I think the best answer to as to why is that I had a dream of a better life, a place where I could grow a family, a place where I could interact with more cultures and people from different backgrounds, a country where there would be more opportunities for me and eventually for my children, with better schools and safer communities. I found that in the United States from the very first time that I came for vacations in Miami back in the '90s.

How long have you been working on obtaining your citizenship?
Since I got my work permit. The citizenship was the final step of the process. So, it was just a matter of time and being a good resident. Any trouble with the law would eventually lead to a removal or deportation. Also, being employed and taking care of your financial issues is important, so you do not end up being a "dependent" of the government, but rather, a productive, tax-paying force. It takes around 2 years of having a work permit before you can apply for your permanent residence. Once the 2 years went by, the approval process took me around 2 years. Then you have to wait 5 years before you can apply to become a US citizen. Then, it takes around 6-8 months to get an interview and finally get a notice for your oath ceremony. So, it’s probably been around 10 years in the making.

Was the process very difficult and/or strenuous?
I always hired the best lawyers that I could afford, so they help me a lot along the way. There is a lot of paperwork that you have to fill out throughout the process and you have to keep records and proofs. But it was more about the time that it takes. At the end, I see it more as a "probationary period" on which you have to prove that you would be a good citizen, that you deserve to be here.

How do you feel now that you’re officially a citizen?
Pure joy. Life is short and it has its milestones: your graduation, your wedding, when you have a child, when you climb a big mountain. Becoming a citizen of the U.S. was one of them. Being a U.S citizen, for me, is being part of one of the greatest countries in the world, so I felt that I had accomplished something big. It was a dream come true, a dream that I had for many years and that changed my life and hopefully the lives of the generations to come after me. Now, I can tell to my daughter to keep dreaming, because dreams do come true.

A Very Wordy Wednesday: How to Get Your PaperStyle Products Looking Their Best

If you’ve never bought invitations or announcements online before, it may seem like a painstaking process. You have to figure out how to use the personalization technology, then come to terms with the fact that your order is in someone else's hands until it arrives on your doorstep. At PaperStyle, we try to make the process as easy as possible for our customers. Not only can you personalize your invitation exactly as you’d like it, but you can also request a secondary proof to see what improvements our TypeStylists have made. If our TypeStylists catch an issue with your order, such as an incorrect date, spelling discrepancy, or missing information, we try to be as proactive as possible by contacting you right away. We want our customers to be sure that their end product is exactly what they wanted, beautiful and personal.

With that said, there are certainly a few things that you can do as a customer to help us make sure that your product looks great.

PHOTOS
This is perhaps the most important section of this blog post. PaperStyle offers a wonderful selection of photo cards (though we're a bit biased, aren't we), but in order for that card to look its very best, the photo should be equally as wonderful. It’s particularly important that your photo is of good quality. Our TypeStylists have the technology to edit your photo to an extent, but in order for the photo to print well on your card, it needs to be a good photo to begin with. Here’s what we mean:

When providing us with a photo, check for pixel measurement and resolution (often referred to as dpi [dots per inch] or ppi [pixels per inch]). The difference between the two is that ppi measures the pixel resolution of your photo on either your camera or computer screen; dpi refers to the resolution of your printed image. A photo with a minimum resolution of 300 ppi or dpi will print very well, given that the measurement of your photo directly relates to the size of the photo on the invite. If the space provided is a small square, your photo should have a high resolution, but doesn’t need to be large. However, if your photo fits into half or all of the design, your photo will print best if it’s large and has a high resolution. Submitting a picture with a lower resolution means that your photo will potentially be unclear at the time of printing.


 

If you have a PC, viewing the properties of a picture is pretty straightforward. Right-click on the photo or file and a menu box will pop up. Click on the "Properties" option and another box will pop up listing the image properties of your photo. The image above is 4608px by 3072px at 300 dpi. That's a pretty big image. This image could be printed at a very large size and it would still be clear. 

It’s also important to note that if you’re scanning a photo, most scanners allow you to choose your ppi when you scan and store your file. 300 captures more detail of the scanned image, so if you have the option to store your file at that resolution, do it. Also, when you scan your picture(s), please be sure to save them as .jpegs. Sending us a file saved in a PDF format isn't something we can use and will most likely delay the shipment of your order. Though this may seem like a lot of information, we highly encourage you to scan your photos, rather than taking a picture of a picture. Chances are, that photo will be distorted and discolored.

It's important to understand that the orientation of your photo should match the orientation of the photo space on your card. Adding portrait-oriented pictures into landscape-oriented spaces will leave empty space on the sides of your photo; doing the reverse will cut off much of your picture.

On that same note, be careful with cropped photos. Cropping reduces the size of your photo, which means that even a high resolution photo could be unclear if it’s too small for the space on your invitation/announcement. It’s better to send or insert the whole photo into the photo space, then leave a note for a TypeStylist in the "special instructions box" on the personalization page to crop how you’d like it. If it’s possible, our TypeStylists or PaperStylists will be more than happy to help you out.

WORDING
When it comes to the wording of your invitation, announcement, thank you note, etc., the biggest piece of advice that we can give you is to double, triple, even quadruple-check your order before submitting. A good way to be sure that you have all your pertinent information on your card is to have a checklist. Do you have...

• Date
• Time
• Place
• Rsvp (date to RSVP by & necessary contact info, such as phone number or email address)
• Extra requests: proper attire, parking information, early arrival time for surprise parties, host or cash bars, etc.

We review every invitation and try very hard to catch any errors before your order leaves our facility, however, some things may slip by. Our TypeStylists and Quality Control team members check for grammar, spelling and spacing errors, but by ensuring that everything on your invitation is correct before you submit your order to us, there is less room for us to interpret something incorrectly. For example, we often receive invitation orders with no RSVP information on them. It’s difficult for us to interpret whether you purposely omitted the RSVP info, or simply forgot to include it.

SPACING & ALIGNMENT
The spacing of your invitation shouldn't be something you worry too much about. Our TypeStylists are here to help ensure that your product is going to look beautiful. However, we have seen plenty of TypeStylist notes in the "special instructions" box about customers having difficulty adding new text lines to their invitation. So, here's a (hopefully) helpful visual to show you how to add extra lines to your invitation, should you need them:

As you can see, there is an "Add Line" option in the toolbar that will appear above your item
on the personalization page. Clicking that option will create a new, empty line in the center of the design
that you can fill with your desired text, then move to the appropriate space using your mouse
or the arrow keys on the left-side toolbar.

If you still find yourself struggling to get it to look the way you want it to, feel free to leave a note in the "special instructions" box.

Now, that was pretty painless, right? Lots of reading, we know, but it's good for you, like eating your vegetables. We like to think that with this handy-dandy little blog post, you're well on your way to becoming a pro at ordering online invitations (from PaperStyle, obviously...).

As always, we want our customers to know that we are always available to assist you with your order, whatever the issue might be. We work very hard to ensure your complete satisfaction with your products.

Like all the info you've gotten from this post? Be sure to check out our (frequently updated) Invitation Resource Board on Pinterest, for all sorts of tips, tricks, and articles to help you out.

All the Cool Kids Are Writing Thank You Notes

Growing up, my mother always insisted that my brother and I write thank you notes. Every year, about a week after any holiday for which someone had sent us gifts or money, she'd whip out the stationery and my brother and I would have to stifle our groans of dread. We'd be spending the next hour or so (although it felt much, much longer) inside, carefully penning out our sincerest thanks. Even in college, whenever I came home for the weekend, she'd hand me a stack of notecards and I would dutifully take up residence at the kitchen table. It wasn't until recently that I realized that writing thank you notes no longer felt like a chore. As a teenager, pretty much everything seemed more important than expressing gratitude. That sounds bad, but what I mean is that, in some strange way, I just assumed that everyone knew that I was grateful.

Then I moved across the country. Since I've moved, my friends and I have determined that we rather enjoy getting mail, so birthdays and holidays have come to mean birthday cards and Christmas presents. And even though my friends I speak on a regular basis, I always send thank you cards. It's important to me, as a way to show my gratitude, as well as a way to brighten their day with a piece of mail with their name on it.

So, I really must thank my mother, because the reality is:

nothing shows your appreciation quite like a handwritten thank you note.

If you still don't believe me, here are some other people who agree:

"Let’s face it—we live in a digital world where people communicate in 140-characters or less and are constantly emailing and texting. The stream for communication is non-stop and instant, which is why discovering a hand-written note in your mailbox is such a refreshing surprise."
-Lauren Conrad (LC knows what's up.)

"Just like my mom had taught me, these notes don’t have to be a elaborate. All they require is genuine appreciation, letting the people in your life know that the small things they do make a big difference."
-Carlyann, Lovelyish

"...focus on one true, meaningful sentence about the gift or the person. The notes don't have to be long... sometimes limiting yourself to just a few sentences forces you to distill your sentiments."
-NPR Staff, NPR

That's truly the beautiful thing about thank you notes. They don't need to be elaborate or even eloquent. They just need to be sincere. The fact that you're writing one at all says quite a bit. In this digital age, we lose bits and pieces of our personal relationships to technology all the time. Hearing the sound of someone's voice has been replaced by the dinging of a text tone and the primary contents of my mailbox are annoying credit card applications. There's nothing better than getting a piece of mail from someone I actually know, seeing my name in their handwriting. We really should bring that back. It's the cool thing to do.

That's why we're putting our designer stationery on sale. Take 15% off our entire selection of Crane, William Arthur, Embossed Graphics and Kids Stationery until 6/3/13. Use code PS15WRITE at checkout and bring back the power of real mail.