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A new little series, called Wednesday’s Words. I find a lot of inspirational messages online. Some of them you look at and it can resinate within you and either make your day awesome or make you ponder. There are many days where I can let things get the better of me. So I thought this was a perfect little quote to help me get through each day! I hope you enjoy.

Hello! Happy Tuesday! I will be starting a new feature entitled, “Round the Web,” where it is showing you some amazing things I have been finding on the web! My favorite place to browse Things have been going by so fast lately that I forget that its almost Valentine’s Day. I’ve been searching online at some of my favorite blogs and have noticed so many Valentine’s Day ideas.

1. Found this fun DIY to suite your outfit on that loving day

2. Who doesn’t love a friendship bracelet. Go check out what the girls over at Honestly WTF have come up with for Valentine’s Day!

3. If your trying to stick to your New Year’s resolution here is a great idea for a special little treat without ALL of the loaded calories!

4. To spice up your Valentine’s Day attire here is a great nail DIY from the girls at The Beauty Department!

I hope you guys have a wonderful Tuesday!

Name: Zoe Jade

Hometown: I’m a London girl through and through

Turn ons: At the moment I’m loving film photography, my ipad, chocolate covered pretzels, fabric shopping, 90s inspired fashion, and car boot sales.

Turn offs: I dislike rudeness, people who walk unnecessarily slowly, cold tea, being stuck inside when it’s sunny outside, running out of printer ink when I’m in the middle of printing something important.

Favorite color: I have a lot of love for black and white, especially in clothes. I also love mint green in a major way – it’s such the perfect summery colour. My colour choices depend a lot on the season though. As we are getting nearer to Autumn I’m leaning towards browns and mustard yellows more and more.

Favorite place you have traveled to: I am totally obsessed with America, in particular New York City. If I had to pick somewhere other than London to live it would definitely be NYC. It’s such an inspiring place.

Favorite albums: I listen to music all day everyday pretty much and am always looking for new artists to listen to – my go to albums are ‘Romance Is Boring’ by Los Campesinos! or ‘Rumours’ by Fleetwood Mac. They make me work harder for some reason!

What inspires you? Everything. Old movies, magazines, shop window displays, blogs, my friends, junk shops…. I try not to limit myself and am forever ripping pictures out of magazines, and hoarding pretty packaging and scraps of fabric that I like. I try to surround myself with pretty things and hope that they will help me to create pretty things!

How did you get your start? My Nan passed away at the start of 2011 – she lived with me and my family, so after she died her room sat empty. It became just sort of a junk room for a while as we didn’t know what to do with it and it felt weird to move her things out. I’d been wanting to start my own business for several years, and so my parents said I should turn my Nan’s room into a studio to work from. I did, and ended up starting up Ladybird Likes in February 2012. I haven’t looked back since!

What is your favorite design you have created? I love the pin up girl brooches – I have about 6 of them which I swap over on my cardigans! They always get so many compliments whenever I wear them, and I think they sum up the Ladybird Likes brand pretty well too.

Who do you want to work with? I’d love to work with the photographer Tim Walker (he is my total hero) or with one of my blogger crushes like Elsie Larson of A Beautiful Mess.

What part of your job do you find most challenging? I actually find most parts of my job pretty challenging! As I only started my business in February the last six months have been probably the steepest learning curve of my life. I’ve had to learn everything from product photography to accounting, and I’ve had to learn it quickly. I pretty much jumped in at the deep end, but even if I could go back in time I wouldn’t do it any other way.

What part of being a small business owner do you find challenging? I am really awful at managing my time. I will spend hours on a task that is relatively unimportant, then end up having to complete something really important in an hour! I also suck at making decisions – I like to mull things over, research them, get other people’s opinions, but I’ve had to make split second decisions on more than one occasion, and it’s stressed me out a lot!

Any Advice for anyone who is just starting out in a career path similar to yours? Go for it! Put everything you have into what you make, be true to your dream and your vision, work hard, have fun, and be nice to everyone you meet even if they aren’t nice to you. Everything else you will learn along the way.

Thank You Zoe for taking part! If you want to see more on Zoe and Ladybird Likes head on over to her pages!!

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Etsy

I hope you all have a great Monday!

OH Man! TGIF!! Its almost the end of the day and my friend, Danielle, sent me the best video! Here Take a look!! Happy Friday!!!!

Wow! A year has passed already! It has been such an incredible year with the most amazing man I know! When I use to hear the term, “marry your best friend,” I never really thought that would happen to me. 10 years ago, I met that man and now we are married. This has been such a crazy and amazing 1st year together. I am so blessed and thankful for the life that we have made together. I thank God everyday for bringing him back into my life. Happy Anniversary Babe!! With that being said, we decided to head to Austin for our anniversary! We’ve both heard how amazing the city was, and they were right!! This place was AMAZING!!!!

If you follow my Instagram then you’ve seen most of these photos, but we arrived last Thursday and I can’t even tell you how excited we both were! Thursday we spent the day walking around by our hotel to get a feel for where we were and that night we headed to Foreign and Domestic for dinner! If you ever get the chance to head to Austin you HAVE to check this food out! Holy mouth water it was amazing. Its kind of off the beaten path but it is well worth the trip over there.

The next day we headed out to Franklin’s BBQ, but missed it by 10 mins! Apparently you need to get there before 11 when it opens. The line was out the door and they told us we could wait but it would be 2 hours and we weren’t even guaranteed food. Ha! So, yeah we left after that.

We explored the city for most of the day and wandered around the SOCO District right by our hotel. This place was so cool, with lots of vintage shops, antique stores and great food. Food trucks were a huge part of Austin, in the SOCO District there was a street that was just full of Food Trucks. It was pretty fun hanging around there all day.

We walked along this street for most of the day and I scored the Best gift ever..I got my antlers! Sadly, they are still sitting in the Austin airport at Jet Blue waiting for a Fed Ex number to be shipped out to us. So, lesson learned don’t tell Jet Blue you have horns in your bags or they won’t let you fly!

So there is a bridge that was right next to our hotel called Avenue of the Bats. This bridge is known to have 2 million..that’s right..MILLION bats living under it. One of the things to do while in Austin is see this amazing spectacle at night! I will warn you, if you stand on the bridge they start to fly up at you and let me tell you that was not fun to witness! haha!

We ended our trip by heading to a famous mural that is in Austin. It was the best way to end our trip. Austin, you will be missed but until next time! And Happy 1st Anniversary to the most amazing man ever!!!! Love you!!!

If anyone has followed my Pinterest they would see how obsessed I have become with Home Decor and all things Antlers. The other day I was with my friend, Dominique, and we were walking around a vintage antique store and I almost fainted when I saw random Antlers just sitting on top of this dresser! I love the outdoor feel that they bring and I love how it can make anything look rustic. Seriously, I am obsessed right now. Dave and I are heading to Austin in a week and I found online a taxidermy store and I can’t wait to go in there and see what I can find!! Eeeeeee!! The excitement is exhilarating!

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Hello! I’m very excited to be back and have some fun new fresh people to introduce you to! I hope you enjoy the series once again!

Hometown: We were both born in different parts of Michigan but now we live in Los Angeles

Turn Ons: A good typeface, french press coffee, weekend projects, awesome vintage finds

Turn Offs: Bad Typography

Favorite Color Jake: I get asked that a lot and honestly I don’t have a Favorite color Jamie: Blue, more specifically Pantone 19-4056

Favorite place you have traveled to: London, that’s where we fell in love.

Favorite Albums: Abbey Road, MuteMath’s Odd Soul, also loving Of Monsters and Men’s My Head is an Animal album.

What Inspires You: Maybe this sounds silly but we really get a lot of inspiration from each other. We are able to bounce ideas off each other, collaborate, and in the end hopefully produce something beautiful that we are both proud of. We also love old things. They have great colors, textures and history. And of course good music is a given.

How did you get your start: The blog started as a way to keep our family updated on our life. Then we just enjoyed sharing our lives and work with people so we just kept writing. The design and letterpress part came later. In college we both studied design but their was one class in particular that really impacted us. We took a printmaking class where we learned a bunch of different printing proceses. We got our hands dirty, made fun art pieces, and loved every minute of it. I think that’s when we knew what we wanted to do. That class was the first and only class in our college carrer where the professor just let us create whatever we wanted. At that point it was more about the process than the actual art, but that freedom to be creative and create what we wanted was like a breath of fresh air. We never wanted it to end. So naturally we bought a letterpress and started printing.

What is your favorite design you had created? Even though it’s been two years, we still love our wedding invitations. They are really special to us so they will probably we our favorite thing we’ve done for a while.

Who do you want to work with: Hands down Brady Vest from Hammerpress. We just can’t get enough of his work. He has mastered what he does so learning a few tricks of the trade from him would be a dream.

What part of your job do you find most challenging? Letterpress is a hand done process so finding the balance between producing quality work and still allowing the imperfections of letterpress to show through can be challenging. It’s a process that calls for patience.

Any Advice for anyone who is just starting out in a career path similar to yours? If you can financially–just go for it. It is so rewarding when you get to wake up everyday and do what makes you happy. Even if you can’t quit your day job you can still make time to grow whatever business you’re wanting to start. Also I think writing a blog is a good way to share your work and have an online presence everyday. If blogging is not your thing, try submitting your work to different blogs that post the same type and style of work. There are tons of blogs that even ask for submissions. The worst thing they can say is no.

To see more on A Pair of Pears head on over to their site!

A Pair of Pears

Etsy

Hello! I’m back! I’m so excited to FINALLY be ready to get back on the blogging wagon. I have missed you all and I hope to get some of you back. This weekend I had the privilege of helping my good friend Ally and her now husband Graham, with their wedding. I’ve known Graham and Ally for almost 3 years now and through that time I’ve gotten really close with Ally. I was so happy when she called me and told me of her engagement. Graham and Ally have been together for 10 years and they are now ready to start the next chapter in their lives. My good friend, Dominique and I have started a small party planning business that I will explain more on later, and Ally had asked if we could do her day of coordinating. Of course we both agreed and thought it would be great. Ally was a dream to work with, she was so organized and had made SO many things for her wedding. All of the details that surrounded her wedding were the “Ally touch” that made their day so amazing!

The head table came out so beautiful. Dominique and I had so much fun setting the wedding up and making sure it turned out the way Ally had dreamed it would look.

Dominique rocked the night! She was so on top of everything making sure that the wedding moved a long without creating any lulls in the evening. It was so fun working with her that day, her and I will make a great team. I had so much fun and I was so thankful for being apart of their special day!

Hi Everyone, This morning I was reading some great articles and had come across Tavi Gevinson. Now if you don’t know who she is google her, you will not be disappointed by this young and inspirational girl. At 13 she started a fashion blog called, The Style Rookie, which has grown over the past couple of years. Now at 16, she has created an online publication called Rookie Magazine for your teens. I will admit that I had lost track of her, but when I stumbled upon her again through Instagram I reconnected with my love for this young individual. I was looking through her blog this morning and I came across some videos from her and holy crap this chick is very bright and very articulate for a 16 year old! Take a look..

Not to mention she is a very beautiful singer.

So yeah, check her out and see what she has to say. You will gain a new respect for this young girl. I hope you all have a great Thursday!

Hello Hello! It’s time to get back to the one thing that I enjoy..Blogging. After my long hiatus I’ve realized that I have missed this and missed all of my fans. Or the one or two that I reach at least..Mom, Dave..I love you both. Today, I was reading through some of my favorite places to visit on the internet and stumbled upon Jessica Hische’s post for her wedding invitation. I love Jessica Hische’s work and even her wedding invitation is amazing and doesn’t disappoint!

As you scroll down through their story the illustrations, links and typography ( of course) is amazing! I just love her and her creative mind!

If you have time and want to read a great story of love you need to head over and check it out! I promise you will not be disappointed!

Jess & Russ