Navy Pier Bridal Show recap

Thank you to everyone that stopped by our booth at Sunday's bridal show. The Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier are always a great setting to show off our invitation designs, especially on a sunny fall day.

Our next show is the North Shore Style Wedding's Bridal Fashion Show & Expo at the Doubletree North Shore in Skokie on November 8th. Hope to see you there.

Chicago Flag Christmas Cards...New and Improved!

Chicago Flag Christmas cards are back, and better than ever. How can they be both new and improved you say? Well, the three card sets feature a new card for this year, plus a modified version of one of last year's cards.

After Chicagoist was kind enough to mention them last year, they sold like hotcakes...so you might have to move fast to get them this year. Actually, we'll keep printing them as long as people want them.

So why not use a little Chicago-style to keep in touch this holiday season with a set of Chicago flag inspired Christmas cards? Each 12 card set features three different card designs that use traditional holiday images to mimic the iconic Chicago city flag.

One of the bright blue stripes wraps to the card's interior, underlining the text "Chicago Christmas. Celebrate early, celebrate often."

Bridal Show this Sunday at Navy Pier

Attention engaged couples and brides to be....Chicago Bride Magazine is putting on another bridal show this Sunday, the 18th of October, at Navy Pier. Come on by to see Spilled Ink Press and a ton of other great vendors. It's from 11am to 4pm in the Crystal Gardens at Navy Pier.

As an added bonus, the Bears don't play until later that night, so your fiance can come too without having to miss the game!

Naomi Ashley

Spilled Ink Press's favorite singer, the one and only Naomi Ashley, has a great new website. Of course, we just happened to design the logo that is featured prominently on the site, as well as the cover for her awesome CD "Another Year or So".

I highly recommend catching a Naomi Ashley Band show whenever you can. Looks like the next one is October 17th in Evanston.

Here is the cover we came up with for her latest CD...

She's a celebrity? Get outta here.

Thanks to NBC, the Blagojeviches are getting more TV time to embarrass the state of Illinois. Somehow Patti Blagojevich qualifies as a celebrity, and is appearing on "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!". Her husband, our former governor, used to jog past Spilled Ink Press headquarters a lot, but we haven't seen him lately. I guess seeing his wife on a reality TV show is going to have to do....if we were actually watching.

Anyway, having the Blagojeviches in the news again reminds me of our Christmas card from last year.....


and the inside.....

The Settling Dust

Ah, it's been a crazy ride these last few weeks. As we mentioned- the pace was intense as we were moving invitation jobs through production and out the door before we left for the East Coast (sounds so glamorous, doesn't it?).

Finally, we arrived at The National Stationery Show in New York City!
The show was good- smaller, as expected (I'm shaking my fist at the economy right now...). We were actually very pleased to see the snarky meter was amped up a touch. Blame it on the economy, maybe, but it opens the door for us to return to the show next year and not scare all the little sweet store owners away with our biting sarcastic cards. Here were our favorites: Old Tom Foolery, Nuk-u-lur, and Mean Cards (it's good karma to give shout outs to the worthy competition).

And it was very exciting of course to see our invitation displayed at the show as a LOUIE finalist.

So back we went to the hotel to get cleaned up for the LOUIE awards dinner. It is fun to dress up every once in a while! When we got to Capitale (an old Bank building, with it's coffered ceiling lovliness- turned swanky party venue), we made a bee line to see our invitation displayed again... no, first we got drinks, THEN we went and took cheesy pictures next to our invitation again- and of the building, like the architect dorks that we are.

(see how pale we are from working so hard and never seeing daylight?!)

So after grazing on the fancy appetizers ("Top Chef" quality, as I described it) and earning back our ticket price in drinks, it was time to begin. The presenters read the teleprompter in expected awkwardness (I was imagining someone sitting at their cubicle writing the "witty banter" thinking, Oh yeah, this will get laughs baby...). And they zipped through the awards with the fantastic phrase, "...and the LOUIE goes to..." clapping, gasping, a bright spot light shined on a table, a humble designer stands up and squints into the light.... it was all very magical.
ESPECIALLY when the time came for our category, and after that famous phrase, they actually said, SPILLED INK PRESS! Wow. We stood, we squinted, and they clapped. It was a blur (it might have been the dirty martini's, granted). It was fairly early in the presentation that we were announced, so the relaxation set in early and we were able to enjoy the night comfortably. It was exciting when the big award at the end of the presentations was announced, "Card of the Year" and it went to our fellow table mates with Compendium, Inc. Apparently table 15 was the place to be.

After the award ceremony, we had our picture taken for... gosh, I'm not sure what. I was on the phone with my parents in Ohio screaming that we won (to my Mother's praise, "Oh my lands!"... that's Sue-speak for "awesome"). And then we hit the dance floor. No, we didn't. We hit the tables next to the dance floor and ate the equally as fancy desserts and watched the rest dance. This is us having our cake, and eating it too.
It turned into a regular wedding celebration at that point- which seemed oddly appropriate. There was a few guys dancing that shouldn't have been, a few that knew what they were doing, a cheesy DJ, the usual.
It was anything but usual that night, and let me tell you, it was amazing.

We won a LOUIE!

Wow, what a night....we won a LOUIE award! One of our custom wedding invitations received the honor of being named the best personalized invitation selling for $5 and under. What a great award to win considering how the poor economy means tighter wedding budgets.

Stay tuned for a detailed review of the awards dinner and our stop at the National Stationery Show. But for now, we just wanted to update our loyal readers with the big news!