MEET ELIZA
How It All Went Down
Paper Eliza was a happy accident. I didn’t dream about opening a custom stationery shop as a little girl. Confession, I dreaded the ritual of writing thank you notes post birthdays and Christmas.
In high school, I was yearbook editor and dreamed of working in publishing. I dabbled in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, fine tuning my InDesign, PhotoShop, and Illustrator skills and loved to paint in my free time. Freshman year of college, I missed the creative outlet yearbook provided and found myself accepting a marketing internship with a graphic designer who specialized in helping small businesses grow through social media. She shared an office with a beautiful wedding stationery-er and I worked for them both - exporting documents, handling printer relations, and packing collections.
MEET ELIZA
How It All Went Down
Paper Eliza was a happy accident. I didn’t dream about opening a custom stationery shop as a little girl. Confession, I dreaded the ritual of writing thank you notes post birthdays and Christmas.
In high school, I was yearbook editor and dreamed of working in publishing. I dabbled in the Adobe Creative Cloud suite, fine tuning my InDesign, PhotoShop, and Illustrator skills and loved to paint in my free time. Freshman year of college, I missed the creative outlet yearbook provided and found myself accepting a marketing internship with a graphic designer who specialized in helping small businesses grow through social media. She shared an office with a beautiful wedding stationery-er and I worked for them both - exporting documents, handling printer relations, and packing collections.
I loved it and learned what it took to run a successful small business from two incredible girl bosses. A handful of friends were familiar with my creative side and commissioned me to make them custom stationery sets for their summers abroad. I sketched the illustrations, saved the documents, called the printing company that I was familiar with and placed the order. In order to open an account with the printers and print the cards, they asked the name of my paper business. Thrown off guard and in a moment of panic, I answered “Paper Eliza” and the rest is history.
One stationery set led to another and soon I was creating custom works for people I didn’t know (big time) and loving it. A friend asked me to design her wedding suite and I found myself in the wedding paper business. Paper Eliza has been a process of determining client needs and building a product offering that fits the vision and demand of my clients. Custom wedding paper is so special to me because it not only allows me to use my gifts to create something unique and perfectly tailored to a couple’s relationship, but yet get to know each and every client as a friend, hearing their special stories one-by-one. And that very-best-part of the whole endeavor happens over and over with every order. I love hearing a client’s idea and vision and executing those dreams in a way that exceeds what they could’ve imagined. I am in the business of bringing dreams to life, whether that is in the form of creating a stationery set that screams YOU or a custom crest that captures a special memory, person, or place.
I live in Birmingham, Alabama, am a sucker for the NY Times' Mini-Vows section, have three scuba certifications, do not cook, and am a notoriously bad texter. I love being outside, buying books that I don’t have time to read, decaf coffee after dinner, high school football, and last minute vacations. I know every word to every One Direction song (even the Target exclusives) and my love language is charcuterie. I falsely believe that I can accomplish any home-reno-project imaginable and annoyingly love living in my city.
I would love to collaborate with you and bring your paper dreams to life.
Fun fact? I am weird and love writing thank you notes now. Oh, how the tables have turned.