Chocolate Cigars from L.A. Burdick
If you're expecting, or know somebody who is, you might want to consider these baby favors from our favorite chocolatier, L.A. Burdick. L.A. Burdick makes all of their chocolates by hand, and we can say from experience that they are fantastic. The Chocolate Cigars are a great way to announce the birth of your child, or to say Congratulations
to new parents. L.A. Burdick also offers custom imprinting on the ribbons of all of their baby favors. However, there is a minimum order of 25, and L.A. Burdick requires at least two weeks notice. So, be sure to plan ahead!
inababycarriage Birth Announcements Review
The other day, I received some sample birth announcements from inababycarriage.com. Amber Gatej, the owner and designer, started creating these announcements back in 2002 after getting fed up with her dot com
job. She searched for something that she could do out of her house, and decided to direct her considerable design talents towards the creation of these fantastic birth announcements. Typically, after you've placed your order you'll receive a digital proof within one to two business days. After your final approval, your entire order ships within five business days via priority mail.
inababycarriage.com offers a wide variety of products. On the low end there are Photo Cards. These are essentially 5x7" photos that are printed by the folks at Photo Affectations. The process seems pretty straight forward. You pick the design you like best at inababycarriage.com, and then head over to Photo Affectations. There you can specify the text you'd like on the announcement, as well as any customizations like black & white or sepia toned photos. Photo Affectations involves a human at every step of the process — from processing your uploaded pictures, to double checking the information you provided, to creating up to three digital proofs of your announcement. Photo Affectations also provides a very handy page that should help you plan on when you will receive your announcements. The sample we received was printed on 5x7" Fujifilm Crystal Archive paper with a slightly textured matte/luster finish. Since these announcements are real photographs, they will definitely last a long time in your photo album. All orders of Photo Cards include white envelopes made from 80lb paper.
inababycarriage.com also offers Panel Card announcements. The card itself feels amazing. It is press-printed on thick cardstock, so it is nice and sturdy. The color reproduction is absolutely fantastic; it looks even better than the Photo Card. The sample we received had the recommended U/V coating which adds a glossy finish, and apparently helps with the color reproduction. So if you don't get the finish, your colors may not be so vibrant. The best thing about these cards is they are double sided. Normally, the basic design is repeated on the back, but for $25 more, you can add custom printing to the back as well. As with the Photo Cards, all orders include white envelopes made from 80lb paper.
The Photo Mount style is a little more expensive than the Panel Card. These are essentially 4x6" matte finish photographs mounted on 5x7" white cardstock. The cardstock is slightly raised where the photo is mounted. The effect brings a nice white border around your photograph, as well as making the whole announcement nice and sturdy. The border sort of reminds me of older black & white photographs when photos weren't typically printed to the edges of the paper. Therefore, I think this effect looks best with a black & white announcement, although your tastes may vary.
On the high-end, inababycarriage.com offers Envelopments. These are almost twice as much as the Photo Mount style, but when you get one of these in your hand, you can definitely tell that it's worth every penny. The envelopment came sealed in cellophane wrapping, and once opened, I thought it was just a pink envelope. Instead, it was a thick cardstock envelope that opens up completely to reveal the announcement mounted inside. The announcement itself is the Photo Mount style, so again, I think a black & white announcement works well here. Of course, there is so much color in the envelope that I think you could probably reflect that in the announcement. Also included with Envelopments are matching return address labels!
To complete your set of announcements, inababycarriage.com offers sets coordinating thank you notes. Using the same motifs and pictures, these thank you notes will leave as much of an impression as your original announcement. The notes are 4x5.5" fold over cards made out of thick cardstock, and include envelopes. The cards really feel just like the cards you'd buy at your local stationary store, however the included envelopes seem just a tad too large for the card — perhaps they're really sized to accommodate a 4x6" card inside.
Additionally, inababycarriage.com offers a set of coordinating return address labels. These are included for free with the Envelopment announcements, but if you are interested in something a little less expensive, you can order them for as little as $0.24 per label. Just like the thank you notes, the return address labels carry the design you've chosen outside your envelope.
Finally, inababycarriage.com recently started selling mom cards. These are the business cards for today's busy mothers. Give them to the parents you meet at the park, day care providers, or your child's teachers. The cards are professionally printed on both sides and come in glossy or matte finishes. The sample we received in the mail was glossy, and it was very snazzy. And best of all, every design on inababycarriage.com can be turned into a mom card.
Perhaps the best thing about inababycarriage.com is the extensive choice of designs. At the time of this review there are over 140 designs for both girls and boys, and there are even designs for those of you lucky enough to have twins or are adopting.
If you're in the market for birth announcements, I would highly recommend checking out inababycarriage.com. I really like the quality of the products, and the designs are all fantastic. I'm even thinking about getting Laura some mom cards as a gift.
Purple Stork Photo Birth Announcements
When it was time to create birth announcements for Anderson, we went with Purple Stork. We chose them because they have a fantastic photography tips page which really helped us capture the stunning pictures you see above. Now, I would consider myself perhaps a mild hobbyist when it comes to photography, but their ideas for keeping the background simple and lighting straight forward definitely helped our pictures. I was fortunate to be able to borrow a friends digital SLR camera, but I see no reason you couldn't get good pictures from your trusty point and shoot camera.
When it comes to ordering announcements, the process is very simple. You pick the style that you want (we went with the Emma design), then fill in the appropriate text for the announcement. There are lots of things you can customize about your announcement. You can pick the font, whether you want black & white, sepia, or full color photos, and more. We also had Purple Stork send us envelopes ahead of time, preprinted with our return address on the back (with a matching font, of course). That allowed us to address all of our announcements ahead of time before Anderson arrived because we knew afterwards we probably wouldn't be up to a project like that.
The announcements themselves came out wonderfully. They were printed on photo paper, but Purple Stork offers 100# card stock with both square and round corners for $0.60 more per announcement. We could not have been more pleased, and virtually everybody we sent them to remarked that it was the best announcement they've ever seen. As an added bonus, because we ordered more than 75 announcements, we received a free 8"x10" enlargement of our announcement, as well as two or three wallet sized announcements.
Purple Stork's customer service was very prompt, polite, and professional. They answered all the questions I had and weren't confused when I made some mistakes when sending them the photographs via email. They kept me informed throughout the whole process of creating our announcements, and they shipped them to us very quickly. We had the announcements in the mail to our friends and family within two weeks of Anderson's birth!
Overall, I recommend Purple Stork very highly. We will definitely be using them again in the future, as in addition to birth announcements, they also create holiday cards, moving announcements, birthday cards, and much more. They will work with you to create a photo card for virtually any occasion.
I've Arrived by tiny*prints
When you have a baby, you want to let the world know. It's one of the most important and momentuous events in your life, so how you share this with the world is very important. I know my husband spent hours researching which company we'd use, taking the perfect photos, etc. Personally, I wanted to go photo free (after all, many babies are NOT cute right when they are born, let's be honest here). So I would have loved this announcement from tiny*prints. Really, I think this is just such an adorable announcement. It almost makes me want to have another so I can use it. It's also available in a girl's version. Other announcements I like from this company include the Blue Chocolate Bear Baby Announcement, the Pink Teddy Birth Announcement, and the Lime Tummy Love Baby Shower Invitations. They also make holiday photo cards as well.
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