Headed by friends Liv and Tanya, Eltee Creative offers unique, custom invitations, which are perfect all those special occasions. Their lovely designs are simple as well as classically elegant, but never stuffy or ordinary. Personally, I think Eltee Creative should by on anyone's radar who is looking for unique invitations at affordable prices.
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| Isabella Engagement Party Invitation |
CM: Tell us about about yourselves...
L&T: Eltee Creative is made up of 2 graphic designers, Liz & Tanya (El & Tee) living and working in Brisbane Australia. After working in the commercial world for many years, we both felt that we needed an outlet for our creativity in a less restricted/commercial form. We still wanted to be able to share our work with the world but needed to have our own artistic freedom, so we mixed a bit of business with pleasure and formed Eltee Creative. |
| Delia Engagement Party Invitation |
L&T: We met in Graphic Design College in 2005 and have stayed close friends ever since. Although we've often shared our trials and tribulations about the design industry with one another throughout those years, we officially started working together in November 2010, when the idea of Eltee Creative was just being born.
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| Josephine Wedding Invitation |
CM: What's it like to work together? Do you each have different roles?
L&T: We each have offices set up in our own homes and live approximately 40 minutes away from each other, but with the beauty of IM, email, texting and Skype, it's so easy to communicate with each other so this distance doesn't create too much of a problem. Liz will often drive over to Tanya's office if they need to collaborate or do some manual work with the invitations, and since we're only very new, we've had to take turns going back and forth to each other's houses to get things done. Otherwise, we communicate a lot by email and give each other to do lists. We'll generally share the design tasks and divide any admin that needs to be done. Liz has slipped into the role of marketing and social networking management and Tanya manages suppliers, printing and design. We both try to do the same amount of design work when we can. We both have different working styles and aesthetic tastes which creates a diverse range of products, but our personalities fit quite well with each other - when Liz is a bit frazzled, Tanya takes the reigns and calms things down, and vice versa. We try to keep communication as transperant as possible and we both know that our day jobs/real life take priority and we fit in Eltee Creative work where we can. It's working pretty well so far.
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| Stork Baby Shower Invitation |
CM: What drew you both to creating artistic invitations?
L&T: We came up with the idea to create invitations after seeing countless friends and family struggle to find really lovely, unique, personal and affordable invitations. We have both been in love with paper since our childhood and had missed working with it after spending years in studios with digital files. We still have our day jobs, but we'd like to eventually be able to run Eltee Creative full time.
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| Viola Engagement Party Invitation |
CM: What's the best thing, in your opinion, about selling on Etsy? The most challenging?
L&T: I can't just name one, I have to name 2 best things: The first being that we love the autonomy of selling on Etsy.While every store has the same template, it is far easier for us to adapt to this and just use all of Etsy's selling tools than to have to create our own E-Commerce site from scratch. The second best thing are the people on Etsy - the buyers and sellers - there is a wonderful and genuine atmosphere of community and support in the Etsy marketplace.
The most challenging aspect of Etsy is by far, getting noticed and getting sales. We are still starting out so it will take a little while for us, but because the marketplace is full of sellers with amazing items, it is so easy to drown into anonymity. Getting noticed is something we're working hard on doing better, and it helps that there are fantastic networks, teams and blogs (like this one!) that are willing to promote and support sellers :)
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| Penelope Wedding Invitation |
CM: What's your favorite item in your shop right now?
L&T: Our favourite item in our shop right now is our 'Abigail' wedding invitation:
It's so traditional and elegant and is printed on beautiful stock with a gold shimmer. Designed by Tanya :)
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| Abigail Wedding Invitation |
L&T: We have so many favorites on Etsy - it's hard not to! If we have to pick one though, We love the elegant items from Timeless Paper. Amazingly beautiful and creative work!
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| Vivian Wedding Invitation |
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