El's Cards wishes you a Happy New Year!
Happy New Year to all! What a busy and fun, and year it has been at El's Cards. Bob and I wish to extend the most heartfelt thank you to all of our wonderful customers and friends. We mean it most sincerely.
When you shop with a small business, it's really a double gift. By shopping at El's Cards, every sale directly affects our lives. We appreciate each and every purchase that comes in. Then you pass that gift on to your friends and family and they smile too. We know there are so many places you can choose to shop, and for you to come to our website or show is the most wonderful compliment.
This synopsis of our year is a fun way to look back and remember some of the real highlights of 2025.
A new year begins with good friends!
January- We visited the botanical gardens in MA and took a stroll enjoying the beautiful lights to ring in the new year with some good friends! As you can see...it was pretty chilly that night!
Wedding save the dates were already flying out the door, and contract creation was in full swing for our 2025 couples also.
Custom Valentine's Gift painted by hand from a thoughtful groom to his bride
February-To celebrate Valentine's Day, one of our former grooms had me create two paintings, which we enlarged and had printed on canvases. The scene was all the houses his bride had lived in, and featured her jobs, pets, and vehicles too. One of the most custom and special works of art I have ever created! This was a challenging (figuring out the layout and what to include was tricky), but FUN project!!
March- Bob completed the birthday cards for one of our great corporate accounts! The owner has been working with El since the Boston days, and every year we do holiday and birthday cards for all their clients.
Then, Bob and I flew south to visit mum in Florida! A great little getaway. At this point in the year, the wedding invitation orders were already well underway, and in full process!
Everyone loves our new stir sticks! Even Marty took a moment to smell the flowers!
April-Such an exciting month! We received so many new products for the spring, including our favorite new item-acrylic stir sticks! This item became a huge hit with our wedding couples and has been a great addition to our product line year round. The response to these cute accessories has been fantastic.
Special custom invitations with a hand painted map
May-We were so honored to work with one of our favorite photographers on all her wedding stationery! It is a wonderful compliment when a fellow professional comes to us for wedding stationery, or orders from our product line any time of year. Jenn and Matt featured a custom hand painted invitation and a watercolor map in their fully custom suite. Weddings were in full swing here in May!
NEW international map for 2025-London, England
June-London Calling!! We launched our map of London, England just in time for our summer shows! I started doing the research for this map in January with help from one of our former wedding couples. After college (a few 24-hours ago lol), I had visited London as part of a class trip. Creating this map brought back so many fun memories for me! I'm really hoping for Bob and I to visit London together one of these days.
The Colorful Year 2026 desk calendar-photo by Jenn Bakos
July-After lots of new paintings, our 2026 desk calendars hit the website. This year our Colorful Year calendar was our most popular of the two! Jenn Bakos came to do a fun photoshoot of our products and got this stunning shot of that calendar.
Special bridal shower invitations-it's fun to be a guest!
August-2025 was a big year of anticipation for a special family occasion! The first celebratory event was in August-my niece Jenny's bridal shower! Of course we did all the invitations, paper goods, and fun details for the celebration at the Garrison Inn in Newburyport, MA. Stay tuned for a full blog post about this special event and all the great tea themed designs. It was so much fun to create all the fun details for someone so special to us.
September-This was a great month! Two of our favorite shows, Laudholm Farm in Wells, ME (in spite of the rain!), and Milton, MA at Eustis Estate. We saw so many friends and great customers at both shows. Meanwhile...weddings were happening! So many memorable wedding details and wonderful couples this year...and I feel like September was our busiest month of all. Too busy to even take any photos evidently ;)
The bride and groom, Jenny & Riley, their hand painted seating chart, and Bob & El being fancy!
October-This was an especially fun month for us! We had a show in Camden, ME the first weekend, and another in Needham, MA the last weekend.
But the best part....we went to Las Vegas to Jenny and Riley's wedding and all the festivities and fun with our family. Jenny didn't miss a detail and she and Riley had a wonderful weekend. (Can't wait to do their wedding gallery page! Stay tuned for that soon!!) I had to include a photo of my favorite part of the wedding day decor-the hand painted seating chart! We even took a few extra days to enjoy Wizard of Oz at the Sphere, relax by the Bellagio pool, and even see the Cirque show "O" for the second time.
Thanksgiving day 2025
November-We kicked off the month with our favorite show of the year-Seacoast Artisans at Great Bay Community College! Every year we see good friends and clients there, and it always sets the holiday season in motion. We love a good local show and this one is always fabulous. Joyce, the show organizer, does the best job with this excellent event every year!
Then...we hosted family (12 of us!) for Thanksgiving dinner and proceeded to do our first weekend as visiting vendors at the Live Freely Market in Hampton, NH. Black Friday weekend was a busy one and we had a wonderful time meeting some new friends and seeing so many good customers coming to visit the market.
A Christmas wedding invitation for Bridgid & Michael in New Jersey
December-What a month!! We started the month with a great show in Hamilton, MA, the first weekend, then did another weekend at Live Freely, and shipped out our last wedding of 2025 was on December 27th! This sweet NJ couple had a Christmas themed wedding and it was so fun wrapping up our wedding season with them!
Happy New Year to all our friends and family! What a year 2025 has been here at El's Cards So many fun projects, new designs, and extra special celebrations. We look forward to 2026 (the year of the Fire Horse)! I have so many new designs in mind, and our wedding season is already looking busy.
A great big thank you once again!
Lots of Love,
El & Bob
Marty & Sunny
xoxo
