Beth + Bee is a wife-and-husband endeavour, run by just the two of us - Laura and Ian.

We're ever so proud of the fact that we've been working together for years now without injury, so we must be doing something right!

Whilst we take our business endeavours seriously, we really are just a couple of laid-back goofballs trying to navigate our way through this crazy world.

For the keen of eye you'll know that our other business is Elle Bee Design, focused on wedding invitations and stationery.

We live in Worcestershire with our two fur-babies, Jackson the cat, and Teddy the bunny.

Back in 2013 Laura gazed into the past and to a time where she used to make cards and gifts and had a desire to fill spare time outside of an NHS day job with a long-lost hobby.

In a little room tucked away in our house, Laura started making cards for friends, family and the occasional craft fair.

Over time the number of designs grew, they became more elaborate and the amount of stock and small machines in the house became greater, too!

This ultimately culminated in opening an Etsy shop and one that we still have open to this day.

One thing Laura never compromised on, even in the early days, was quality. We've always been paper snobs. So it was a natural progression that these skills would transfer to weddings.

So was born our wedding stationery business, Elle Bee Design. Focusing first on traditional handmade styles, things took off and most weeks were booked with two weddings at a time.

With capacity maxed out we bit the bullet and bought our first ever professional printer, who we nicknamed Bertha. She was large, so much so that Ian was in A&E 2 weeks after getting her into the house!

Our digital printing service was born when Bertha arrived.

Things took off quickly when Bertha arrived; our design catalogue expanded, the number of couples wanting to work with us increased and despite still being an entirely part-time endeavour, things were starting to get more "legitimate", let's say.

We'd have consultations with clients, do bucketloads of admin, have discussions about tax - we're talking real grown up stuff here!

As time moved on it was clear that something had to give so after tapering down hours in her full-time job, Laura took the plunge to go full-time with her business in September 2019.

Doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "The Wonder Years", does it? Laura's timing was impeccable as only a matter of months after taking on the job full-time, the lockdowns began and weddings were on a pause.

In the years preceding, Ian had been spending virtually every spare waking hour and minute outside of his Business Development job to help with proofing, printing and day-to-day running of the business.

January 2020 was a crazy time with stupidly long days and nights; so we booked a short holiday in Tenerife for the March. Only for the holiday to be curtailed by a Spanish lockdown, forcing us to return home after not much of a holiday at all...

To make ends meet Laura completely revamped our digitally-printed card designs which were extremely popular and, some of these designs remain today! We're a little sentimental about them, so we'll likely never cull them.

Anyone who got married from around 2021-2022 will tell you how crazy this period was and, for us, it was a time to look at taking next steps.

The business was still at home, we'd redeveloped an existing extension into something resembling a studio and, in summer 2021, Ian took the plunge by handing his notice in for his long-term Business Development job, with an agreement to leave in March 2022.

We hung out in our studio for a year together before turning a gaze towards a business premises; we had dreams of equipment that we could never fit at home and a desire to further legitimise the business and separate home from "work" by having somewhere to go to do our thing.

Ideally we didn't want to stray too far from home but, on the border of our search lay a business park on a farm which caught our eye.

The space we viewed was a converted barn and, crucially, it had DOUBLE DOORS! By this stage Bertha had been put into retirement but she'd been replaced by two others; Goose and Betty. These printers are pretty big and, given that we wanted to add a guillotine, laser engraver, and more, we needed the access.

And it remains home to this day. It's not always been easy but the one thing that continues to put a smile on our face is where we are. We've befriended all of the farm dogs (two of which you can see here, Milly on the left, Thistle on the right) and have a wonderful collaborative relationship with everyone here.

It's a beautiful thing to be truly aligned; we appreciate their support massively and we wish them as much success as we know they wish us.

Being just the two of us is a blessing and a curse. We're constantly coming up with ideas but have so little time to make them a reality.

But making cards was fun and it's a part of our business we felt that we'd both neglected and that we could do so much more with.

Over the years we've built up an incredible library of fonts and artwork and now have access to Lawrence, our antique letterpress, and Flo, our platen foil press, so we'll be able to provide more of a diverse range than ever before, in a more eco-friendly way than we ever have done, too.

But we felt truly inspired by the farm and the passion of the people that believe in it's ethical, eco-concious practices, and our plan fell into place... for our greetings cards to have their own space and their day in the sun.

So here we are. Beth + Bee is born :)

We truly thank you for you stopping by, we hope our little business can put a smile on people's faces.

Much love,
Laura & Ian