Life & Work with Danielle Connell

Today we’d like to introduce you to Danielle Connell.

Hi Danielle, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
One of my favorite childhood memories is pressing flowers into handmade paper with my grandma and learning about good penmanship. She had the prettiest handwriting I had ever seen and was a stickler for naming and dating every piece of artwork. Looking back, there does seem to be a dose of foreshadowing now that I get to play with pretty handmade paper and ink for a living. 

My mother, a mixed media artist, and my father, a freelance photographer, were both huge influences on my career disposition as well. The 9-5 cubicle life was never really modeled to me, and I grew up watching two humans pursue their artistic passions with complete disregard for 401ks and paid vacations. The ensuing list of what I wanted to be when I grew up was a long one, but artist wasn’t initially included on it. 

I spent my free time as a kid drawing floor plans of pretend houses, so naturally, I thought I wanted to be an architect. Unfortunately, math did not turn out to be a strength of mine and I realized quickly that it was a pretty important skill for an architect to possess. I would write countless short stories dreamt up while playing in my backyard, so for a time, I thought I would be a journalist. Almost Famous came out when I was 17 and after watching it three times in the first rental period, it was pretty obvious to me that I was going to write for Rolling Stone. I gave up on this one after a community college English professor was ever so slightly critical of my essay. Flight attendant school was a total flop, so I bartended and traveled the world in my early twenties. When it came time to buckle down and go to school at the ripe old age of 23, I decided on an Interior Design degree. It felt like a sensible path that was at least adjacent to the smarty-pants architects and all of their math skills but did not require a trigonometry prerequisite. 

Fast forward to 27 years old. I had recently graduated and had been bartending to pay my way through school, as well as staging homes for an interior designer in Laguna Beach. But what do you do with a fancy interior design degree when you realize that it’s a terrible fit because AutoCAD is not your friend? You keep calm, pay your absorbent student loan bills, and try to carry on. As life does, it threw me a curve ball in the form of the sweetest surprise. I had my daughter and was so lucky to stay home with her for the first 9 months, all the while still trying to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. 

Lucky for me, I stumbled into the wedding industry during the planning of my own first wedding just a couple short years later. I became obsessed with all things weddings, hand lettering, and calligraphy. I screen-printed my save the dates, designed my wedding invites, and hand-lettered each guest’s address in the most obnoxious way imaginable. I spent every spare moment learning about letter forms, hand painting signs, and immersing myself into the world of weddings. For a hot minute, I even thought the move was wedding planning. I coordinated all of two weddings and peaced the eff out. It was awful. I had started taking commissions in the meantime, painting chalkboards and hand lettering menus for restaurants. But then, as fate would have it, I met my first kind soul that wanted me to create their wedding invitations! In exchange for real money! Here was this trusting human that actually wanted to hire me for realsies with no portfolio in sight. It was pivotal. 

My little “business” started keeping me very busy and took me on a winding path to get to present day. I continued on for a couple years with a pathological propensity to say yes to everything that came my way. Murals, large-scale menu art, custom commissions, and, of course, wedding signage and invitations. It wasn’t until late 2020, though, that I really niched down to weddings only. I may have had a few extra minutes to think that year, and I used them to map out what I was actually passionate about. Once I got intentional with my business, things shifted quickly in a positive direction. I opened a creative studio in January 2022 and have since built a small but mighty team, a fantastic vendor network, and to be completely honest, my dream life. It has been a journey of niching down further and further and refining my processes as I go. But I pinch myself thinking about the fact that people like my work enough to be able to make a living out of designing invitations. And more so, that I wake up every day so excited to do just that. 

I tell you this rambling, crazy story to illustrate that everyone’s path is extremely different and not always as linear as you might expect it to be. Looking back, I am sure I would do a few things differently if I could… but maybe I wouldn’t be where I am if I hadn’t sweated it out the way I did. Look, Vera Wang was 40 when she decided she wanted to be a designer, Martha Stewart was 41 when she published her first book that made her famous. There is time, and there is room for us all. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Paper Cliché is a boutique design studio based out of Costa Mesa, California. We specialize in modern, minimalist wedding invitation design with a flair for old-world romance. See Understated elegance and attention to detail. We combine modern design with luxury print methods to tell your love story in its truest form. Our Collection designs are a highly customizable option for stylish, modern couples looking for wedding paper unique to them. If organic textures and romantic calligraphy make your heart skip a beat, you have probably come to the right place. 

Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc.?
The book that I picked up at just the right time: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. It was transformative for me and a huge influence on getting intentional in my business. Anything Seth Godin but especially: The Practice. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.papercliche.com
• Instagram: @itspapercliche

Image Credits
@sixpounders
@nectarphotos
@alvindphotography