{Alice and Doris Lieu - sisters and partners in crime}
Sisters, roommates, and business partners Alice and Doris Lieu are the designers behind ILOOTPAPERIE, a growing stationery line from Pasadena, CA and a Leanna Lin’s Wonderland favorite. I asked them some questions about their line and their answers are just as fun as their cards!
Can you introduce yourselves, or even better, can you introduce each other?
Doris: Alice is my older sister aka partner in crime, who is the mastermind that brings all of our Ilootpaperie concepts to life. What people may not know (even close friends), is that she is amazingly ninja climber that has saved the day more than once when we've been locked out of our house/apartments.
Alice: Life and our cards are infinitely more pun-derful because of Doris. She has a cheeky way with words and is brave enough to risk the wrath of a very sleepy me after I've stayed up working on a card until the wee hours of the morning, by letting me know if she thinks I need to tweak the design a tad more because it's not quite there yet. Even if I don't always agree lol! She is our logistics guru and has an uncanny ability to estimate the exact time we will arrive somewhere.
How did ILOOTPAPERIE come to be? And what does ILOOTPAPERIE mean?
Alice: We loved that our father looked up our last name “Lieu” in the dictionary to determine the spelling when he immigrated over as a graduate student (he was and still is very nerdy). So we’ve aspired to weave our family name, Lieu, into a company name ever since we were little. We initially started with “In Lieu of Ordinary Things.” Then one night we were playing around with variations and realized the acronym spelled “ILOOT,” we added “Paperie” to it and voila! Pierre, our French stripe–wearing bandit mascot, sprang to life.
We actually started working with paper goods by dabbling in custom wedding invitations for some close friends. Greeting cards seemed like a natural extension and the perfect way for us to put to paper a collection of cheeky thoughts and images that represented who we are.
What’s the best part of working with your family?
Doris: Disagreements are a natural and healthy part of building a business together - it's good when you are family because you both know that you're stuck with one another so you have to work it out.
Alice: And because we are lucky enough to be close, as not all siblings are, there is a wealth of shared experiences and shared reference points for us to draw upon when we are throwing ideas back and forth.
How do you first come up for an idea for a new card? Is there a time or place where you find ideas come to you most easily?
Doris: Our process is very sporadic and organic - we bounce around ideas with each other all throughout the day through text, emails or chats - many of the conversations are filled with exclamation marks as we are easily excitable and try to have fun with the process as much as we can.
The car tends to be a good spot for card ideas - probably because it's the one of the only periods of time where we have some forced sit down time together in between running errands.
New Small Fry Kids Tee and TGI Fryday Pin are available online!
Do you guys have personal favorite cards?
Doris: We both are very tickled by our hot dog card - You're a Wiener; you're not quite sure if you're being insulted or complimented and that makes it fun!
Your cards are so funny; you must be filled with jokes. Can you tell me a joke?
Doris: Actually we are horrible at telling jokes. But here's one that we borrowed from the 49th Street Elementary first graders that we try to volunteer with once a month to read and do arts and crafts with through the Ready to Learn program:
knock, knock
who's there?
beets
beets who?
beets me!
Shop all new ILOOTPAPERIE designs in store and online + tons more greeting cards for Valentine's Day.
