Do What You Love- episode four: Anna Bond

**This is the fourth in a series of posts that I will be featuring here on Monday mornings that I made for the Gap, you can read HERE for more info about how this series came to be, and the finer details of what it's all about. In short: This is a new series that will be featuring women who Do What They Love for a living. Women who are living their lives on their own terms, and finding success.

It has been such a pleasure to watch Anna and Nathan Bond both owners and operators of Rifle Paper Co. grow their business over the last two years together here in Orlando. I was lucky enough to work (for a quick minute) on a collaboration with Anna just before Rifle Paper officially took off, and before Anna's custom wedding invitations made the rounds on the blogosphere flooding her with orders, and ultimately landing her art and their new business in the pages of the fall issue of Martha Stewarts Weddings. Anna made a custom wedding invitation for a friend as a wedding gift, and after the internet got their eyes on her creation, she was in demand. It was thrilling for me to see someone turn their sketch book into a thriving booming business -- blank journal pages that Anna filled with ideas and designs, and whimsical illustrations, and then brought to life with paint and brush on paper. Anna hand paints all of the creations at Rifle, and with so many custom orders and personalized options to choose from, she is almost always working. While I was shooting this piece at her brand new soon to be opened storefront and studio, in Winterpark, I asked her: "When is the last time you had a weekend, you know where you slept in and didn't really do anything at all just because it was Saturday & Sunday?" She immediately smiled and blanked out a bit in thought...."It's been a really long time, not since the business started I think."

The long hours and sleepless nights, and going through the growing pains of starting a new business might have been a much lonelier place if she wasn't going through all of it with her husband. They both share the same work ethic and drive, and it is inspiring to see two people living out a dream, doing all of this together, making huge strides, believing in one another, a true partnership-- It's awesome. For me to see this couple put their heads down and work so hard, and not only find local success, but through the blogging community find global success, it is truly exciting. Anna's work has been all over the web, and shows no signs of slowing down with each new product launch. It is truly a new age in business when Rifle can launch a brand new stationary line, and choose not to utilize traditional advertising in any way, and through the power of bloggers and social media grow Rifle Paper in such a short period of time. Anna did admit that she is doing what she loves for a living, but it was impossible for me to get her to herald Rifle Paper a success, she is modest and quiet about all the noise surrounding her business. She still has the stress from their first launch in her eyes, she can laugh about it now, but you can tell it wasn't pretty. It was just her and her husband, and all that could go wrong, went wrong in the first few weeks, problems with the printer, and shipping, and website crashes, and many lessons learned. They got through it together, and came out of it all with wisdom and momentum, and they have not looked back. You can feel the buzz in the building that houses Rifle Paper, their employees are happy and busy, and it was a total joy to be around them all for the day making this profile. Jokes and stories rolled out as they packed away paper goods and filled orders, and handled calls, Anna paints away in her office, and keeps her journal filled with fresh ideas.

You can follow Anna and Rifle on Twitter right HERE! If you are curious to see more of her work, please take a look HERE. If you would like to stay linked into Anna and her latest projects, she blogs HERE.

Please enjoy the video below...

**Pictured Above: Forever skinny jeans (saturated dark wash) by: Gap



**All of the clothes seen in the still images and video were provided by the Gap for this series, you can check out the entire 1969 collection HERE

For more videos and stills and loads of denim inspiration please take a look HERE. it's a really great collection of images and looks.

The Music was provided as always by the band: Rabbit! - Song: When We Were Young - This song is unfortunately NOT available for purchase on their latest album Connect the Dots which you can grab HERE. But it will be coming so very soooooooon on their next release :)

If you missed the first posts in the series, please take a look HERE

All the Love in the Universe ~ Me

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