It all started with an iPhone case. Sold at Anthropologie, the perpetually candle-scented oasis for all things flowy, floral, and flouncy, it was also floral, but not in an old-bedspread kind of way. Instead it was hand-painted in a vintage style (ding ding ding!), simple and adorable, for around a mere $20, and soon to be everywhere you looked. It was probably the most savvy decision Anna Bond ever made, to launch her paper-stationery company with a totem of digital life: What does your iPhone case say about you?

Anthropologie was Rifle Paper Co.’s first client, and they came calling early—too early. Bond was in her earlier 20s when she started Rifle in 2009 with her husband, Nathan, in their Winter Park, Florida, home. She was freelance illustrating, designing a lot of posters for Nathan’s pop-rock-bluegrass band, playing with her style and trying to “really figure out what my voice was, and not look like anybody else,” she said. Huge success came from designing personalized wedding invitations that wedding blogs went nuts for. She did a few friends’ invitations, but her own, for her mariachi-themed wedding, featured a little cartoon version of herself and Nathan, and that’s what people wanted: little thems.

Instead of going to Etsy, which hosts anything from your aunt’s knitted cat portraits to $50 ceramic espresso cups handmade in Italy, they launched their own Web site, a confident move, but a glitchy one. “We probably made every single mistake we could make,” Bond told us. They made Anthropologie wait six months while they figured out how to produce wholesale for such a mammoth company, but it was worth it. And if you’ve stepped in the store (or Web site) in the past year, they’re still selling greeting cards, calendars, recipe cards, and iPhone cases—updated for every new version plus the Pluses, Galaxies, and now available with clear backgrounds to see through to your rose gold.

Rifle took off right as design blogs—and the obsession with having a perfectly “curated” life—did. Think: gallery walls, artfully amiss flower arrangements, food on marble backdrops, packing photos, messy tablescapes taken from above. New York magazine’s The Cut started a blog series called, “I Like This Bitch’s Life,” that both parodies the beyond-perfect aspirations these bloggers and Instagram stars create, but also admits they still can’t resist it. That’s how you feel when you peruse Anna Bond’s Instagram, which is a mix of Rifle products in the making, baby-bump selfies, glimpses of her closet, and beautiful places you want to be at, too. You follow Bond through every phase in a project—early drafts of her sketches for an illustrated 150th-anniversary edition of Alice in Wonderland until the final book appears, the stages of her nursery coming together, sneak peeks of collaborations with Birchbox, dresses with Paper Crown (that were so in demand the site crashed), backpacks with LeSportsac. Comments are a mix of glowing love and “Where is that amazing lamp from?”

“Anna has created a world of Rifle in the way Wes Anderson has created a world of Wes Anderson,” said James Hirschfeld, the co-founder of Paperless Post, which launches a collaboration with Rifle Paper Co. this week, and just in time for the holidays. “It’s not about paper or non-paper,” he said, “it’s about creating this look that consumers connect to.” The two companies are the perfect fit, he said, because they can take Rifle’s custom invitations and make them even more customizable and affordable through their digital offerings.

If 2015 was Rifle’s biggest year yet—plus Anna and Nathan’s first baby!—2016 is only looking bigger. Those iPhone cases we mentioned earlier? Now they sell over 2,500 a month. In 2010 the company sold approximately 200,000 greeting cards, and in 2014, 2.8 million. The team has since expanded beyond just Anna and Nathan to 185 employees. “We see ourselves as more of a lifestyle brand,” said Bond, referring to perhaps another foray into apparel. “I’ve always thought it would be so fun to put our patterns on clothes. It’s been fun for our customers too, to have the artwork in such a different way.” That’s a longer-term experiment, she added, hinting at more home gifts and décor to come in the new year, starting with candles that she’s still sniffing out, quite literally. “I’ve been so picky about them. I don’t know if being pregnant even affected it,” she said, laughing. “It’s really important, and in every collaboration and product, it’s about the design, and it’s about the quality. We’re not just going to slap our art on any old candle that doesn’t smell good. I want every aspect to be amazing.”

Related: See New Illustrations of Alice in Wonderland by Rifle Paper Co.