By SCOTT McCONNELL

"This will be a great addition to the town of Tarrytown. There's really nothing like it there right now," said Mayma Raphael, referring to her store, Paper Passion, which is opening its second location this month.

The Mount Kisco-based company designs, prints and sells high-end invitations for weddings and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs as well as custom stationery, leather-bound journals and albums.

A second store may seem rather ambitious for a company that just opened the doors to its first one in October, but Raphael says the Tarrytown location was thought of early on because she wanted to provide both eastern and western Westchester with a high-quality paper goods store.

"We are very unique in what we do," she claims, explaining why she feels the store faces little competition. Neither Mount Kisco nor Tarrytown had a store like this before, and "they've welcomed us with open arms."

Raphael started making invitations for parties she and her friends were hosting in college. Although it became her passion, she never thought it would turn into a career. Instead, she took a job as a policy analyst with the Canadian government. She liked that work, but she wanted the "freedom to design and do what I want and not be constrained with paperwork and research."

So, when she and her husband moved to New York she decided to stay home and make invitations full-time. Her clientele started small but grew by word-of-mouth, and in April 2001 she was featured on Oprah as an example of a woman who had followed her passion and made it into a successful career.

It was after living in Westchester for a little while that Raphael realized the lack of a high-end paper store. People who wanted more expensive or custom products had to go all the way into New York City to find them.

So, she found a location in Mount Kisco, hired an architect and designed Paper Passion. The store took seven months and lots of hard work to open, but Raphael calls the finished product "simply wonderful."

Aside from the lack of nearby competition, Raphael attributes her store's success with its quality work and its ability to customize anything. Raphael or one of her employees will sit down with customers for a free consultation and go over everything from the size and shape of the paper to its texture and print style.

Once all the decisions have been made, the store produces the invitations from scratch, usually in two to four weeks time. Customers are billed by the unit and most invitations run anywhere from $10 to $50 per item.

Raphael learned a lot from opening her Mount Kisco store and although she calls it "a labor love," she seems just as happy that the Tarrytown store is easier.

"There, everything was a trial," she says. "Now, I've done it before."

Despite using her experience from Mount Kisco, Raphael is quick to point out that she is not simply cloning her first store.

"Tarrytown is a whole different atmosphere," she explains. "It will have the same quality, the same service. But Tarrytown is a much more trendy place with younger couples."

Because of the younger clientele, Raphael expects to be doing more wedding invitations. Also, because of the foot traffic in Tarrytown, there will be a more diverse line of products on the shelves. She has even hired a different architect, one that has designed higher ceilings and used lighter-grain wood. Their work, she says, "is absolutely amazing."

One thing that will not change is the public relations firm that Raphael hired. Co Communications signed on a couple of weeks before the Mount Kisco grand opening and has been with her on the Tarrytown store since day one. "My only regret," Raphael says, "is that I didn't hire them earlier."

Although she has opened two stores in a relatively short time, Raphael has no immediate plans to grow more. In fact, she believes part of the attraction of Paper Passion is its small size - the Mount Kisco store has eight employees and the Tarrytown one will start with just four or five.

"People love the small independent stores. They want to support them," she said.

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