Ladies and gentlemen, meet Brianne. Here she is holding a giant box of letterpress printed wedding invitations in pretty pink envelopes ready to go to the post office. Isn’t she just adorable!?! Brianne is one of our fabulous custom wedding clients from this spring and is getting married this upcoming July in Arroyo Grande, California. If the above photo looks familiar, it may be because you recognize her from WeddingBee.com. She’s Miss Turtle! If you’ve been following her posts there, you may have already seen and heard about these invitations, however, they’re just so pretty that you’re going to have to hear about them again from us. Brianne actually designed her invitations herself (isn’t she awesome?!?) and hired Twin Ravens Press to do her letterpress printing. She had us print for her an A7 size invitation, 4bar size reply card and two sets of coordinating envelopes.
Brianne’s wedding invitation suite was printed on 100% cotton Crane Lettra Pearl White paper. She chose a duplex weight (really really thick) sheet for the invite and a standard 110 lb. sheet for the reply card. Everything was printed in chocolate brown ink. Here are some close-ups of the invitation:
I absolutely adore Brianne’s choice of fonts (Feel Script and Academy Engraved) and her totally awesome monogram at the top of the invitation! It’s a very classic format with some very cool modern touches! Love it!
One subtle, special detail of these invitations is that Brianne had us paint the edges metallic silver. Edge-painting and gilding are centuries-old, decorative techniques where color is applied to just the edges of paper. Edge-painting has a rich history in letterpress printing and bookbinding, with the earliest use of the technique dating back to the 10th century. For centuries, master bookbinders gilded the edges of books with gold, to show their preciousness. Today we can use edge-painting to give your invites an extra little bit of pizazz by highlighting an existing color in the printing or by introducing an all new color to the suite (like Brianne did). Check it out:
I’m really excited to be offering this technique in our studio and I think it’s a really classy way to add a little something extra to a set of invitations or business cards!
Brianne also designed a matching 4bar-size reply card to go with her gorgeous invites, and we paired them with a light pink envelope from Waste Not Paper Company, also printed in chocolate brown ink.
The invitation envelope was also pink (as you saw above) and had Brianne’s parents’ address letterpress printed on the back flap, also in chocolate ink.
If you like the way these invitations turned out, you really ought to go and check out Brianne’s posts about them over on WeddingBee here, here and here. After receiving the invitations from us, she added some more awesome embellishments herself, including envelope liners, a custom belly band with a wax seal, and some super-cool vintage stamps! Brianne is super-creative and was really fun to work with on this project and I’m sure the rest of her wedding is going to be amazing. Thanks so much Brianne and Brandon, you rock!
Check out these awesome business-related items we printed for Donna of Donna Boucher Photography in Madison, Wisconsin last month! Donna found out about Twin Ravens Press from Crystal Kluge (thanks Crystal!). Donna had hired Crystal to design a logo for her photography business and then needed a letterpress printer to print the design on business cards, thank you notes and on some signage. Above you can see all of the pieces we created for Donna together.
The large print that you see in the top left above is just of Donna’s logo. The logo features a camera (hand-drawn by Crystal Kluge) and her name in calligraphy, also done by Crystal. Donna loved the logo that Crystal created for her so much that she wanted some signage to use for her business, or just to frame and keep as a keepsake, so we printed these on 5″x7″ paper, so that they would be suitable for hanging and framing.
We also designed and printed some simple, yet lovely business cards for Donna using her new logo. The logo was printed in black letterpress ink on one side of the card and her contact information was printed on the back. The font we chose for the contact information was also designed by Crystal Kluge (it’s called Silverstein). I just love the way that these cards are playful and contemporary, yet professional all at the same time. Donna does mostly children’s and portrait photography, so we needed a little bit of both (playfulness and professionalism) to really convey the nature of her business, and I think these cards do an excellent job of it!
Last, but certainly not least, Donna also had us create a set of matching thank you note cards for her to send out to her clients. The notecards are a 4bar size, letterpress printed in black ink on 100% cotton Crane Lettra paper and come with coordinating pool blue envelopes from Waste Not Paper Company. Aren’t they just too cute?!?
I had a wonderful time working with Donna on this project and working with Crystal Kluge is always awesome! If you like the look of Donna’s logo and wish to have a similar one designed for your own business contact Crystal! And, if you’re in the Madison, Wisconsin area and are looking for a wonderful Children’s and Portrait Photographer, get in touch with Donna. You can also check out Donna’s website and blog to see more of her gorgeous photography! Thanks so much Donna and Crystal!
Hi all and welcome to our new website! Wow, it feels like such a long time since I was last here, doing the blogging thing, and really it has been. My last post was April 11th, which was (eep!) over a month and a half ago. Seriously, where does time go to anyway?!? In the last month and a half we not only moved from our old blog site, to this new, awesome, much prettier, and much more informative one, but we’ve also designed and printed several new and gorgeous invites to show off to you, have a new service to show off, and we went to our first national trade show last week in New York City. It’s been pretty crazy around here, but all that means for you is that there will be a lot of awesomeness to read about on this blog in the coming weeks – so stayed tuned!
As for today, though, I have a truly amazing set of wedding invitations to show off to you that I showed you a sneak peek of right before my extreme blogging absence over the past month and a half. Without further ado, I present to you, the wedding invitations of Erica & Noah. I’ve been working with Erica for quite some time now, creating paper goods for their very quickly approaching wedding in New York City. If you missed their Save-the-Date cards that I posted about a few months ago, you really ought to go and check them out here. Erica and Noah have been an amazing couple to work with and I’m so excited to be finally showing these off to you in their full glory. At the top of this post you can see all of the pieces in the main invitation suite together. For Erica and Noah’s wedding we created gorgeous, hand-sewn, letterpress printed wedding invitation booklets, a set of printed, custom-lined envelopes for each book to slip in to, matching directions cards, reply card and reply card envelopes. These booklets were a true collaboration, not only between Erica, Noah and myself, but also between Twin Ravens Press and some of our favorite outside artists and wedding vendors. More on that momentarily.
Here is what the invitation booklets look like on the outside. Each booklet was hand-sewn with chocolate brown linen thread and the covers were made from blue Nepalese Lokta paper. This paper is handmade in Nepal using centuries-old traditions with fibrous bark from the daphne cannabina shrub, which grows at high altitudes in the Himalayas. Each sheet is made by hand, making each one subtly unique! As a decorative detail, we attached a small sprig of magenta leptospermum flowers to each book. Aren’t they pretty?!?
When you open the booklet to the first printed page, this is what you would see:
All of the interior pages of these booklets were printed on handmade, totally awesome, cream colored paper from Porridge Papers that has mixed wildflower seeds embedded. Like the paper we used for Erica & Noah’s Save-the-Dates, this paper will actually grow wildflower seeds if it is planted! The first page of the booklet features gorgeous hebrew calligraphy by Jerise, and gorgeous english calligraphy by one of my favorite calligraphers in the universe, Fran Heider of Little Flower Calligraphy. The calligraphy is of a traditional Hebrew poem, often used in Jewish weddings. I think this is a really nice and personal touch and is a great “opener” for a booklet-style invite.
The second page of the booklet is Erica and Noah’s actual invitation:
Erica & Noah’s invitation features a lovely design of poppies and lavender letterpress printed in three ink colors: a deep, bright red, spring green and navy blue. The invite page also featured more english calligraphy by Fran and Hebrew calligraphy by Jerise. I love how the different calligraphy styles and our hand-drawn flowers came together so beautifully to create such a stunning page! Next up is a page featuring a hand-drawn map of New York City with landmarks that are notable and relevant to Erica & Noah’s relationship and upcoming ceremony.
The map page was hand-drawn by another one of my favorite artists, Crystal Kluge. I’ve worked with Crystal before on a few other map and calligraphy projects and her work is always amazing! The fourth and final page in the booklet you can see in the bottom right of the above grouping and it is a simple information page which included accommodations and transportation information. I love the way that a booklet-style invitation keeps all of the relevant information for the couple’s celebration together in one spot. Plus, booklets make a really beautiful and wonderful keepsake for both the couple and the family and guests to cherish for years to come.
Along with the gorgeous booklets, Erica also had us design and print a few additional pieces to go along with the suite. Here is their reply card and envelope:
Erica and Noah’s reply cards were also printed on wildflower seeded Porridge Paper in navy blue ink. They featured more of the pretty floral design from the inside of the booklets and more calligraphy from Fran. The envelope was a light blue shade from Waste Not Paper and had the couple’s return address letterpress printed on the front, also in navy ink.
There was also a separate directions card for getting to and from the ceremony and reception from various locations in and around New York City.
Erica chose to keep this page separate from the booklets so that guests could easily tuck it into their purse or glovebox on their way to the ceremony without having to remember the entire book.
In order to mail these off to their guests, Erica and Noah needed some pretty nice envelopes. They chose a luxe cream colored envelope from Waste Not Paper and we lined it with slightly off-white, lighter-weight Nepalese Lokta paper that was embedded with pink flower petals. We also printed their return address on the back flap of each envelope in navy ink so that everything coordinated perfectly!
In all honesty, I love just about every detail of this invitation suite. It was a long and extremely detailed endeavor for our studio, but the results were truly spectacular, and Erica and Noah were super-happy and excited about them. If you’re reading my post and thinking to yourself that you may have seen some of these photos before, wonder no longer. You may have. If you are a reader of WeddingBee.com, Erica is one of the featured bloggers over there, and she wrote many wonderful things about these invitations for her Weddingbee blog. If you want to go and check them out, you can see her save-the-date and invitation-related posts here, here, here, here and here (she’s Miss Hermit Crab, by the way). I loved reading Erica’s posts about the work we did together and it’s also been really fun sneaking peeks at other details of her wedding!
It’s not over yet though! A few months after we finished her invitations, Erica and Noah hired Twin Ravens Press again to create a set of matching thank you cards to use after their wedding.
We printed these on a similarly-colored non-seeded paper from Crane (as Erica figured it would be easier to write on) with the same navy blue ink from the rest of the invitation suite and we paired it with the same light blue envelopes that we used for her reply cards, but this time, printed their return address on the back flap instead of on the front. Aren’t they cute?!?
I’ve absolutely loved working with Erica and Noah these past few months and I know that their upcoming June wedding is going to be just spectacular! Thanks so much Erica & Noah, you guys are awesome! : )
