Right before the Thanksgiving holiday last week, I finished up a set of really adorable baby announcements for a local couple, here in Eugene, that I’ve known for some time. Sean & Rebecca just had their first child in late October, and I was super-excited when Rebecca asked me to design and print birth announcements for them!
Before she was born, Rebecca and Sean knew they were having a little girl, so we worked on several cute designs prior to her birth, and Sean and Rebecca ended up choosing this one. They have two pups in their household – a daschund and a basset hound, and Rebecca thought it would be cute to have their silhouettes featured on Katie’s announcements. I couldn’t have agreed more!
Katie’s announcements are an A2 size flat card, which measures 4.25″x5.5″. They were printed on Holyoke 100% cotton rag Bone White paper in two ink colors: a deep, chocolate brown and a light, baby pink. They were paired with matching A2 size pink envelopes from Waste Not Paper Company, and had Sean and Rebecca’s address letterpress printed on the flap.
The announcements were designed using two fun fonts! All of Katie’s information was printed in chocolate brown ink in one of the fonts and her name was printed larger in pink in the other font. For the design at the bottom, I created two silhouettes of each of the Sullivan’s pups and printed them in chocolate brown. They each have little pink footprints trailing behind them, and the daschund is chasing a little pink butterfly. Aren’t those too cute?!?
Check out the letterpress impression below in the Holyoke paper! I know I’ve been saying it a lot lately, but Holyoke is quickly becoming one of my favorite papers for letterpress printing. It’s just so pretty and wonderful to the touch!
Thanks so much for the custom order Sean & Rebecca and congratulations on your new little lady! I can’t wait to meet her! See you soon!
I hope everyone out there had a very happy Thanksgiving weekend! Earlier this month we finished a small, but lovely, set of engagement party invitations for a couple down in Santa Cruz, California. Not only are engagement parties a super-fun way for friends and family to help celebrate a couple’s recent engagement, but having really pretty letterpress invitations for such an event can make it that much more fun! You can see Brad and Cindy’s pretty, ampersand engagement party invites above and below! They were designed by the couple’s wonderful wedding planner, Ashley Dicksa of Creative Events by Ashley. These were printed in two ink colors: a light pink and navy blue, on Holyoke 100% cotton rag, bone white paper, and they came with matching navy blue A7 size envelopes.
I love the color combination on these, and the simple, san-serif text paired with the big, decorative ampersand! The ampersand was the only design element that was printed in pink, and all of the text was printed over the top of it in dark navy blue ink.
Check out the lovely impression that both the text and the giant ampersand made in the Holyoke paper. It’s sometimes difficult to achieve a deep impression on large design elements with letterpress printing, but the Holyoke 100% cotton rag paper is so soft, that achieving that impression, even on a large design element like this wasn’t a problem. I’m excited to see what Ashley, Cindy and Brad come up with for their save-the-dates and wedding invitations over the next several months. If you like this design, check back in to see their other paper goods later on!
Thanks so much Ashley, Cindy and Brad!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-29 19:01:482015-04-03 21:01:45Engagement Party Invitations | Cindy & Brad
It’s that time of year, folks! If you visited our Etsy shop recently, you will have noticed that we’ve been listing lots and lots of holiday-related goodies in our online store: everything from greeting cards to small gift cards and tags to letterpress printed goodies that would make great holiday gifts, like coasters. If you haven’t been over there recently, I’m about to give you more of a reason than ever to go very soon!
First though, I’d like to give you a little taste of all of the lovely holiday items that are available, right now, in our etsy store! Below is our Penguin Snowball Fight holiday card. This design is the newest addition to our holiday line, and it is an A2 size, printed on Crane Lettra 110 lb. Pearl White Paper in 5(!) ink colors, and comes with coordinating pale blue envelopes. These are available as singles and in sets of 6 or 12.
Last year, at the end of the holiday season we released these lovely sets of tags that you see below. These were a collaboration between the awesome calligrapher/hand-lettering artist Crystal Kluge and myself. They come in packs of 6 (one of each different tag design) for only $5.00 a set. They’re a super cute way to dress up your holiday gifts this season!
We’ve also started releasing a series of small (only 3.5″x2″, folded) gift cards in various designs and colors. You can see four of those below (and yes, I did throw a birthday one in there just for variety, on purpose). These are another very cute way to dress up your packages this holiday season! Clockwise from upper left: Origami Crane Holiday Gift Card, “Make a Wish” Gift Card, Snowflakes Gift Card, “Happy Birthday” Cupcake Gift Card. All of these gift cards come in packages of six with coordinating envelopes for only $5.00 per pack!
The greeting cards in the grouping of photos below are all 4bar size and come in sets of 10, 6 or as singles. Clockwise from top left: Holiday Hedgehogs, Poinsettia Mouse and Peace Dove.
Above, the top left most card, the VW Bug Christmas card, is a 4bar size, and the others in the grouping are A2s. The A2 size cards come in sets of 12, 6 or as singles. Clockwise from top left: Volkswagen Christmas Card, Cardinals, Holiday Cat & Lights and Crane String (Green-Copper-Red). The Crane String card comes in other colors as well, if you like the design but want colors that aren’t so Christmas-y.
At Twin Ravens Press, I feel like I have a lot to be thankful for on this day before Thanksgiving. As of this coming January we will have been in business, making lovely letterpress printed goodies for people all over the country, and in a variety of countries around the world, for four years. We’re doing great, and I couldn’t be happier running this business. The thing about it is, the reason that Twin Ravens Press is working so well, is because of you, not me. Your continued support and enthusiasm for our designs, printing and products, both custom and not, is what makes Twin Ravens Press possible. So, as an extra special thank you to you, our customers, this holiday season, I’m extending an extra special Thanksgiving/Black Friday Sale. We aren’t going to be open tomorrow or Friday, so this is an online sale only. Here’s how it’s going to work: visit our Etsy Shop between midnight tonight (the start of the Thanksgiving holiday), and midnight on Friday (Pacific Standard Time), and order anything from our store. Enter the code: GIVETHANKS2010 when you check out, and receive 20% off of your entire order! This sale applies to all products in our store, not only the holiday ones, so if there’s something you’ve been meaning to pick up, please don’t hesitate. Please note that this sale only applies to items in our etsy shop, and not to custom orders, custom printing, or graphic design services. That’s it!
As I imagine we might get a little more traffic this weekend as a result of the sale, I will be logging in periodically to re-stock items that have sold. If you don’t see everything you want, right when you log in, check back in again, as it will probably be back. All orders will be filled beginning Monday morning, November 29th, in the order that they were received. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Remember the post we did earlier this August about the lovely and ultra modern wedding invitations we created for Bellevue, Washington couple, Angela & Lý? No? Well, if you don’t, click on the link above and check them out because they were gorgeous!
At any rate, Angela was kind enough to send over a few photos from their wedding last week, and I’d love to share them with you all!
Aren’t those some gorgeous wedding photos?!? Angela is just beautiful, and so was their venue. Plus, everyone just looks like they’re having a really wonderful time!
If you want to check out a few more photos of their stationery, that you haven’t seen before, you can below. These photos were taken by our wonderful, professional photographer in-residence, Katie Campbell of Katie Campbell Photography. (In case you were wondering, Katie also took the majority of the photos that you see rotating in our masthead above. She’s awesome!)
Lovely stationery, lovely couple, gorgeous photos… It really doesn’t get too much better than this! Thanks so much Angela for sharing some photos of your’s and Lý’s Big Day with us! All the best!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-23 14:08:542015-04-03 21:01:53Wedding Photos | Angela & Lý
Twin Ravens Press is very excited to be working with a brand-new floral designer in Las Vegas! A couple of months ago Cheryl from Flowers of the Field contacted me about designing both letterpress printed business cards and bouquet tags for her brand new shop! Above you can see what we came up with! Both Cheryl’s business cards and bouquet tags are a standard business card size at 3.5″ wide x 2″ tall.
Both have rounded corners and were printed in two ink colors: a deep, forest green and a bright magenta pink. You’ll notice that we used a couple of different papers for the cards and tags, but I’ll get to that in a moment.
Above are Cheryl’s bouquet tags. These tags were printed in two ink colors with her logo and contact information for the business and have a small 1/8″ hole drilled in the upper left corner for Cheryl to tie a piece of ribbon or twine through. These were printed on 110 lb. Crane Lettra 100% cotton paper and have rounded corners for a softer, more finished look.
Cheryl’s business cards are very similar, but feature a slightly different layout that incorporates her name and e-mail address, as well as the logo and all of the same location and contact information as was on the bouquet tags. These were also printed in two ink colors, but for them we chose to go with a somewhat fancier paper stock. These were printed on custom-made, white, Porridge Paper that has wildflower seeds embedded in the pulp. These cards will actually grow wildflowers if they get wet! How cool is that?!? I’ve worked with paper from Porridge Papers on many occasions, and in a wide variety of colors, for both business stationery and wedding designs, and I just love the way letterpress printing on it turns out! It’s so beautiful and the paper is so wonderful to work with!
Check out the lovely impression and texture of Cheryl’s letterpress business cards on the porridge paper. Isn’t it awesome!?!
Lastly, just to show you what gorgeous work Cheryl does, check out the photos below that I pulled from her website of some lovely bridal bouquets she created. They’re just gorgeous!
Thanks so much Cheryl for working with us on your new business stationery! We’re very excited to be working with you!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-23 12:24:252015-04-03 21:01:58Custom Business Cards | Flowers of the Field
Here’s another lovely wedding design that we letterpress printed earlier this year, this time for a couple in Indiana. Derek and his now-wife, Lindsay, are both graphic designers, and they designed their wedding invitations themselves and had Twin Ravens Press do their printing! Their invitations included a 4bar size rsvp card and a slightly-smaller-than-A7 invitation that was matted onto navy blue card stock and then mounted into a custom, digitally printed invitation folder that had other information about their registry, directions and ceremony.
Below you can see a closer photo of the center invitation panel. The actual invite was letterpress printed in two ink colors: a bright, chartreuse green and navy blue. If you look at the bottom of the invite too, you’ll notice some subtle, but pretty, blind embossed circles. I love all of the little details that Lindsay and Derek put in to the design of these invitations. After the invite was printed it was mounted onto a matching navy blue invite matte and then that was mounted onto the center panel of their folder.
Aren’t the blind embossing and the branch + love birds details in the above photo just stunning?!? I really love the way that all of the little details in this design came together!
Below, you can see images of the other two panels of the invitation folder. This folder was digitally printed on an 80 lb. Gravel Grey card stock from Waste Not Paper Company. The left panel was much smaller than the other two, and included a note from the couple about their ceremony and reception, as well as their registry information. The right panel was the same size as the center, and included an awesome map that Derek and Lindsay designed with the birds representing the location of the church where they were married, and the champagne glasses representing their reception location. They also had written driving directions for how to get from one location to another on this panel. When folded, this piece fit into a chartreuse green A7 envelope.
The other piece for their stationery that we printed, was a 4bar size reply card. These cards were also paired with chartreuse envelopes and were printed in navy blue ink with blind embossing. I love how the reply card is much simpler than the invitation, but still coordinates so well with their choices of fonts, ink color, design elements (like the little love birds) and the blind embossing!
Lindsay and Derek were so much fun to work with on this project and I’m really excited to be working with them again on some business cards for their design business! Congratulations and thanks so much again Lindsay and Derek!
Sometimes, during the summer, when it’s really busy around here, I have a terrible habit of showing off a couple’s awesome Save-the-Dates and then taking forever to actually show you, my lovely blog readers, their invitations. You may have noticed recently, that while I’ve been showing off new work, I’ve also been recapping a lot of my favorite invitations from earlier in the year, that I just didn’t get to blogging about when they were hot off the press. The invitations you’re about to read about in this post, were one such set of invitations and one of my favorite sets from earlier in the summer.
If you’ve been reading this blog for quite a while, you may remember Theresa and Dermot’s awesome save-the-date coasters with tiny little square envelopes that we created way back in November of 2009. If you haven’t been following us that long, you should go back and check out the link, as they were pretty awesome. A few months after her Save-the-Dates were sent, Theresa hired me again to design and print her wedding invitations. She wanted the styling of these to be a little more formal and classic than her save-the-dates, but still whimsical and elegant. We used two ink colors for her pieces: a lovely turquoise blue and a metallic silver. The suite included an invitation and reply card, both of which were printed on Crane Lettra Pearl White Paper and coordinating envelopes for both pieces that were printed with silver ink on pool blue envelopes from Waste Not Paper Company.
Theresa and Dermot’s wedding invitation is a standard A7 size and was printed in two ink colors. The decorative motifs on this design were printed in a light turquoise blue and all of the text was printed in silver ink. For these invitations I created an array of gorgeous, flowing, flourishes that stretch across the top and bottom of the card. I love how the flourishes are slightly calligraphic and really formal, yet whimsical looking. For the couple’s names, I used a script font with lots of flourishing that I thought mimicked the decorative flourishing of the design well. Isn’t this beautiful?!?
Their reply card was a 4bar size and utilized the same turquoise flourishing motif and silver type. I used a little less flourishing on this card, but I think that it still coordinates perfectly with the invitation! We used script to emphasize important snippets of text, like the response date and the “M” on the line where guests would write in their names.
The impression the letterpress printing created in the paper for this design, for both the decorative motifs and the typography, was just lovely. You can get a closer look at it in the image below!
Both the reply card and envelope for this suite were a lovely turquoise color from Waste Not Paper Company called “Pool”. Often we just print the addresses on envelopes for wedding invitations and call it good, but for these we wanted to do a little more decoration on the envelopes themselves. You can see the reply card envelope with the actual card itself in the photo above. I printed Theresa’s mailing address in the center of the envelope in silver ink in the same fonts we had been using for the reply card and invitation, and then created a small flourish motif that could be printed in the top left corner of the envelope in silver. I think this is a lovely way to make the envelope coordinate with the stationery, besides just matching the color. It really makes the envelope a lot more elegant and fancy too!
Theresa and Dermot’s outer invitation envelopes were beautifully adorned as well. I printed a small flourishing motif on the bottom right corner of these envelopes and then a larger one that matched the one from the reply card envelope in the upper left corner. The return address of these envelopes was printed on the back flap and you can see that the decorative flourishing cascades over the top of the envelope from the front to the back. I think these turned out just beautifully and working with Theresa and Dermot on this suite was fantastic!
Ladies and Gentlemen, brace yourselves. For what you are about to see and read about, will quite possibly be the cutest thing you’ve seen and read about all week.
The baby announcements we created for Elizabeth’s parents, Edwina and John, were completed last week, and man, are they cute! These announcements were printed in two ink colors: a light lilac-y purple and a light green on super-soft, 100% cotton rag, Holyoke Bone White paper, and came with matching, light purple envelopes from Waste Not Paper Company. These announcements featured a matted photograph of the cute little lady on the center panel of the tri-fold design. Above you can see one of the announcements and envelopes. The birth announcement information was printed on the left hand side with a cute little monkey and two little butterflies, and the right side of the tri-fold featured and panda, turtle, more butterflies, some pretty bamboo, and a calendar with Elizabeth’s birthday circled.
Above you can see the two letterpress printed panels of the tri-fold design a little closer. I just love all of the whimsical little details in this design! There is also a lot of symbolism in these announcements. Elizabeth’s family has a partial Chinese background, and having panda bears associated with babies in Chinese (and a few other Asian cultures) is considered to bring luck and happiness for the child. You’ll notice that these announcements also feature a small turtle wearing glasses. Elizabeth’s late grandfather on her father’s side was nicknamed “Turtle”, and Edwina and John wanted there to be a little reference to him here as well.
One of the most fun things to me about designing baby announcements, aside from the fact that you often get to draw really, really cute things, is the fonts that you can work with! I just love the three modern, very playful, fonts we used in Elizabeth’s announcements. We used different fonts for the little calendar on the right-hand panel and different fonts for her name and the main text of the announcement information. I just love how playful and light-hearted all three are! So much fun!
Another thing to note about these adorable birth announcements is the wonderfully luxurious letterpress impression that we were able to achieve. At Twin Ravens Press, we always strive to have at least some impression in all of the work we do, but depending on the design, and on the paper and other materials being used, sometimes it’s easier to get a deep impression than other times. With these announcements we used super-soft and thick 100% cotton rag Holyoke paper. Holyoke paper is specially manufactured for letterpress printing, by a company that does letterpress printing themselves, and it’s quickly becoming one of my most favorite papers to print on. In all of these photos you can just see the deepness of the impression without having to look very hard. This, combined with the fact that the paper is thick and wonderfully soft, make it one of the nicest papers I’ve worked with.
I mentioned above that the center panel on Elizabeth’s tri-fold announcements featured a photograph and no letterpress printing. Edwina and John picked out three, totally adorable photos of their little girl to use in these announcements. We had the photos printed by a photography studio here in Eugene, and they were each matted on a small, light purple matt and then matted onto the center panel of each announcement. The paper we used for the photo mattes matches the purple envelopes that were created for the announcements as well. In order to make the envelopes match perfectly with the baby announcements themselves, I used the same fonts for Edwina and John’s return address as we did for Elizabeth’s cards, and we printed two of the cute little butterflies on the flap as well! Aren’t these just too cute!?!
If you were curious what three photos Edwina and John chose for the announcements, you can see all three together in the grouping of photos below. Isn’t she beautiful?!?
And, because I know you all can’t get enough of the awesome pictures, and there were so many wonderful ones of these announcements, check out the extra, gorgeous, detail photos below.
Creating these baby announcements for Edwina, John and Elizabeth was so much fun! I really can’t express enough what a wonderful family these three were to work with, and how much I just love designing birth announcements! If you or someone you know is expecting, and are interested in custom letterpress baby announcements or shower invitations, please don’t hesitate to contact us. We would love to work with you!
Thanks so much Edwina, John and Elizabeth! You’re the best!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-18 11:54:422015-04-03 21:02:17Baby Announcements | Elizabeth Kathleen
Check out these pretty, single color, traditional, yet tropical, letterpress wedding invitations we created for Florida couple, Lauren and Nicholas, earlier this year! I love how classic, but beautiful this set of wedding invitations is! All pieces in this suite were printed on Crane Lettra Pearl White Paper in one ink color: a lovely, tropical green and came with matching Crane Lettra envelopes. The suite included a letterpress invitation, reception card, inner and outer envelopes and a digitally printed reply postcard (which is not pictured above, but you will see farther down in the post).
Below you can see Lauren and Nicholas’ invitation all by itself. This invitation is a standard A7 size, and was printed in two lovely fonts – a delicate, but not too flourishy script for the majority of the text and a lovely wood-type look-alike font for their names! Lauren provided us with the vintage palm tree image that we used to decorate all of her stationery pieces, and it letterpress printed just beautifully!
For her reply cards, Lauren had several vintage Florida postcards digitally printed with her response information. Twin Ravens Press didn’t do the printing for these, but I thought that the idea to use vintage postcard imagery for a reply postcard was just so cool that I had to show it off to you. The left image of the above grouping is the original postcard, and the version on the right is the new one Lauren created (with the help of an awesome, graphics-savvy friend) for the reply postcards. I think these are super-fun and really set the tone for a sunny, tropical, Florida wedding!
In the above grouping of images, you can see Lauren and Nicholas’ reception card and the back flap of their invite envelopes. The reception card was styled very similarly to their invitation, except that it was smaller and was a horizontal rather than vertical orientation. We used the same palm tree motif, fonts and ink color to tie the whole suite together! On the bottom right you can see the flap of their invitation envelope. It also featured the tropical palm motif and the script font that we’ve been using all along for their return address. I think this suite turned out so lovely and was just perfect for a Florida wedding!
Thanks again Lauren & Nicholas and Congratulations!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-17 12:00:402015-04-03 21:02:23Weddings | Lauren & Nicholas
Last month, a lovely couple we worked with earlier this summer were married in San Francisco. Karin and Dennis had seen the Save the Dates from the invitation suite we were working on for Kara & Steve earlier in the year, and loved the floral design that I created for them so much that they wanted to incorporate the same floral motif into their wedding stationery. The suite we created for Karin and Dennis included an A6 size wedding invitation, a 4bar size reply card with corresponding green envelope, and a small tea ceremony card. Karin’s wedding colors were green and grey and we were able to incorporate both of these into the set along with some lovely blind embossing.
Above you can see Karin and Dennis’ invitation all by itself. This invite is an A6 size, measuring 4.5″x6.25″, which is slightly smaller than the standard A7 size that I typically do for rectangular invitations. I used two of the floral motifs that Karin liked from Kara & Steve’s invites on the left hand side of the invitation – one was printed in a medium grey ink and the other was blind embossed below it. I just love the awesome texture that blind embossing creates on 100% cotton paper! It’s so pretty and so unique to the letterpress process! Karin and Dennis’ names were printed in green ink and the rest of the text of their invitation was printed in the same medium grey as their floral motif. I love the mix of modern script and san-serif fonts we used for this design. They came together beautifully!
The top two photos in the grouping below are of Karin and Dennis’ tea ceremony card. A tea ceremony is a traditional part of any Chinese wedding, and Karin and Dennis wanted to create a small separate card to include with family and close friend’s invitations inviting them to this special, cultural event. The card was printed entirely in grey ink, with the exception of the words “Tea Ceremony” at the top, which were blind embossed. This card is small, at 3.5″x2″, which is the same size as a standard business card. Creating a small insert card like this is a great way to inexpensively add a little extra information, whether it’s about a smaller, intimate aspect of your wedding ceremony, or if it is for wedding registry or wedding website information!
The lower three photos in the above group are of Karin and Dennis’ reply card and envelope. This card was also designed to match the rest of the suite. It was printed in grey ink and featured one floral motif and both lovely fonts! We paired this card with a green envelope that matched the green ink on their invitation and printed their return address on the front of it in grey.
I love how simple, yet beautiful this suite came out! Thanks so much Karin and Dennis for working with us and congratulations!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-16 12:04:112015-04-03 21:02:26Weddings | Karin & Dennis
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