Twin Ravens Press Post-Holiday Sale on Now!

Hello lovely blog readers! I am back from the holidays and had a wonderful time and am hoping that all of you did too! In light of post-holiday-ness, and in order to get ready for the new year, all of our holiday-specific cards, card sets and gift tags are now on sale in our etsy shop. This is a great opportunity to stock up on some really cute paper goods for next year, and everything is at least 20% off, so go over and check it out!

Also, we are going to be releasing some really fun, new designs for Valentine’s Day in the coming weeks, so check back to get a sneak peek at those! See you all soon!

Merry Christmas!

I hope everyone out there reading this blog is having a wonderful day and a Very Merry Christmas! Thank you for making this last year truly great!
For those wanting to get in touch with me about custom printing or who are waiting for a card order to be filled, we will reopen on Monday. Until then, have a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful weekend!

Weddings | Amanda and Matthew



I’ve really been enjoying catching all of you up this week on a few wedding invitation suites I designed and printed this past spring/summer that I didn’t get to feature right away! The suite I’m about to show you was printed last spring for a lovely couple who were married in late July in Jacksonville, Florida! Amanda and Matthew’s wedding colors were blue, white and black and they desired a whimsical, yet modern invitation suite featuring hand-drawn line art of various “landmarks” near, in or around their wedding venues. Here is what we came up with!

You can see the majority of the pieces in the suite in the image at the top of this post. Amanda and Matt’s suite included an inner/outer invitation envelope set, an A7 size invitation, a 4bar size reply card with corresponding envelope, a small 3.5″x2.5″ reception card, and an A2 size rehearsal dinner invitation with corresponding envelope. All of the pieces were printed on Crane Lettra 100% cotton pearl white paper. All of their envelopes were from Waste Not Paper Company. The reply card envelope and rehearsal dinner invitation envelope were a lovely light blue color and the main invitation envelopes were white.
First things first, though, let’s take a look at their invitation!
As I mentioned above, Amanda & Matthew’s invitation is a standard A7 size, measuring 5″x7″. It was printed in black and light blue inks on 100% cotton pearl white paper. The inspiration for the imagery on this piece came from a photograph of a clock that is near the church where they were getting married. Amanda wanted to include lovely hand-drawn line art of landmarks or other features that were relevant to the particular venues of their wedding throughout the design of the suite. She sent me a photo of this old, outdoor clock and we thought that it would be the perfect motif for the invitation with the hands of the clock indicating the time of the wedding. I love the way that all of the pieces in this suite came out very simple looking, yet modern and elegant all at the same time. All of the designs were really clean and crisp and I love the way that fine line art and typography just sinks into the cotton paper from the letterpress impression. Check out this detail photo to see what I’m talking about:
For their invitation envelopes, Amanda chose a lovely set of inner/outer envelopes from Waste Not Paper Company in white. These envelopes feature a European pointed flap. The outer envelope was unlined and was printed with their return address in blue ink on the back flap.
The inner envelope was unprinted, but featured a beautiful custom envelope liner created from handmade Nepalese Lokta papers in a variety of light blues. Amanda and Matt had quite a few invitations to send out and because Lokta paper is handmade, no two dye-lots of it are completely the same. Because of this we used paper for their envelope liners from a few different dye-lots, which added some lovely variety to the shades of blue in the suite.
Amanda and Matt’s reception card was a standard 4bar size and featured a line drawing reminiscent of the tables and chairs in old French cafés.

We utilized the same typefaces and ink colors in the design of this card and gave guests the option to indicate what meal choice (roasted chicken with champagne sauce or seared salmon with citrus buerre blanc) they preferred for the reception.
We decided to dress up the envelope for this card a bit as well, all while keeping with the theme of the other pieces in the suite.
The envelope was a 4bar size envelope in a light blue, also from Waste Not Paper Company, and it featured Amand
a’s address on the front, printed in black ink, and a characterful mailbox with her actual address numbers on the side. You can’t see the numbers on the side of the box because they are blurred out for privacy purposes, but let me tell you – the whole thing was super-cute. Here are the reply card and envelope together:
Amanda and Matt’s main invitation suite also included a small reception card. This card measured 3.5″ wide by 2.5″ tall. The couple chose to do a separate reception card for their suite because they were getting married in a church and holding their reception at a separate venue. For the imagery on this card, Amanda sent me some lovely photos of chandeliers that were in the room where they were having their reception. We figured this would make the perfect little drawing for their little reception card!
Aren’t the little line drawings cute?!? Here is what the three main invitation pieces look like together:
Last, but certainly not least, Amanda and Matthew also had me design and print a set of rehearsal dinner invitations, which they sent out separately to certain guests.
Their rehearsal dinner invitation was a standard A2 size, measuring 5.5″ x 4.25″ and came with it’s own light blue Waste Not Paper envelope. The envelope had Matt’s parent’s return address printed on the flap and the card featured another fun and whimsical line drawing: this time of a crab.
I love the way this whole suite turned out and it was so much fun coming up with the ideas for the different graphics on the different pieces with Amanda! I’m sure their Florida wedding this past July was just lovely!
Congratulations Amanda and Matthew!

Shorewood Lodge Napkins


Check out these really cool letterpress printed napkins I printed recently for a lovely lady named Phyllis, in Salem, Oregon! Phyllis contacted me after seeing this post I did earlier this summer about some similar napkins I had printed for a couple with a sailboat. Phyllis’s son and daughter-in-law recently built a lodge in Minnesota, and Phyllis thought that letterpress printed napkins for their lodge would make the perfect gift! I used photos she gave me of the lodge to make the drawing and then we printed the image as well as their names and the lodge names on the diagonal of the napkins. I think they turned out fabulous!

Letterpress printed cocktail napkins are also wonderful for parties, weddings and other formal celebrations and events. They come in a variety of colors and we can print just about any ink color you can imagine on them, including metallic inks! If you’d like more information about our napkins, feel free to contact me at [email protected]!

From the Mailbox: Gorgeous Watercolor Maps by Crystal Kluge

Yesterday afternoon I was totally delighted when my mailman came and brought me a large chocolate brown colored envelope that was decorated with some gorgeous calligraphy, labels and those very awesome king & queen of hearts postage stamps that came out earlier this summer:
I get quite a bit of mail and it’s not everyday that you receive a package that looks this neat on the outside. Check it out, she even calligraphed our address on the large light grey circular label on the front:

This package was from a wonderful artist/calligrapher that I worked with a couple of months ago named Crystal Kluge. Crystal and I worked together with our clients, Allison and Ryan, to create a gorgeous wedding invitation booklet, complete with hand-illustrated maps for their wedding in September. Crystal illustrated three maps for them, and did the calligraphy for several different pages of their booklets, and I letterpress printed it all, along with the art I designed for their invitation, and hand-bound it all into small invitation booklets. If you don’t remember what this amazing suite looked like, check it out, here.
Anyway, in the previous post I mentioned that Allison and Ryan had commissioned Crystal to illustrate the three maps that were included in their books and I letterpress printed them. They also had me print a few loose maps on watercolor paper and send those to Crystal so that she could hand-watercolor them. Allison and Ryan wanted to have these maps as keepsakes and gorgeous art pieces that they could frame and hang up in their home. Crystal sent me photos of the finished maps she did for Allison and Ryan a couple of months ago and you can see those here. At the time, I sent Crystal a few copies of each map so she had some extras in case of mistakes or in case she wanted a set for her portfolio or for other promotional purposes.
Anyway, yesterday I opened her gorgeous envelope and found these:
Crystal water-colored a set of the letterpress printed maps and sent them back to me!! How awesome is that!?! I wasn’t really expecting it because I know that doing work like this is incredibly time-consuming, but I was absolutely delighted to get them in the mail! They are gorgeous! Check it out:
This is the first map in the booklet. It shows a detail of Allison and Ryan’s wedding location on the Oregon coast. The next map was a map of a large portion of western oregon and the I-5 corridor:
I love all three of these maps, but I think I love this center map the best. You can also see in the above photos the very sweet note that Crystal wrote me. And the third map was of Portland, Oregon:
Aren’t her maps and watercolor work just absolutely stunning?!? If you want to see more of Crystal’s work online, be sure to check out her website or her blog. She is incredibly talented and just a super-awesome person all around. If you love her style and are considering having a map, calligraphy or any hand-illustration done for your wedding invitations or another project, Crystal would be a wonderful person to contact. Believe me, it was a total pleasure working with her, and I can’t wait to work with her again! It was so much fun too to receive such wonderful work and a reminder of our collaboration in the mail yesterday!
Thanks so much for the gorgeous maps Crystal! They will most certainly be cherished.

October Special: Business and Calling Cards

Happy October Everyone! I’ve been pondering the idea of doing semi-monthly specials for a while now on certain retail products that we print or on custom printing, and I’ve decided that we’re going to give it a shot! I know I write a lot on this blog about all of the awesome wedding-related stationery that we design and print, but you should know that we also print some wonderful business-related cards and stationery as well!
So, for the month of October, our special will be (drum roll, please): 10-20% Off on all Business or Calling Card orders!
You heard me right! If you are a current business or calling card customer of Twin Ravens Press, place an order with a deposit for reprints of your current business card design between October 1 and October 31, 2009 and receive 20% off of your printing!
If you are a new business or calling card customer, don’t worry, you can get in on this deal too! If you haven’t ordered business or calling cards from us before, but would like to, place your order with a signed contract and deposit between October 1 and October 31 and receive 10% off of the printing of your cards. This discount does not apply to design work or platemaking.
If you have any questions, or would like to place your order, please contact us at [email protected]!

200 on Etsy


I hope everybody out there had a wonderful and long Labor Day weekend! It’s been a pretty busy “Monday” around here getting back from it, and I still have lots of gorgeous recently completed or in-the-works things to show you, but in the meantime, Twin Ravens Press hit a small milestone on Etsy today. Our etsy shop made it’s 200th online greeting card sale! Check it out:

The 200th sale was one of our famous love-inspired robots. This is one of my oldest greeting card designs, which makes it exciting that it was #200. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can, here. Cheers!

The OMG-WTF Spectrum


I can’t believe it’s already the last day in August! Seriously, where has the last month/year/summer gone?!? This week is going to be a really busy week between printing an awesome set of promotional greeting cards for a wedding planner in California to keeping up with the design work for some upcoming winter wedding clients before I leave for Seattle on Thursday afternoon. I’m hoping to have a new blog post up later today too to show off some more awesome things we’ve been working on this summer, but in the meantime, I found this online this morning and thought it more than appropriate. If any fellow designers out there are reading this blog, I know that you can appreciate this too. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the OMG-WTF Spectrum:

(via Neatorama)

In my opinion this is very applicable to design work, be it letterpress related or otherwise (way before I opened Twin Ravens Press I worked in marketing for a university bookstore and this was applicable there too). Also sometimes applicable for personal relationships, traffic, and tech support…
There will be more awesome letterpress-related stuff later! In the meantime, have a Happy Monday!

Nikki McClure

Image copyright Nikki McClure, via www.nikkimcclure.com
Happy Friday everyone!  I just found this interview online of one of my favorite artists, Nikki McClure.  Nikki lives and works in Olympia, Washington and is best know for her painstakingly intricate paper-cuts.  Nikki uses an exacto knife and a single sheet of paper to cut out complex images that speak to ideas of motherhood, nature and activism.  I know she’s also done some mixed media work with letterpress as well.  The video interview below totally speaks to many of the reasons why I enjoy being an artist myself and to why I love living in the Pacific Northwest.  Anyway, if you aren’t already familiar with her work, you ought to check out the video below, as well as her website.  Have a fantastic weekend!

Coasters and Meet Your Maker at PRI!

I have two exciting announcements today for all Twin Ravens Press lovers out there!  First, if you’re in the Eugene/Springfield, Oregon area today and are looking for something fun to do on Friday night, you should come down to the Last Friday Artwalk in the Whiteaker neighborhood and stop by The Pizza Research Institute (otherwise known as PRI), on 5th and Blair!  PRI  is hosting its first ever Last Friday Artwalk/Meet Your Maker Indie Arts and Crafts Show and Sale this evening from 5:00 to 9:00 pm.  The admission to the show/sale is free and you can enjoy awesome beer, wine and pizza at PRI!  You can see the poster for the show at the top of this post.  Twin Ravens Press will have a booth there and you can also shop with other fabulous local/Oregon artists and small businesses including: La Petite VieLoop’dBellybalooEsther Lee Jewelry, Knotty Girl Designs and several others!  Come down, see some cool art, drink some beer or wine, eat some pizza, and check it out!  


The second (totally awesome) announcement I have for today is that the brand new Twin Ravens Press coasters featuring our favorite robot with a heart will be available for sale starting today at the show!  

These coasters were letterpress printed in two ink colors on 3.5″ square heavy-weight coaster stock and are available in packages of one dozen for $10!  Are you not in Eugene, or are, but can’t make it to the show?  These awesome coasters are also available in my etsy store!  Check out the listing here!