Custom Business Cards | Steel Bloom Flowers
Hi everybody! I apologize for my long blogging absence last week, but things have been super-busy around here. The great thing about that though, is that it means I have a lot of new, very cool work to show you in the coming days. Today I want to show off a very unique and cool set of business cards for a little floral design business in Bend, Oregon, called Steel Bloom Flowers. Steel Bloom’s owners, Stephanie & Mark McKinley, hired me to design and letterpress print their cards as well as come up with their logo and branding, and I’m super-excited about how all of it turned out!
In the photo above you can see Stephanie’s business cards (front and back) on the left and her tags for bouquets, arrangements and such on the right. These cards are really unique and exciting! They were printed on a custom duplexed, black, 180 lb. Wausau Eclipse Black stock. We used silver ink for the main information and logo text on these cards, and then printed the Dahlia logo in the background using a slightly shiny black ink to create a varnish effect. All of the cards feature rounded corners and all of them were were edge-painted with metallic silver. Aren’t they awesome?!?
You’ll very rarely see my fingers in the photos on this blog, but for these cards I needed to show you how cool the black on black printing for Steel Bloom’s flower motif was. When held in the sunlight, the flower really shimmers on each card. I love the contrast too of the silver ink on the black. We often have customers ask us if we can print white on black. White on black really isn’t an option for letterpress printing since white letterpress ink is actually clear. It doesn’t show up well on dark stocks. I think that using silver though, creates a beautiful effect and is definitely a lot more readable than a non-opaque white ink ever could be.
In the photos above, you can see the backs of Stephanie’s business cards. The backs have a slightly smaller dahlia motif, centered, and Steel Bloom’s logo on the back.
Below is a close-up of the tags. Steel Bloom’s tags are a 2.5″ square shape with rounded corners printed on the same custom duplexed, Wassau Eclipse Black stock we used for their business cards. These were printed single sided with the black-on-black dahlia in the background and silver text over the top. Each of these cards was also edge-painted in metallic silver, which you can see in the bottom right photo below. It’s such a cool effect!
Stephanie also ordered several adorable enclosure cards from us in different designs to pair with her arrangements. Some feature the dahlia on a small, white folded card in either black, grey or silver, and others feature small hearts in the center of white cards in red, pink or silver.
I actually got to visit Steel Bloom Flowers and meet Stephanie and Mark in person over President’s Day weekend and it was so much fun to see their shop and actually meet them in person. If you are in Bend, definitely stop by Steel Bloom Flowers on Arizona Avenue! Stephanie and Mark are awesome!
