The day after Christmas, a lovely couple that we had the pleasure of working with from Paris, France, were married in the Philippines. Talk about an awesome destination wedding! Bianca and I designed her invitations via email and Skype, and the results were truly awesome! She was looking for a classy and sophisticated design that spoke to both their ceremony, and maturity as a couple. We chose to use a beautiful damask pattern and classic fonts printed in silver ink to achieve this look! Each invitation was letterpress printed as an A7 size in one ink color (silver) on super-thick, 220# Crane Lettra Duplex paper. After they were printed, we then laser-cut each invitation out to give it the cool, scalloped edges that you can see in the photos. To make these invites even more unique and special, we also edge painted all of them with shimmery copper edge paint. A set of A7 envelopes were also printed with Bianca & Paul’s return address on the flap to compliment the invitation! I just love how this classy set of invites turned out, and it was such a joy working with Bianca! Check out more photos of the finished invites below! Thanks so much again for working with us Bianca! I’m sure your wedding a few weeks ago was just beautiful! If you ever need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thanks again!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Bianca1.jpg987892Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2013-01-11 14:52:032015-04-03 21:24:06Weddings | Bianca & Paul
Hi Everybody! Wow – February has just flown by! We’ve been up to so many cool things lately, I don’t even know where to begin. So, let’s start with some awesome and cute business cards that we finished earlier this month for Los Angeles-based Floataway Studios! Floataway Studios is a creative collective specializing in weddings and lifestyle portraiture and videography. They’re based in LA, but available worldwide. You can check out their website from the link above or check out their blog here!
I had so much fun working with Mary to create Floataway’s new business cards, which you can see above and below. The cards are letterpress printed on 100% cotton, super-thick duplex paper stock with grey ink on one side and turquoise ink on the other. The first side features their logo in grey and the other features their website and email in the turquoise. I love Floataway’s adorable logo and modern fonts, but the coolest thing about these cards is their custom shape! Seriously, how often do you see a cloud-shaped business card floating around? Each card was printed and then custom-die cut on our press into their cute, totally unique shape. I love them!
If you love Floataway’s cards, you should go and check out their photography on their website and or blog. It’s adorable!!
Thanks so much for working with us Mary! If you need anything else, just let me know!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Floataway1.jpg595892Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2012-02-28 16:46:212015-04-03 21:26:54Custom Business Cards | Floataway Studios
One of my favorite custom holiday cards from this past season was created for one of my very favorite Chicago families! If you have been reading this blog for a while, you may remember Edwina, John and little Elizabeth. Edwina originally hired me to design and print Elizabeth’s adorable, tri-fold, birth announcements in the fall of 2010, and, my how that little girl has grown! Edwina also had me create Elizabeth’s 1st birthday party invitations earlier this fall, but I haven’t posted them here yet (just you wait – they’re coming soon). At any rate, I love this family an awful lot, and I feel like after working with them on so many different projects, I’m really getting to know them, despite the fact that we’ve never met in person. It was an absolute joy to create their holiday cards this year, which you can see above and below.
The Boege Family’s holiday cards were an A6 size card printed in two ink colors, red and charcoal grey, on 100% cotton rag Holyoke paper. Holyoke paper is 140# and super-soft, which makes for a deliciously deep letterpress impression. Edwina wanted to include a photo with these cards, so it was my challenge to design a card that incorporated one. Above is what we came up with! This card features a 2.5″ diameter die-cut circle window with the mitten design encircling it. The front of the card reads “Warmest Wishes”, and the inside has a more personal message from the family, also in red.
Each family photo had rounded corners, and was tipped in by hand, so that it showed through the window on the front of the card. Their holiday greeting was printed below each photo, and each card came with a matching red envelope with a copper return address printed in the same fonts on the back flap.
Aren’t they sweet?!? I loved this design so much, that I actually created a non-photo-card version for our etsy shop! You can find it here. The Boege’s have been wonderful to me and Twin Ravens Press over the past couple of years and I love every new project that we get to work on together! I can’t wait to see what projects are in store for us and the Boege’s in 2012! Thanks so much again for working with us Edwina, John & Elizabeth! Happy 2012!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Edwina1.jpg652892Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2012-01-06 12:40:022015-04-03 21:28:17Custom Holiday Cards | The Boege Family
Hi all! I must apologize for my lack of blogging this week, but it’s been crazy – busy around here! To make up for my absence, I want to show you a really special set of wedding invitations that we created last year for a couple in Indiana who had a destination wedding in Florida last April. Let me tell you, this is a post I should have written, literally, about a year ago. The couple I’m going to be writing about, Louise and Dagan, were so awesome and wonderful to work with, and so understanding when situations weren’t ideal, that they have been long overdue for some blogging love. You see, I worked with Louise last year on her fairly extensive set of invitations that you can see in the photo above. The invitation suite included an A6 size invitation, A7 size inner and outer envelopes, An A2 size reply card and coordinating envelope, a custom monogram belly band, 4bar size rehearsal dinner and brunch invitations and a smaller website card. The suite utilized combinations of three different ink colors including chocolate brown and two lovely shades of green. All of the pieces were printed on Crane Lettra Pearl White paper and the invite envelopes were also from Crane. The lovely light green envelopes that Louise chose for her reply card envelopes were from Waste Not Paper Company. Everything went completely as planned with this job, and we were a week away from going to print on it, when I fell hiking and broke my leg last January. I expected Louise to freak out about the sudden, unplanned delay in her printing, but she took everything with stride and was so completely sweet about it to boot. Despite the delays, her invitations were amazing, and I’m so excited to finally be showing them off to you on this blog.
In the photos above you can see what the whole “package” looked like together. Louise and Dagan’s invitation suite came in an A7 size envelope and featured all of the cards I mentioned above tied up with a custom, letterpress monogram belly band. If you have a lot of different pieces in your invitation suite, and aren’t including something like a pocket folder, this is a really nice way to tie everything together (no pun intended) and make it look really nice for your guests when they pull it out of the envelope.
Louise and Dagan’s belly band was a 2″ round medallion featuring their initials in the darker of their two green inks with two little love birds perched on either letter. The medallion had two small holes drilled on either side of the initials so that we could thread a 1/4″ wide, green, double-faced satin ribbon through each one. Each ribbon tied in a small knot behind all of the stationery.
The main piece in Louise and Dagan’s suite was their gorgeous, three-color, A6 size wedding invitation. The invitation featured a classic roman typeface for the majority of the invite text and then a lovely, playful script in green for their names. The motif on the top of the invitation, was one that I’ve used before several times, but that I love very much. It’s a couple of love birds in branches surrounded by clusters of lovely blossoms. Isn’t this invitation gorgeous?!?
Louise and Dagan’s A2 size reply card was also printed in three colors and was designed to match their invitation. It featured a smaller bird-in-branches motif in the top right corner and all of their response options below in a mix of the roman and decorative script fonts we had used on the invitation. For the meal at the reception, Louise had her guests indicate whether they wanted Surf-n-Turf with a cow + lobster icon, or vegetarian, represented by a couple of carrots. I use little animal and vegetable icons for meal choice options on reply cards all of the time, and let me tell you, for some reason they just never get old. I love them!
Loise and Dagan’s reply card envelopes were printed simply with one ink color (the darker green) on a light green envelope from Waste Not Paper Company.
There were also two smaller invitations – one to a rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding and one for a brunch the morning after the wedding, included in Louise and Dagan’s invite suite. Both of these invitations were printed on 4bar size cards in one ink color. The Brunch invite was vertically oriented and printed in the darker green ink and the rehearsal dinner invite was horizontally oriented and printed in the mintier green. Last, but not least, they also included a small, 3.5″x2.5″ card with their website information and two more little birdies in an even darker green ink.
I just love how everything coordinated so well with this suite!
After we completed their invitations, Louise and Dagan hired me again to do some design work and letterpress printing for their actual wedding ceremony and reception. We designed and printed for them a coordinating set of thank you cards, some cute monogram favor tags, table numbers and place cards. Louise’s thank you cards, which you can see in the top photo below, were a 4bar size folded card printed in one ink color that came with matching white envelopes. The thank you’s featured the same script we used throughout the invitation suite and two little flying love birds across the front of the card.
For their favor tags, Louise and Dagan had me print more of the the little monogram medallions we had used for their belly bands, but instead of drilling small holes in the sides, we drilled a single hole in the top of the medallion instead. This allowed Louise to run a tiny 1/8″ wide satin ribbon through each medallion and tie them to her favors.
Their table numbers and place cards were really cute! These weren’t actually letterpress printed, but what we did is took one of the bird designs from the invitation and scaled it up fairly large. We then found coordinating papers that would match their green inks and custom die-cut several little birdies out of the different green papers. Louise used one shade of green for the place cards and the other for her table numbers. She hired a calligrapher to write out the names and numbers on each little card and for the place cards, we drilled holes in the cards so she could hang them from a small tree at the entrance to their reception. Totally cute idea – don’t you think?!?
Lastly, in lieu of a guest book, Louise and Dagan had me print a run of double-sided postcards in their design in green ink. The postcards were left on a table, where you might find an ordinary guest book, and guests were instructed to write their well-wishes on a postcard that would be mailed to Louise and Dagan later on in the upcoming year. I think this is a totally fun idea, not only because it’s more letterpress, but also because then you get wonderfully happy mail from all of the people who attended your wedding throughout the coming year. Very cool idea. Very cool.
So, do you want to see some wedding photos from Louise and Dagan’s big day? I know you do. Louise sent me these a couple of months after the wedding. She was such a beautiful bride! All photos below courtesy of Goode Green Photography in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida.
Aren’t they one of the loveliest couples you’ve ever seen?!? Thanks so much again Louise and Dagan for working with me last year! You two were so wonderful to work with and I hope I get to work with you again at some point in the future. All the best!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2011-02-09 14:41:212015-04-03 20:58:46Weddings | Louise & Dagan
The pretty square business cards you see above and below, for Kat & Justin Speyer of Persimmon Images, a wedding, boudoir and portrait photography studio in Seattle, Washington, were in-the-making for quite some time before we completed them at the beginning of December. Kat and I have been friends for a while, and her and Justin’s wedding invitations (which you can see a few photos of in that rotating masthead directly above this post) were one of the first commercial wedding jobs I completed after starting Twin Ravens Press. Because of our longstanding friendship and history working together, I was super-excited when Kat decided to quit her soul-crushing office job and start her own photography business. She poured through a lot of inspirational images when branding her company, coming up with her logo, and designing her business cards, and then I set out to turn them in to a reality. At the time that Kat designed these cards, Twin Ravens Press wasn’t offering edge-painting and it was at Kat’s encouragement that I set out to learn the technique. We went through a couple of failed attempts at her cards, while I was learning to edge-paint, before getting the results you see above. I think these cards turned out so awesome and were well-worth the long wait and multiple failed attempts. Plus, Kat’s encouragement about the edge-painting has not only allowed us to perfect the technique for use with her design, but if you look back through our archives you will see several other beautifully letterpress printed and edge-painted business cards and wedding invitations that we’ve created this past year!
The cards you see above are printed in one ink color: a lovely persimmon orange. They are double-sided and feature a blind-embossed logo on one side, contact information in orange on the other, rounded corners, and light blue edge-painting. They were printed on ultra-thick Crane Lettra Duplex Paper in bright white s. I love the combination Kat chose of the orange with blind-embossing, and I think the blue edges really complete the card and make them stand out in a crowd!
If you haven’t done so already, click on the link above and check out Persimmon Images’ website! Kat has a great eye for photography and lots of talent and she’s photographed a wide variety of people, places and events. She studied magazine journalism in college and discovered much of her love for wedding photography when she was a writer for WeddingBee a couple of years ago (She is Mrs. Cherry Pie!). As I mentioned above, she and Justin are based out of Seattle, but they’ve been known to travel far and wide if there’s an exciting occasion or event that calls for it.
And, just because I know you all love pretty pictures, more of my favorite shots of their letterpress business cards are below!
Thanks so much for working with me on your new cards, Kat! Keep up the awesome work!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2011-01-05 17:46:502015-04-03 20:59:51Custom Business Cards | Persimmon Images
Happy November everybody! I can’t believe how quickly the holidays are approaching. Twin Ravens Press has several wonderful goodies in store for the upcoming holiday season that you’ll be hearing about here very soon, but in the meantime, I want to show off an absolutely gorgeous set of wedding invitations we finished early last month for a couple getting married on New Year’s Eve! Jessica (who goes by “Jay”) and her soon-to-be husband are getting married at the luxurious Parker Palm Springs on New Year’s Eve and wanted a fun, modern and original design for their invitations.
Jay’s invitations are a long and skinny #10 size, letterpress printed on Crane Lettra 100% cotton duplex bright white paper. We created a monarch size wedding itinerary to accompany them, along with a set of 4bar reply cards and envelopes. The invitation and other components were enclosed in a custom-made invitation sleeve with red and gold Thai Unryu paper that was sealed with a custom monogram belly band and ribbon and came in a black #10 string + button envelope. Allow me to walk you through what you would see if you were to receive one of these beauties:
Here is what the invitations looked like when they were first removed from their envelopes. We die-cut that small window at the top of each sleeve, so that a lovely, thin, red and gold Thai Unryu paper would peek through. The inspiration for this window design came from photos Jay had sent me of a large wall that surrounds The Parker’s grounds that is made up entirely of this pattern. The sleeves were tied shut with a black and white 1/8″ wide ribbon and each ribbon had a custom letterpress printed monogram medallion in the center.
Untie the sleeve and inside you would find the invitation’s contents wrapped in tissue-thin Thai Unryu paper. This paper is a bright red color and has little gold threads woven throughout. All of Jay and Michael’s stationery was printed in a single ink color: black, on white paper, so adding this bright red paper to the inside of the invitation sleeve really added a lot of color to the suite!
Here is just the invitation sitting nestled inside the sleeve. Jay’s invite was double-sided and featured the same pattern that we used for the motif on the front of the sleeve, blind embossed into the invite itself. The majority of the text of the invitation was printed using a traditional all-caps serif typeface, and the beautiful calligraphy for Jay and Michael’s names as well as “dinner, dancing and 2011 to follow” was created by Lori Raines Calligraphy Studio in Keizer, Oregon. Lori created all of the calligraphy for Jay’s suite and then we letterpress printed it on each piece. Lori also addressed all of Jay’s black invitation envelopes! The back side of Jay’s invite included the same monogram you saw on their belly band medallion, and their wedding website URL below it. In the images below, you can see some close-ups of the die-cut window in the sleeve, the belly band, monogram and ribbon.
Here are some close-ups of the invitation by itself! I absolutely love the combination of gorgeous calligraphy with traditional serif fonts and blind embossing. You really can’t get much more modern and elegant than this.
For an extra-special touch, we also edge-painted the edges of Jay’s invitations in bright gold. Edge-painting is a very subtle touch, but really adds a lot of punch to any invitation suite, especially when you use such an awesomely bright color! The gold looks just fabulous with these!
Along with the invitation, Jay also chose to include a simple itinerary of the weekend’s events. This piece was also letterpress printed in black ink on Crane Lettra 100% cotton bright white paper. I love the simplicity of this piece and the tiny blind embossed designs that we included separating each day’s events. These are the same little square motifs from both the invitation and die-cut sleeve!
Last, but certainly not least, is Jay and Michael’s reply card. This card was also printed on Crane Lettra and came with a matching white envelope. It features the same, lovely blind-embossed border elements as the other cards, as well as Lori’s calligraphy for the “M” and reply by date. We tried to keep this card as simple and modern as possible, while still having all of the information that Jay and Michael will need for their event. Jay also chose to utilize our super-cute beef and fish icons for her dinner choices, which I think is pretty awesome.
Jay and Michael were so much fun to work with and I know that their New Year’s Eve wedding celebration is going to be a gorgeous night to remember! Congratulations Jay & Michael! Thanks again!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2010-11-01 15:52:422015-04-03 21:03:03Weddings | Jay & Michael
Check out these awesome business cards we printed for owner/creative director of Vespagraphics, Keith Van Norman, last Friday! Vespagraphics is a graphic design company in Eugene, Oregon that focuses predominantly on print media, so it was quite the compliment that the owner, Keith, hired me to design and print his new cards, rather than designing them himself. Keith’s company focuses on creating socially, environmentally and fiscally responsible design solutions within their own work, and he wanted to keep up this responsibility with his business cards by using an environmentally responsible (recycled, tree-free) paper and soy/linseed oil-based inks.
Keith’s cards were printed on a custom, seeded, 100% recycled, 100% cotton paper by Porridge Papers in a cream color. The paper is embedded with wildflower seeds that will actually grow! They were printed with two ink colors: chocolate brown and deep burgundy-red. Design-wise we chose to go with a more antique-looking layout, with a vintage-inspired rendition of a Vespa in the center of the card, and all of Keith’s relevant contact information thoughtfully placed around the Vespa in a slab-serif font. I really love the wood-type inspired typeface that we used for the actual business name. I’ve used this typeface on a few other projects before, and I absolutely love how crisp and classy it looks letterpress printed!
Then, to be extra-fancy and unique, rather than keeping this card a standard rectangular shape, we die-cut the cards on the letterpress into a unique and more organic shape! I find die-cutting to be a really satisfying process that can really add a lot of character to certain designs. For Keith, it was the perfect finishing touch to make his cards really unique and interesting!
Keith was an absolutely wonderful client to work with and it was so much fun getting to show him the actual process of printing his cards from start to finish! He actually came and hung out in my studio on Friday morning while I was printing his cards, just so he could check it out. It’s really fun for me when a client takes as much interest in the process of creating their cards, as well as in the outcome! If you’ve ever wanted to see more photos of my shop, Keith took quite a few while I was printing, which you can see on his flickr stream. Check them out! Also, if you’ve ever wanted to see a 1912 Chandler & Price Letterpress in action, Keith took a short video of me as I was printing and die-cutting his cards. Check it out here:
If you are interested in having new business cards designed and printed for your company, please feel free to contact me anytime! Also, if you are in, or are willing to travel to the Eugene/Springfield, Oregon area and would like to visit our studio to check out the actual printing process, you are more than welcome to do so! (Just make sure you make an appointment first).
Thanks so much Keith! You rock!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2009-11-10 11:16:002015-04-03 20:42:00Vespagraphics Business Cards
I just finished printing a set of gorgeous wedding menus for a couple who are getting married in Spain next Saturday. I’ve been working with the bride and groom that these are for for several months now and this is the final piece they are having me print for their wedding. The couple I’m speaking of are Isabel and Luis, who I printed a gorgeous set of wedding invitations for back in January. I wrote about working with Isabel and about her wedding invitations in a couple of other blog posts, which you can find here and here.
Like her other letterpress pieces, Isa designed her wedding menus herself and sent her design to me to be letterpress printed. Like her other pieces, the menus are bilingual, english and spanish and feature a gorgeous, ornate-looking, romantic design. These menus are also extremely unique in that they are 5.5″ circle shapes. In order to print these, I first printed them on a square 6″ sheet of Crane Lettra 100% cotton ecru paper in violet ink and then die-cut each one on the letterpress using a sharp, custom-made, steel 5.5″ round circle die. As, you can see from the above photo, they turned out magnificently! (Click on the photo if you’d like to see a bigger version).
I really loved Isabel’s fancy designs throughout her whole suite. Here is a close-up of some of the ornate, beautiful pattern on the top of the menu:
The design is beautiful and really shows off the letterpress detail and impression very well! These menus were rush shipped off to Spain this afternoon so that Isabel and Luis can enjoy them at their reception next weekend.
Congratulations again, Isabel and Luis! Thanks again!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2009-05-14 18:17:002015-04-03 02:05:27Just off the Press: Round Wedding Menus!
Thanks so much again for working with us Bianca! I’m sure your wedding a few weeks ago was just beautiful! If you ever need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask! Thanks again!
Aren’t they one of the loveliest couples you’ve ever seen?!? Thanks so much again Louise and Dagan for working with me last year! You two were so wonderful to work with and I hope I get to work with you again at some point in the future. All the best!
