This past December, a lovely couple we worked with in Australia were married in Kew, Victoria. Vivian and Allen designed their wedding invitations themselves and hired Twin Ravens Press to do their letterpress printing! Vivian and Allen’s stationery suite included an A7 size wedding invitation and a small gifts insert that were enclosed in an unprinted A7 invitation envelope from Crane & Co. All of Vivian and Allen’s stationery was printed in one ink color: a gorgeous, deep, dusty-rose pink on 100% cotton Crane Lettra Pearl White paper.
Below on the left is their invitation by itself. I love the combination of classic roman type with the large calligraphic script they chose for their names. The lovely rose graphic that Allen created is a gorgeous motif for a wedding invitation, and it letterpress printed beautifully! In the photo on the bottom right you can see their gifts insert. In Australia, enclosing a card like this is fairly common, as many couples don’t do a registry, but do a wishing well instead. I love how simple and pretty this suite turned out!
Allen and Vivian – thanks so much for working with us last year on these! I just love all of our Australian clients – it’s so much fun to work with you, even though you’re over 8,000 miles away! If you ever need anything else, please don’t hesitate to let me know. Congratulations!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Vivian1.jpg713892Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2012-04-18 00:05:022015-04-03 21:25:12Weddings | Vivian & Allen
Last month we completed a lovely set of wedding invitations for a Chicago couple who are getting married this May in Cape Cod. Caitlin and Matt hired us to design and letterpress print their gorgeous single-color invitation suite. The suite included an inner/outer set of invitation envelopes. The inner envelope was lined with a pretty green paper that was embossed with a lovely floral-vine pattern. The stationery suite also included an A7 size wedding invitation, an A2 size events card, a 4bar size reply card with coordinating reply card envelope and a matching belly band to tie everything together.
If you were to have received one of their invitations, the first thing you would have noticed was the beautiful calligraphy on the front of her envelopes. Caitlin hired a Chicago calligrapher to match the script type we used throughout the suite for her guest addressing. You can see the letterpress printed script on her outer envelope flap below. In the photo on the right you can see both the outer invitation envelope and the inner one with the invitation tucked inside. I love the pretty green embossed paper Caitlin picked out for the envelope liners! The texture and color of it was just lovely!
When you remove the invitations from their inner envelope, the pretty bundle you see above is what you would see. All of the pieces in Caitlin and Matt’s invitation suite were stacked in order of size and then wrapped and held together with a custom, letterpress printed belly band. The belly band featured playful curly lines along the band and a round medallion featuring their names, wedding date and a bucket of hydrangeas graphic in the center. This central medallion was matted onto a slightly larger circle of the same green embossed paper we used for the envelope liners to tie everything together.
Caitlin and Matt’s wedding invitation is both classic and modern at the same time. The layout is fairly simple and traditional, featuring a small graphic at the top of the design with the main body of text in a classic roman font below it. The styling of the names is in a more contemporary, all lower-case script, and is featured prominently throughout the design. I love the adorable hydrangea graphic we came up with and used throughout the suite! Caitlin kept buckets of hydrangeas in her bedroom at her parent’s house, and we found these to be the perfect floral, but not too-busy, graphic for their invitations.
Caitlin and Matt’s 4bar size reply card was designed to match their invitations using the same fonts and ink colors. These reply cards were paired with a matching white reply card envelope printed with their return address in the same sage green ink. All of Caitlin and Matt’s stationery was printed on 110 lb. Crane Lettra 100% cotton paper in Pearl White.
Caitlin and Matt also included a separate events card with their invitations. This card was an A2 size and featured information about the other events they are having in conjunction with the wedding. We created tiny icons to represent each event. These events include a clambake rehearsal dinner, a Sunday morning brunch and a sunset beach bonfire the night after the wedding. It sounds like it’s going to be a fantastic weekend!
Above is one more shot of the belly band by itself so that you can see athe beautiful textures from both of the different papers and the letterpress printing. I just love how this piece tied all of the other pieces together!
We’re currently working on a matching set of place cards and favor tags for Caitlin and Matt and I just love how they’re turning out!
Caitlin and Matt – you’ve been so much fun to work with! Thanks so much for hiring us to create these with you! Talk to you soon! : )
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Caitlin1.jpg958892Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2012-04-17 11:12:082015-04-03 21:25:19Weddings | Caitlin & Matt
I can’t believe it’s been nearly 3 weeks since my last post. Sheesh! It’s been busy, but in an awesome sort of way. We’ve gotten to work on so many cool projects in the last few weeks, I don’t even know where to start.
Last week we finished the awesome 3-color invitation you see above for Anna and Matthew. Anna and Matt are getting married at the end of June in Pennsylvania, and I couldn’t help but show off this invitation, because it’s just so pretty. I love it when couples incorporate bright, cheery colors into their designs (plus, I just really love orange).
Anna and Matt designed their invitation themselves based off of the design we printed for Weddingbee’s Mrs. Panther last year. You can see Stephanie’s invitations here. Anna changed up the fonts and colors for her design, but kept the layout fairly similar. As you can see below, the invitations were letterpress printed on heavyweight 100% cotton duplex paper in three ink colors: two shades of orange and a lovely light blue.
The letterpress impression on these turned out totally awesome!!
As a gorgeous finishing touch, Anna and Matt had us edge-paint their invitations in a similar light blue to the blue we used to print their names. This is a gorgeous finishing touch and really adds to the beauty and uniqueness of their invitations!
Again, that color combination just makes me smile. It really feels like summer might be around the corner when we get to print invitations like these!
Thanks so much for working with us Anna & Matt! If you ever need anything else, please don’t hesitate to let me know!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/Anna1.jpg595892Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2012-03-22 17:27:042015-04-03 21:26:35Weddings | Anna & Matthew
The gorgeous couple you see above almost needs no introduction. If you are a reader of WeddingBee, you’ve probably already met the bride, Stephanie. She’s Mrs. Panther! I had the pleasure of working with her and her now-husband, Brad, last year on some really awesome floral wedding invitations and I’m excited to finally be showing them off! Check ’em out:
Stephanie created her own invitation design and hired us to letterpress print it! The letterpress parts of the suite were an A7 invitation printed in two ink colors with a corresponding A7 envelope and smaller, 4bar RSVP envelope.
The A7 invite features an awesome, violet, floral design on both the back and front. The typography was a fun mix of modern san-serifs and scripts printed in a light, but bright blue and violet within a modern violet frame.
I love how bold and non-traditional Stephanie and Brad’s colors were, and I also love how she was able to incorporate classic, traditional elements, like flowers and scripts, into the design, as well as bold colors and modern typefaces. It’s not something you see done very often and when it’s done this well, it looks just awesome!!
Something else that was totally cool about these invites was the bright teal edge-painting on the invitations. All of Steph and Brad’s invites were edge painted with a shimmery teal-green paint that really added some extra pizazz to each one! Check out that awesome pop-of-color more closely in the images below!
Twin Ravens Press also printed some lovely envelopes for Stephanie & Brad’s suite. Both the invitation and rsvp envelopes were a dark, shimmery blue paper printed with gold ink. The calligraphy for the fronts of all the invitation envelopes as well as the letterpress return address on the back, was created by Michele Clark of Calligraphy by Michele. Michele’s awesome! We’ve worked on several different projects together over the years and her work is always beautiful!
If you’d like to see the other pieces from Stephanie’s suite, how the whole thing came together, more gorgeous calligraphy from Michele, and read what the bride herself had to say about these, and working with us, you can totally read her posts about them here and here on WeddingBee.
I loved working with Stephanie and it’s been really fun to check in from time to time on her blog to see what other fun wedding goodness she incorporated into her big day! Thanks so much again Stephanie! If you ever need anything, just let me know!
Right around this time last year we worked with one of my favorite East Coast designers, Katie M. and a good friend of her’s on a beautiful charcoal grey and pink set of wedding invitations featuring Lilies of the Valley. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll remember Katie. We’ve worked with her several times before. The first job we ever printed for her was her wedding invitations back in 2009, and I just love all of the projects we’ve worked together on since. I was super-stoked to print Katie’s, friend Kathryn’s invitations last year that you see above. The invitation suite featured an A7 size wedding invitation and 4bar size RSVP card printed in grey ink on Holyoke 100% cotton rag paper. The RSVP envelopes are a lovely shade of pink from Paper Presentation and the outer envelopes are a matching white European style envelope from Waste Not Paper Company.
Check out the gorgeous letterpress impression in Katie’s Lily of the Valley floral design and in the typography! I just love how the letterpress printing looks on our cotton rag paper!
I love how everything that Katie M. designs coordinates so well with all of her other pieces, without being too matchy-matchy.
We actually worked with Katie and her mom just before the holidays this year on a really sweet set of greeting cards that will be up on this blog shortly. If you are interested in working with Katie on the graphic design for your upcoming wedding, branding or other graphic design project, check out her design studio and feel free to contact her! You’ll be very glad you did!
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!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2011-03-07 13:39:212015-04-03 20:58:07Custom Business Cards | Steel Bloom Flowers
I hope everyone out there had a very Happy Valentine’s Day yesterday! The weather outside today is decidedly wintery and cold, so I wanted to show off to you a lovely, much warmer, and cheerier, set of wedding invitations that I finished printing for local couple, Heidi & Derek, last week. You may remember Heidi & Derek’s matching Save-the-Date cards from a few months back that I posted here. If not, go check them out, they’re really pretty too!
Heidi and Derek’s wedding invitation suite, which you can see in the photo above, is comprised of an A7 size wedding invitation, a 4bar size reply card, and two sets of corresponding envelopes. Both the invite and reply card were printed in three ink colors on Holyoke 100% cotton rag Bone White paper. Both sets of envelopes were a bright, cheerful yellow color from Green Paper Company and both sets were printed with the couple’s return addresses in blue ink.
Heidi and Derek’s invitations were designed to match their save-the-dates and feature lovely clusters of blue and yellow flowers with green stems and vines all along the bottom of the invitation. All of the text was printed in blue. I love the quote that Heidi had me put at the top of the invitation! It’s so sweet! For the quote, their names, and “Reception to follow”, I used a decorative, but modern, script font, and for the other text, we used a modern san-serif typeface. Don’t these look great?!?
In the bottom right photo of the group of three above you can see a close-up of the blue return address on their yellow invite envelopes. I just love this color! I think that it’s great that Heidi and Derek went with yellow envelopes since we used yellow ink so sparingly on the actual invite design. It’s a great match!
Above are Heidi & Derek’s reply card and matching envelope. As you can see, we used the same lovely blue and yellow flowers as a motif for this piece as we did for the invite, so that everything would match. All of the text is in blue again and I love the line they have for “Number attending (kids too!)”. I just thought that was a really cute way to let their guests know that yes, kids are welcome. I just love the look of all of the little blue blossoms with their yellow centers and the combination of these with the yellow envelopes! They’re too cute!
Thanks so much again Heidi & Derek for working with me on these! I love how they turned out and I’m so glad that you do too! If you need anything else, just let me know! All the best!
Last summer we created a lovely green and grey set of wedding invitations for an east-coast couple who were married in Massachusetts last September. Micah and Jenn were one of my favorite couples from last year, and their invitation suite was rather impressive, so I wanted to take the opportunity today to show it off to you! In the above photo you can see the main components of their invitation suite. It included an A7 size wedding invitation, an A2 size accommodations card, rehearsal dinner invitation, celebration card and reply card and envelope. The main invite envelopes were hand-lined with an awesome, floral screen printed paper and we later created matching wedding programs for them as well!
Below are Micah and Jenn’s wedding invitation and invitation envelope by themselves. For the invitation, we created a lovely flourish to adorn the top of the card and then all of the text was in custom calligraphy by Fran Heider of Little Flower Calligraphy. In order to do this, Micah and Jenn hired Fran and worked with her to get the calligraphy elements just how they wanted them, then Fran sent us scans of all of the calligraphy, and we turned it into vector images, scaled it down to size and arranged it in the layout of the invitation. Using calligraphy within the design of your invitations creates a really beautiful effect and it ensures that your design will be entirely unique from any other design out there.
For the invitation envelope, we found a lovely screen printed floral patterned paper that we die-cut into envelope liners and then lined each envelope by hand. I love how the olive background color on the paper really coordinated with the green ink we used on the invitation, and I think the black and gold, modern, floral pattern is just gorgeous!
Isn’t Fran’s calligraphy beautiful?!? Before hiring us to do this design, Micah and Jenn discovered us from a previous design that was nearly identical, also using Fran’s calligraphy, that we had featured on this website about six months before. If you’d like to check out that design, you can here. We kept the flap of their invitation envelopes simple, and printed their return address in a roman typeface, centered on the back flap, in grey ink.
Micah and Jenn’s celebration was going to last the entire weekend, so they had us design and print a separate card featuring the events that were on different days from the actual wedding ceremony. They had a get-together with s’mores and beverages on the Friday evening before the wedding, and a post-wedding brunch the Sunday after. For this card, we incorporated more of Fran’s calligraphy for the dates and the “Celebrate with us” phrase, and we incorporated the green flourish design into the border of the card!
As you can see in the images below, we also created a matching rehearsal dinner invitation (for a Southern Barbecue Rehearsal Dinner – awesome!) and a separate Accommodations card for Micah and Jenn. Each card was a little bit different, but all of them featured both the green and grey inks, flourishing, calligraphy, and some roman type to balance everything out. I love how much variety we were able to achieve with one simple graphic and a couple of ink colors!
Several months after their invitations had been sent out, Micah and Jenn contacted me again to create a matching ceremony program for their wedding. This program was a booklet style that featured a letterpress printed cover and a digitally printed interior page. The cover was printed using Fran’s calligraphy in grey ink for their names and wedding date, and a bunch of green flourishes to match their other paper goods. The interior page was a single sheet of paper folded in half to create four booklet pages. The first page had information about all of the people in Micah and Jenn’s wedding party. The two middle pages featured information on the different Jewish wedding traditions that Micah and Jenn were incorporating into their ceremony, and the last page had a thank you note from the couple to their guests, and a list of family members who were no longer with them, but who they wanted to acknowledge on their special day. These programs measured 5″x7″ folded, and were tied together with a piece of green ribbon that was threaded through two holes in each page. This is a simple, elegant, and fairly inexpensive way to create a booklet-style program for your wedding!
One of the best things about working with Micah and Jenn was getting to work with other members of their family too! Micah’s mom, Beverly, contacted me a couple of weeks before the wedding and had me create another invitation, in the same style as Micah and Jenn’s invite, but in different colors, for a celebratory brunch that she would be throwing for the newlyweds back in New Jersey a few weeks after the wedding. This invite was a simple A7 size card printed in two ink colors and was paired with coordinating blue envelopes from Green Paper Company.
I loved working with Micah, Jenn and Beverly last year and I think that all of their paper goods turned out so beautifully! Thanks so much again Micah, Jenn and Bev! If you ever need anything else, please don’t hesitate to ask! All the best!
The day before yesterday, I finished I really pretty set of Save-the-Dates for local couple, Erin and Adam. I’ve known Erin for quite some time, and, although we’ve never been the best of friends, I was still pretty excited when she asked me to do her Save-the-Dates and wedding invitations on her friend Heidi’s recommendation. Erin and Adam’s Save-the-Dates are an A6 size card printed in three ink colors: a light spring green, pink and orange. They were printed on 100% cotton rag Holyoke paper in Antique White, and were then matted on to a larger, Jackpine Green, A6 card from Green Paper Company, to give them a 1/4″ green border all the way around. These Save-the-Dates were then paired with an orange envelope, also from Green Paper Company, that had the couple’s address letterpress printed on the back flap in pink.
For this design, Erin knew that she wanted Gerber Daisies to be the main decorative element. They are her favorite flower and she’s planning on having them at the wedding. Plus, they come in lots of gorgeous colors, which allowed us to incorporate lots of colors into her printing. I created two Gerber Daisies, one in pink and one in orange, on the left side of the card and then we laid out the text in a classic roman typeface to the right of the flowers in all three ink colors (pink, orange and green). I really love how the matting on this save-the-date really frames everything well and adds another shade of green to the piece.
In the above grouping of photos you can see the gorgeous letterpress impression of the daisies on the Holyoke paper and you can get a better look at the decoration on their envelopes. We’re also working with Erin & Adam on their main invitation suite, and I’m super-excited to begin designing it. If you like how these turned out, check back in a couple of months to see the rest of their paper goods. Thanks so much Erin & Adam! Talk to you soon!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2011-01-21 16:29:422015-04-03 20:59:19Save the Date | Erin & Adam are Getting Married!
Happy New Year everyone! I wanted to start the new year off by showing off some lovely business cards that we printed a few weeks ago for a client in California who is starting up her own floral design business, The Proper Poppy. Click on the link and check out the photos in Jennifer’s portfolio – they are stunning!
Jennifer’s cards are double-sided and were printed in a single ink color: a nice medium grey, on ultra-thick, Crane Lettra Pearl White 100% cotton duplex paper. One side of the cards features The Proper Poppy’s logo and the other features some fun, thick, vertical, blind embossed stripes surrounding Jennifer’s name and contact information. To give these cards a more “finished” look we die-cut them with rounded corners.
I just love how sweet and simple Jennifer’s logo is! It looks so professional on that all-white background! These cards were designed for Jennifer by graphic designer, Liz Grant. We’ve worked with Liz on a few different projects in the past including wedding invitations for local couple, Anna and Zane, and on Jennifer’s holiday cards early last month. Liz is a terrific designer and we just love printing her work!
I just love the back side of this card! The blind embossed stripes do a lovely job of framing the typography for Jennifer’s name and contact information and really create a lovely texture! We’re going to be working with Jennifer and Liz on more stationery items for The Proper Poppy in the coming year, so if you love these cards, keep your eye out for the other pieces on this blog in the next few months! Thanks so much Jennifer and Liz! Talk to you both soon!
https://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.png00Kristinhttps://twinravenspress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/NewRavensLogoForMatt.pngKristin2011-01-03 11:44:592015-04-03 21:00:05Custom Business Cards | The Proper Poppy
Right around this time last year we worked with one of my favorite East Coast designers, Katie M. and a good friend of her’s on a beautiful charcoal grey and pink set of wedding invitations featuring Lilies of the Valley. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ll remember Katie. We’ve worked with her several times before. The first job we ever printed for her was 
I love how everything that Katie M. designs coordinates so well with all of her other pieces, without being too matchy-matchy.
