Elias' Bar Mitzvah

At Twin Ravens Press, I print a lot of wedding invitations, which is a lot of fun, but did you know that we also print invitations for other events as well? Besides weddings, we can design and print invitations for Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, graduation parties, bridal showers, baby showers, anniversary parties, fancy corporate parties and events, etc. You name it, we can probably do it! The stationery you are going to see in this post was created for a wonderful Eugene, Oregon family that I've done work for before. Their youngest son, Elias is having his Bar Mitzvah on January 16th, and these are the invitations they are sending out for it.

For those who don't know, a Bar or Bat Mitzvah (Bar for boys and Bat for girls) is a Jewish ceremony celebrating a boy or girl coming of age in the Jewish community. The Bar or Bat Mitzvah ceremony is typically an ordinary Sabbath service in which the boy or girl participates for the first time as an adult. Typically a boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13 and girls become Bat Mitzvahs at the age of 12. Following the service there is often a celebratory meal or other type of party with the family, friends and members of the Jewish community. If you'd like to read more about Bar & Bat Mitzvahs, you can here.

I actually did Elias' older sister Dahlia's Bat Mitzvah invitations about a year ago, and a good friend of theirs' Bar Mitzvah invitations earlier this year. You can check out Dahlia's invites here and the friend, Ari's invitations and other paper goods here. For Dahlia's invitations we did a fairly simple design involving an A7 size invitation with a perforated reply postcard and envelopes. For Elias' invitations, their mom, Cheryl, wanted us to print a design that didn't require envelopes, so this is what we came up with:

The invitations are long: about 15 inches long, to be exact, and 5.5 inches wide. They are either perforated or scored in three different places, so that when the invite is folded up it is the size of a standard A2 size card (4.25"x5.5"). The front side includes the standard invitation information on the top 2/3 and the bottom 1/3 of the front is a perforated reply postcard that the recipient can detach and mail back. The backside of the design has the back side of the postcard printed on the lower section and there is printing on a small section at the very top that has the Henderson's return address. When the whole thing is folded up, it looks like this:

Pretty cool, don't you think?!? I think that when they're folded up they almost look like an envelope, even though they are the actual invitation. These were sealed shut with 1" circular clear stickers that can be found at any office supply store. What's great about doing something like this is that you are saving money on having envelopes printed and you're saving a lot of paper! Postage for something like this is the same as a regular envelope ($0.44 if you're in the U.S.), so you aren't spending any extra on postage either!

You can see one close detail of the actual invitation portion at the top of this post and here is another:

I love the green and brown color combination that Cheryl and Elias chose and I love the tree leaves and branch pattern that they decided to use! These cards were printed on Crane Lettra 100% cotton paper in Ecru. Here are the front and back sides of the reply postcard portion of the invitation:

As I mentioned above, this card is perforated at the top so that guests can easily separate it from the rest of the invitation, fill it out and mail it back. Pretty neat design, don't you think?!?

If you'd like more information about custom Bar & Bat Mitzvah invitations or any of our other custom work, feel free to contact me at twinravenspress@gmail.com.