Wedding Sneak Peek

I'm very excited about a rather large wedding invitation order that I've been working on printing this past week.  The wedding colors are deep plum and white and I've already printed the invitations, reply cards, outer invitation envelopes and reply card envelopes.  Those four pieces, as well as the unprinted inner invitation envelopes are on our house paper, Crane Lettra in Pearl White, printed with deep plum colored ink.  This wedding set also includes a reception card, menus and programs.  The reception card, menus and programs are being printed in a cream (almost white) colored ink on a custom made deep plum colored paper.  I just finished the reception cards and boy do they look cool!  Check them out above and below: 

Pretty fancy, unique and awesome, don't you think?  (The photos were taken in the shop, which explains the uneven lighting and the press and other accoutrements in the background).  

The custom paper was made by Porridge Papers in Lincoln, Nebraska.  If you are unfamiliar with Porridge, they are a small batch custom paper-making studio.  All of their paper is made to order and they have some really fun options, like custom colors (just about any color you could want), scented papers, sparkly papers and plantable papers with growable seeds embedded in them. If you have the budget for it, having custom paper made is definitely a wonderful option for your wedding invitations or other special event.  We are also printing the menus and programs for this suite on this same plum colored paper.   Watch out for those and the rest of this suite in a later post!  

Classic & Elegant: Kiely & Scott are Getting Married!

Right before I left for Japan there were three different sets of wedding invitations for three different clients that I finished and sent off.  Because I had finished them right before I went out of town, I didn't have time to post about them here before I left.  So, while I get caught up on upcoming custom printing and design jobs and get the *new* Twin Ravens Press Christmas and holiday cards ready for December, check out this beautiful wedding set for a couple in Virginia.  

Kiely & Scott were fabulous clients who wanted a simple, but truly elegant look for their wedding invitations in the form of classic, beautiful typography.  Their desired "look" for their invitations struck a soft spot in my heart because when I first began learning about letterpress printing, the only thing I printed for quite some time were designs made up entirely of typography from antique metal type. While I enjoy designing invitations and cards with multiple colors and a variety of graphical elements, I really enjoyed designing and printing Kiely & Scott's wedding set because it brought me back to my original graphic design/letterpress printing roots.  

Check out the beautiful typography on the invitation.  Kiely & Scott's invitation is a horizontal A7 size invite with two classic typefaces: the script is called "Mozart" and the serif face is "Engravers".  Check out the completed invitation and a close-up of the typography below: 

Pretty, don't you think?  The entire set was printed in black ink on Crane's 100% cotton Lettra paper in Pearl White, which gave the typography a crisp, beautiful impression that you can see and feel.  Also included in their invitation set is a response card with envelope and a separate, smaller reception card utilizing the same gorgeous typefaces.  Check out the close-up pictures of those below:

The last part of the suite that I haven't mentioned yet is their invitation envelopes.  Kiely & Scott's wedding colors are evergreen and navy blue.  When we originally talked, Kiely wanted to somehow incorporate at least one of her wedding colors into the invitation suite, but still retain the rich, elegant, classic look of black letterpress typography on white cotton paper.  The best way we could come up with to do this was with a colored invitation envelope liner.  Kiely picked out a beautiful and unique navy blue paper for her liners which you can see in the photo at the beginning of this post.  It's hard to see from the photo, but the paper she chose looks more like a semi-shiny, woven, mildly-textured fabric than paper (but it is paper!).  I think that using this paper for the envelope liners was a really nice way to add a splash of color to the wedding set without being too overwhelming and distracting from the other gorgeous paper, printing and typography.  Mmm... classic typography, how I love thee so...

Espresso Colored Calling Cards

I finished up a unique little calling card job on Thursday right before I went out of town to Portland.  The client already had the design, so this was a quick, just-print-it, sort of job.  What made it unique though was that I got to try out a new paper stock.  These calling cards are printed on Crane's Palette Espresso Brown Cover Stock.  This paper is 100% cotton like a lot of the other papers I use, 134 lb. and very, very stiff... but it's brown, which is cool.  I was trying to match a very light, creamy, off-white for the ink.  The off-white ink almost looks slightly silver on the brown paper, but I really like how the color turned out.  I really like them because they're so different.  Let me know what you think!