Julian's Bar Mitzvah

In case you haven't noticed, this week I've been featuring tree-themed invitations on the blog. This wasn't totally intentional, I just happened to realize earlier this week that we've been doing a lot of tree-themed designs lately and I figured it would be a good opportunity to show them off, all together, so you could see how many different possibilities can come out of one, simple theme. The designs I've been showing off so far have been for wedding invitations and Save-the-Date cards, but we also recently printed a fabulous set of Bar Mitzvah invitations, for a young man named Julian, in the Los Angeles area.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, a Bar Mitzvah is a Jewish ceremony celebrating a boy's coming-of-age in the Jewish community. The Bar Mitzvah ceremony is typically an ordinary Sabbath service in which the boy participates for the first time as an adult. Typically a boy becomes a Bar Mitzvah at the age of 13. There is also an equivalent celebration for Jewish girls, called a Bat Mitzvah, which happens typically when the girl turns 12. Following the service there is often a celebratory meal or other type of party with family, friends and other members of the Jewish community. If you'd like to read more about Bar and Bat Mitzvahs, you can here.

Julian and his mom, Suzanne, had seen some of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations I had designed and printed, here, on this blog, and decided to contact me about designing and printing Julian's. Julian and his family wanted some sort of Tree of Life theme and imagery when it came to the invitations, but were open to having that tree image be fairly modern and more organic than other more traditional depictions. Julian also expressed to me when we talked that he liked more antique-looking typefaces, so I made sure to take that into account when coming up with his design. Julian's Bar Mitzvah invitation suite, which you can see all together at the top of this post, included an A7 size invitation, a 4bar size reply postcard and an A7 envelope.

Julian's invitation was printed on Crane Lettra 100% cotton Ecru paper in two ink colors: a very light, sagey green and chocolate brown. I created a very organic, natural, Tree of Life that surrounds the text of Julian's invite and bleeds off of both the left-hand side and top of the invitation. If you look at the detail photo below you can see all of the amazing detail that went into this tree - particularly in the leaves. It turned out so great letterpress printed! All of the text was printed in chocolate brown ink. I used a classic, serif typeface that reminded me of old wooden letterpress type for Julian's and his parent's names, and a different, classic, roman typeface for the rest of the text. Julian's family chose to include information about both the actual service at the temple that is going to happen in the morning, and information about the evening party at a downtown hotel, on the invite. Here is a close-up so you can see some of the details better:

Julian and his family chose to pair the invitation with a simple, matching, ecru, square-flap envelope, also from Crane. The envelope had their return address letterpress printed in chocolate brown ink on the back flap.

For the reply card, Julian and his family chose to do a postcard, rather than a traditional card with an envelope. This is an awesome option as it saves both money on printing, as well as paper. The reply postcard was double-sided and looked like this:

Like the main invitation envelope, we kept the back of the postcard very simple and printed just the family's address on it in brown ink.

The front of the reply postcard was very similar to the invite, and featured the Tree of Life image on the left-hand side, with text printed in chocolate ink to the right of it.

Like the reply card for a wedding, Julian's Bar Mitzvah reply card featured a line where guests could write in their names and a place to indicate whether or not they planned to attend. This particular reply also included a portion where adult guests could choose an entree selection for the party in the evening. Isn't it just great?!? I love the way this set turned out!!

Julian and his family were really fun to work with. I honestly loved getting phone calls from Julian about the designs when we were in the middle of the design process, especially because most of my clients are quite a bit older. It was especially fun to get to work with someone so young, who was so interested in having a say in how his invitations came out! If you'd like to see some more examples of Bar and Bat Mitzvah invitations I've designed and printed in the past, you can check them out on this blog here, here and here. Thanks so much again, Julian, Suzanne and Randy! You guys are awesome!!

Erin & Andrew are Getting Married!

It always amazes me how time does fly here at Twin Ravens during the early parts of spring. It seems like almost all (not all, but almost all) of our clients this time of year are having us design and print stationery for their upcoming weddings in the early spring and summer. We do have quite a few other projects in the works this time of year, including some very sweet baby announcements, an awesome set of Bar Mitzvah invitations, and several different sets of business cards and other business-related stationery, but by and large, this time of year seems to be dominated by weddings. While I truly enjoy this time of year and getting to work with so many amazing people, I must admit, it does make things very busy, which would explain my extremely inconsistent blogging. However, I do have some absolutely lovely things to show you in the next few weeks, starting with this.

Nearly a month ago we finished a really fun, yet classic set of invitations for a couple in North Carolina who are getting married at the end of April. Erin and Andrew had seen some invitations I had designed and printed previously on this blog and chose to combine/modify a couple of them to create their own unique invitation suite! Their suite included an A7 size invite with matching envelope, a 4bar size reply card envelope and a combined A7 size reply card and accommodations card that were perforated down the middle so that the reply card could be detached and mailed back. You can see all of the pieces in this suite together at the top of this post.

Erin and Andrew's wedding colors are navy blue and a light green and we chose to incorporate these into her suite with both her ink colors and her paper choices. Here is Erin and Andrew's invitation all by itself:

This invitation is an A7 size, measuring 5"x7" and has a fun, organic frame surrounding a mix of a classic serif typeface and a fun, modern script, all printed in navy blue ink. To give the invitation some additional texture, we blind embossed a series of vertical lines in the background behind the framed portion of the invitation. I love how a little bit of blind embossing can add some wonderful texture to a design, without being too overwhelming! Below are some detail images so you can see the texture of the embossing and printing better.

We had originally planned to pair this invitation with a green envelope (Erin and Andrew's other wedding color), but due to a very long backorder of the green from our supplier, we ended up going with a matching white envelope, printed with navy ink instead. Check out the cute heart detail below their address! Isn't that adorable?!?

For their reply card envelopes, we did end up using the green. This green is a light green color called "Balsam Fir" from Green Paper Company. Not only are these envelopes a fabulous green color, because they are made from 30% post-consumer waste, they are also "green" environmentally-speaking too!

For Erin and Andrew's two insert cards, we did something that I absolutely love, but have only done a few times before: we combined them. There are, in fact, two separate cards here, but they were designed and printed to be mailed as a single card (5"x7"), but perforated down the middle so that the reply card could be detached and mailed back.

As you can see in the above photo, an accommodations card that is similar in design to Erin and Andrew's wedding invitation is the top half of the joined card, and a cute, navy-blue-on-white reply card is the bottom half.

The accommodations portion of this card also featured some blind-embossing: this time diagonal lines behind our cute frame. The interior of the frame featured information about where to stay and were to find Erin & Andrew's website. If you look closely at the above photo, you can see the perforation in the card right below where the blind embossing ends. Isn't this just cool?!?

The lower portion of this card is their detachable reply card.

Erin and Andrew included a space for guests to write in their names, check-box options for the actual response and an area for guests to initial what their meal preference is for the reception. I just love this combined-card idea. It saves money for the couple on printing (by printing effectively one card instead of two) and it's a great way to keep all of the enclosure information together until the reply is ready to be sent back.

Erin and Andrew were wonderful clients and I thoroughly enjoyed working with them on this suite! Thanks so much Erin and Andrew and congratulations on your upcoming big day!

Katie & Michael are Getting Married!

Right before I left for Minnesota a couple of weeks ago, I printed this lovely set of invitations for a couple in Texas who are getting married in May. The bride, Katie, designed these invitations herself and I just love the pretty flowers and sweet, whimsical grey hummingbird at the bottom. This suite includes a #10 size invitation, letterpress printed in two colors on Crane Lettra Pearl White paper, a #10 invitation envelope from Waste Not Paper Company in gravel grey and a 4bar size postcard that was digitally printed on a matching flat stock also from Waste Not Paper. At the top of this post you can see the whole suite together and below are photos of each of the pieces in detail.

Here is Katie's invitation by itself. She chose a really nice, light green ink for her floral details and names and a medium grey ink to match her envelopes for the rest of the text and for her hummingbird. I just love how whimsical and sweet this design is! Below are some detail photos so you can see the ink colors, fonts and letterpress impression a little better.

The reply postcards that went with these were a little bit simpler - no flowers or birdies, but the same great fonts Katie used were carried throughout. In order to save some money on printing, we chose to have this card printed digitally on a white card stock from Waste Not Paper that was a near-match to the 100% cotton stock we used for the invitation. Here it is below, front and back:

And, last but not least, come the envelopes. For her invitation envelopes, Katie chose a #10 size, long, skinny, grey envelope from Waste Not Paper. We printed her return address on the flap of it in a slightly darker grey than the invitation and envelope color.

Pretty sweet, don't you think?!? Working with Katie was a pleasure and I hope that their wedding this May is just as wonderful as their invitations! Thanks so much and congratulations Katie & Michael!

Fabulous Eco-Friendly Business Cards for Trees Creation & Happy Grow Lucky

A few months ago I created a couple of lovely sets of business cards for a wonderful client and good friend, Teresa Ennis. Teresa is a business owner two-times-over, and wanted brand new, totally awesome business cards for both of her businesses. Both of her businesses are somewhat nature-oriented in one way or another and we wanted to really express that in her branding and in the design and execution of her cards. Here is what we came up with:

The first of Teresa's businesses is called Happy Grow Lucky, a local landscaping business she runs here in Eugene. I loved her business name as well as her tag line: "Dig Deep, Reach High!". For the design of this card we used a gorgeous tree image that has tons of roots spreading out across the bottom of the card. The trunk and branches of the tree twist around moving up the card vertically and accent the shape of the logo I created for her. The tree was printed in a very pale green and all of the typography on this card was printed in a darker evergreen color. These cards were printed on a custom seeded cream paper from Porridge Papers that will actually grow wildflowers if the paper gets wet. How cool is that?!?

I'm pretty proud of this design: it's perfect for Teresa's business and the whole concept really just kicks ass.

Besides having tons of talent for landscape design and making things grow happily, Teresa is also a talented artist. She creates everything from hand-bound books and journals, to jewelry, to found object art pieces. Her shop, Trees Creation, is up and running over on etsy. Go check it out by clicking here. Teresa's Trees Creation cards were also printed on cream colored Porridge Paper with wildflower seeds, this time in three ink colors: chocolate brown, green and plum purple. We continued the tree theme for this card, but created a different tree image and used some different fonts. Check it out:

Aren't they pretty? I just love how we can take the tree theme and create two business cards that are totally different, with a lot of the same elements. Below are a few detail photos of the Trees Creation cards so you can see the letterpress impression, ink colors, fonts and the details of the lovely Porridge Paper a little bit better.

Make sure to go and check out Teresa's etsy shop, and if you're in need of any landscaping in Eugene, give her a call at Happy Grow Lucky. Thanks so much Teresa! You are awesome!

Love is Sweet: Leia & Tyler are Married (continued)!

(Photo Courtesy of Emily G Photography)

Last weekend I posted some pictures of one of my favorite stationery suites that was created for one of my favorite couples from 2009, Leia & Tyler. Not too long after their wedding, Tyler sent me a link to some of the photos from their special day. They gave me permission to share them with you here, and I am stoked to do so! I'm also excited to show you the awesome favor boxes I letterpress printed for their wedding, as well as their thank you cards that we printed just last month.

Let's start with the photos though! Leia & Tyler's photographer was the fabulous Emily of Emily G Photography in Portland, Oregon. I don't know Emily personally, but I do enjoy reading her blog, and ironically enough, she was the photographer for another friend's wedding, who I did stationery for, that was held the weekend before Leia & Tyler's wedding. If you'd like to see that couple's stationery (Emily & Stephen), as well as photos from their wedding taken by Emily G, check it out in my earlier post here.

I love the photos that were taken of Leia, Tyler and their ceremony on the beach! It was such a gorgeous, sunny day too for an Oregon wedding in October! They were really lucky!

I love Leia's green shoes in the foreground in this photo - so cute!!

Aren't they just an adorable, couple?!? And, here are a couple of photos of a few details from their reception:

(All wedding photos above courtesy of Emily G Photography)

See that last photo of all of the brown and light green boxes? Twin Ravens Press totally made those. These were kind of a last-minute project that we did the week before Leia & Tyler's wedding. You see, there is this great little chocolate shop in Eugene called Euphoria, and for their wedding favors, Leia & Tyler had gotten some really tasty little confections for their guests. They hadn't figured out yet though, how to package or display them at the wedding. Leia and Tyler contacted me to help them out with this last little detail. To package their chocolates as favors for their guests, we created a set of paper pillow boxes with a paper band around them, letterpress printed with Leia & Tyler's names, wedding date, and the phrase "Love is Sweet". The chocolate brown boxes were from Waste Not Paper Company, and measured approximately 6.25" x 4.125" x 1.625". Since we did this project on such short notice, you might notice that the font we used for it is a little different than the one we used for their invitations. Because we didn't have time to have a new printing plate made, I used antique metal type for the wording on their favor boxes and we cut one of the trees from one of their other printing plates out and combined it with the antique type to create the design. Pretty neat, don't you think?!? Here is what the boxes looked like flat:

And above is what they looked like folded up, with chocolate inside. Pretty sweet favors, if I do say so myself.

Then, just last month, I had the pleasure of working with Leia & Tyler again to create some custom thank you cards. Before I met Leia & Tyler they had created a set of Save-the-Date postcards themselves using photographs they had made of each other spelling out the words "Save the Date" on the front, and a photo of their two dogs, Vigo & Turbo, with signs that had their wedding date on them, and other information on the back. I don't have one of the actual cards they sent, but here is a screen shot of the Save-the-Date design.

For their thank you cards, Leia and Tyler wanted to return to the idea of using their dogs for some sort of cute, quirky, thank you image. Here is what we came up with:

Leia & Tyler's thank you's are an A2 size card, printed on Crane Lettra pearl white 100% cotton paper, with matching Crane Lettra square flap envelopes. For the design, I created a stylized, cute, cartoony image of Turbo and Vigo for the front, with signs around their necks, just like Leia & Tyler's Save-the-Dates, only this time, the signs read "Thank You", instead of the date.

Coming up with this image was really a collaboration between Tyler and I, to make sure that the eye spots and facial expressions came out just right. The words "Thank You" are also in Tyler's handwriting, just like the handwriting details from the directions card in he and Leia's invitation suite. Aren't these thank you's just adorable?!?

For the envelopes, we kept things nice and simple, and just went with a matching white envelope, and printed Leia & Tyler's return address on the flap in Turbo's eye-spot-color-tan.

Leia & Tyler were fabulous, super-fun clients and have become great friends. I can't wait to see what other non-wedding-related, awesome design/printing projects we come up with together in the future. Thanks so much Leia & Tyler. You rock my socks!

Leia & Tyler are Married!

Happy Valentines weekend, folks! I'm so sorry that I was a bad, well at least, absentee blogger this past week. Needless to say, with the spring wedding season picking up, and my near-total liberation from crutches this week, it's been a little busy around here. To make up for my absence from the virtual world this past week, I'd like to share with you some stationery for one of my favorite weddings from this past fall. As I've said before, I get to work with a lot of really creative, wonderful and awesome people throughout the year, but every now and again I get to work with a couple, family or individual who is just all-out fantastic. Leia and Tyler were one such couple.

Leia & Tyler were married this past October in Cannon Beach, Oregon. Cannon Beach is a pretty, little, Pacific-coast town, just west of Portland, with gorgeous beaches and a very notable natural landmark: Haystack Rock. When Leia, Tyler and I first met, they weren't sure what they wanted to do for their invitations, but after looking at several examples from past clients, both were drawn to this invitation that I printed for a Portland, Oregon couple, just a few months before. Tyler said he liked it because the invitation looked like a ticket to the wedding, which, if you think about it, really is what a wedding invitation is. Both Tyler and Leia also loved the fact that the invitation I linked to above featured a stylized, yet, photo-realistic image of the Cascade mountains. We figured we could incorporate this same idea, but into something that was more Cannon Beach-y.

Leia and Tyler's invitation suite is featured all together in the photo above. The suite included a monarch size (3.75"x7.25") wedding invitation and corresponding light green envelope, a monarch size map/directions card, a 4bar size reply card, with corresponding evergreen-colored envelope and a 3.5" coaster rehearsal dinner invitation. Here is the invitation by itself:

Leia & Tyler loved the style of the invitation from the suite I linked to above so much that we decided to go with pretty much the same idea for their invitation, with a few modifications to make it their own. Tyler and Leia sent me several photos of Cannon Beach to create a background for their invitation from and the one you see above, letterpress printed in a very light green ink, with Haystack Rock in the upper right and the beach and ocean stretching out in the foreground, is the image we chose. I love how realistic, yet very flat and stylistic, using a photo like this looks letterpress printed. We basically flattened the photograph out until it was only two colors, with the details of the beach dropping away in the front and the silhouette of Haystack Rock and other details left in the background. The light green part of the invitation that was printed was pressed down (de-bossed) slightly, from the letterpress process, which caused the white areas (Haystack Rock and other details) to become slightly raised. Check it out:

The texture of this, was totally awesome! To complete the design, we utilized a darker green ink for the evergreen tree on the right hand side of the design, as well as for Leia & Tyler's names, and a chocolate brown ink for the rest of the text.

This invitation was paired with a light green, 30% Post-consumer recycled envelope from Green Paper Company that had their return address letterpress printed on the flap.

Leia & Tyler's reply card was a 4bar size (measuring 3.5"x4.875") and was printed in one ink color: the darker of the two greens from their invitation. Layout-wise, we continued with a very similar style from their invitation. I used the same serif-typeface and we re-used the evergreen tree on the left-hand side.

Leia and Tyler were holding a welcome picnic in Ecola State Park the day before their wedding, so they included options on their reply card for people to indicate which event(s) they planned to attend. This card was paired with a darker green 100% post-consumer recycled envelope, also from Green Paper Company, and had Leia's parent's address printed on the front in chocolate brown ink.

Leia and Tyler's directions card was also printed in a single ink color: chocolate brown and was a monarch shape, just like their invitation.

The directions card featured directions from the Portland airport to Cannon Beach, as well as information about their picnic and accommodations. When I showed Leia and Tyler samples of other invitations I had done in the past, both really liked the hand drawn maps that we had done for several of our invitation suites. For this card, Tyler hand drew the map himself, and let me tell you: it turned out adorable.

I love how Tyler incorporated several cute little drawings of Cannon Beach landmarks into his map. Some of these included Haystack rock, a wooden fisherman that is outside one of the hotels, a puffin (apparently there are a lot of puffin statues and images in Cannon Beach) and a heart on the beach where their ceremony was to take place. Pretty adorable, if I do say so myself.

Last, but certainly not least, was a rehearsal dinner invitation. Leia and Tyler wanted to do something fun and unique for their rehearsal dinner invite and for this, we chose to do a coaster. (Yes, an actual coaster!)

These coasters are 3.5" round, thick coaster stock and were printed with the green tree motif once again, and Leia & Tyler's rehearsal dinner invitation information in chocolate brown ink. I love how we made the text wrap around the shape of the coaster and I love how unique and original this is. I've done coasters for Save-the-Date cards and as actual coasters to put drinks on for receptions before, but this was my first coaster-reheasal-dinner-invitation. Pretty cool, don't you think?!?

Since doing their invitations, Leia and Tyler and I have become pretty good friends. Tyler is an architect and helped me with some minor house problems over the summer, and has also been helping me a bit in my shop since I broke my leg this past January. Both he and Leia are just really cool people, all around. I've done some other work for them since their invitations, including some favors for their wedding, and thank you cards just recently, which I will show off in my next post. Leia and Tyler also sent me several photos from their wedding, that I will show off here too! Check back soon!

Thanks so much Leia & Tyler. You guys are awesome!