Tara & Jeremy are Married!

Last summer I had the pleasure of creating a wedding invitation suite for a lovely couple in Virginia who were married in late September of last year in Bel Air, Maryland. The bride, Tara, had seen this invitation suite that I printed for another couple earlier that year, and wanted to do something similar, but different, for her own invitation suite. Tara and Jeremy's suite featured an A7 size wedding invitation, a 4bar size reply card and coordinating envelopes for both pieces. You can see all four items in the suite in the photo above.

Tara and Jeremy's invitation was printed in one ink color: a nice reddish-purple that was mixed to coordinate with an invitation matt the we created to frame their invitation. The actual invite itself was printed on Crane Lettra Pearl White 100% cotton paper to create a really beautiful texture and impression. Check out the close-up:

For the design we created a simple, yet lovely monogram at the top using letters from the same typeface that we used for their names. For the rest of the text, we used a classic, all-caps, serif typeface.

Tara and Jeremy's invitation envelopes were also Crane Lettra. They had a traditional pointed flap and were letterpress printed with the couple's return address on the flap, also in purple ink.

For their reply card and envelope, we pretty much stuck with the same design as the reply card in the suite I linked to above, but we changed up the colors and information, just a little bit.

The reply card is a 4bar size, printed in light pink ink on Crane Lettra and features a bird with a banner at the top that has their reply by date on it. Below the banner detail is a line for the guests to write in their names, and options to accept or decline. Right below those options, Tara had us include a line with her and Jeremy's wedding website information, so guests could find out more about wedding details, accommodations, etc. there. We paired this card with a very light pink envelope, also printed with the return address in purple, from Green Paper Company.

I thoroughly enjoyed working with Tara and Jeremy and I hope their wedding this past September was just as sweet as their invitation suite! Congratulations Tara & Jeremy!

Henri-Lee and Konrad are Married!

Good morning, folks! It's time for another addition of "It's so cold in Oregon, all I can think about is wanting to be somewhere tropical". So, with no further ado, I present to you a lovely wedding invitation suite that I designed and printed last spring for a couple who live and were married in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time that I began working with Henri-Lee and Konrad, I was actually working with another couple who was using their same wedding planner. The wedding planner's name is Alia Kennedy of Parasol Events in Honolulu, and she put me in touch with both lovely couples! We haven't actually met in person, but Alia is a true gem to work with, and I would highly recommend her if you are planning a destination wedding or a local wedding in Hawaii. When Alia contacted me about Henri-Lee and Konrad's wedding, we didn't have much time to design and print a totally custom suite. I listened to what Henri-Lee was envisioning though and described another suite I was currently working on for another couple, who you recently read about here, and we decided that we could create a similar suite that was adapted to better reflect Henri-Lee and Konrad's wedding without starting completely from scratch. You can see the four pieces in their invitation suite at the top of this post.

Henri-Lee and Konrad's suite included an A7 size invitation with corresponding envelope and a 4bar size reply card with corresponding envelope. The invitation was printed in three ink colors and the reply card was printed in one on Crane Lettra Pearl White 100% cotton paper. The envelopes were pink and yellow, were both printed in one ink color, and came from Waste Not Paper Company. Here is their invitation by itself:

As Henri-Lee and Konrad's wedding colors were pinks and yellows, we really wanted to somehow incorporate both and have a slightly tropical feeling to the suite. In order to do this, we adapted my birds in branches design to have the branches covered in pink plumeria flowers with four little yellow birdies on or flying up to it. If you haven't seen a plumeria in person, here is a photo of the real thing:

(source)

Plumerias are a tropical tree flower that come in a few different colors and are absolutely gorgeous! They smell amazing too! I actually have a small plumeria tree in my house that I brought back from Hawaii at one point. The tree is beautiful, but in the over 10 years that I've had it, it has never flowered. I'm thinking it might just be too cold here to do it, which is sad, but I'm still hopeful that one day it will. Anyway, back to the stationery!

We used a really gorgeous script font for the couples names and a classic serif typeface for the other invitation information. I absolutely love the way these crisp fonts and images combined with bright, cheerful ink colors really sink into the page! Gorgeous! The invitation was then paired with a coordinating yellow envelope and I letterpress printed their return address on the flap in chocolate brown ink.

For Henri-Lee and Konrad's reply card we went with a similar coordinating design motif, this time without the birds and in only one ink color to save them some money. The reply card was printed in chocolate brown ink and featured a place for guests to write their names, check whether or not they would be attending, and then select their meal choice for the reception.

For the reception entree choices, we used some cute little caricatures (something I do fairly often) to represent fish, beef and vegetarian. The reply cards were paired with a bright pink envelope and again printed with the couple's address in chocolate brown ink.

Isn't this suite so sweet and beautiful all at the same time?!?

Since Hawaii is a fairly expensive and not very easy location to get to, Henri-Lee and Konrad planned a small wedding. Now, let's say that you're planning a small wedding and you invite just your closest friends and family to the actual event, but you also want to inform other friends of your nuptials. How do you do it? Send out wedding announcements! A wedding announcement isn't an invitation to the event and it is typically sent out after the couple is already married, but it is a nice, formal way to inform friends whom you don't necessarily want to invite to the event, or who you know won't be able to attend, that you were married. This is what Henri-Lee and Konrad did shortly after their wedding! Here is the announcement:

For this piece HL wanted to continue with the same sort of design that we had used for the actual invitation, but change up the size just a little bit. There was quite a bit of wording on their announcement, so in order to accommodate that without making the card look cluttered, we chose a long and skinny T-Length size. This card measures 3.875"x9.25" and was printed in three ink colors: chocolate brown, yellow and pink. It was paired with a coordinating, white, T-length envelope from Waste Not Paper Company and the return address was printed on the flap of it in pink ink. Here are some details of the announcement and announcement envelope so you can see the pretty fonts, images, ink colors and impression a little closer:

Aren't these lovely?!? It's such a nice way to announce your wedding to all of the people you couldn't invite, or who otherwise wouldn't have been able to make it to your actual event.

Once again, working with Alia of Parasol Events on this was absolutely wonderful and our clients, Henri-Lee and Konrad, were really sweet! Congratulations Henri-Lee and Konrad and thanks again!

Save the Date: Erica & Noah are Getting Married!

Check out these super-cute Save-the-Date cards that I finished earlier this week for a couple in Syracuse, New York who are getting married next June! Erica & Noah's save-the-date card is an A6 size card measuring 4.5"x6.25", printed in Navy Blue ink on a custom-made, 100% cotton, recycled, light pink paper that is embedded with wildflower seeds from Porridge Papers. The cards were printed and then affixed with a small photograph of Erica and Noah. They came with coordinating cream-colored envelopes from Waste Not Paper company that were printed with the couples' return address in navy blue ink.

I love how gorgeous and textural the papers from Porridge Papers are! They are so pretty, unique, and absolutely wonderful for letterpress printing. They take letterpress impression beautifully and are so fabulous to the touch. Check out these close-up photos for a better look:

Aren't they cute and beautiful all at the same time?!? I love that Erica had us print on a light pink paper too - it's not a color that my clients ask for too often, but I think this paper would be lovely for other wedding stationery or for some really sweet baby shower invitations or baby announcements too! Erica, Noah and I are currently working on the designs for the rest of their invitation suite which will be printed shortly after the first of the new year. If you like this design, make sure you check back to see the rest! It's going to be pretty!

Emily & Stephen are Married!

(Photo courtesy of Emily G Photography)

Happy Friday, everybody! It's been kind of cold, rainy, and wintery in Western Oregon today, so I thought I would share with you a really bright and cheery wedding invitation suite I printed earlier this summer for a very cute couple who were married in Portland, Oregon in late September. Emily and Stephen are good friends of mine. Shortly after college I met both of them while we all worked at the same University bookstore. Emily and I worked in the graphic design/marketing department and Stephen was working in IT. I can remember talking to Emily constantly about how one day I was going to quit doing design for marketing and advertising and open up my very own letterpress shop (she and I used to have our desks about three feet from each other after all). At that point, she and Stephen had recently started dating, so it was really fun when she got in touch with me earlier this year about letterpress printing her wedding invitations, and it was really fun in September to get to go to their wedding!!

Anyway, being the über-talented designer that she is, Emily designed her invitations herself! Check them out:

Emily and Stephen's invitation suite included an A7 size invitation and envelope and an A2 size RSVP postcard. They were printed in two ink colors on Crane Lettra Pearl White 100% cotton paper and came with a coordinating white envelope from Waste Not Paper company. Emily and Stephen also had me print some really cute, matching wedding coasters for their reception as well!

Emily's stationery as well as her wedding, was bright, cheery and colorful. They had their ceremony and reception in Portland, Oregon at the McMennamin's Kennedy School - an old-fashioned school house that has been converted into a hotel/restaurant/bar/event space. I love how she was able to incorporate so many pretty colors into everything from her invitations to her reception without the whole thing being overwhelming. Here is her invitation by itself:

Emily chose to print her invitation in deep red and light pink inks. I love the fun and whimsical floral pattern she designed which adorned all of the pieces.

Their reception coasters were printed in the same ink colors with their names and the wedding date and some of the cute floral pattern. These are a 4" round coaster, which is perfect for beer, cocktail, wine and other beverage glasses!

I wish I had taken some photos of how cute these looked at the reception, but, I actually forgot to bring my real camera to their wedding and the only photos I have were taken with a cell phone (and they weren't very good ones). Let me tell you though, they were super-cute!

Here is the coordinating Waste Not Paper invitation envelope that Emily picked out:

We used a very pretty reddish-purple ink to print the return address on the flap. Then, for their reply cards, Emily chose to do a postcard to save on reply card envelope printing and postage. We used the same reddish-purple ink on this card as well as a bright and cheery yellow!

I absolutely love how Emily and Stephen's personality and sense of humor shines through on the reply card. Take a look at their accepts/regrets options: "Sure" and "Nah...". Aren't they just too cute?!? I think they're just about as cute as the couple they were created for. Here are some photos from Emily and Stephen's big day, taken by Portland-based wedding and portrait photographer Emily G.

(All Wedding Photos courtesy of Emily G Photography)

If you'd like to see more photos from their wedding, check them out on their photographer's blog, here.

Congratulations Emily & Stephen!

Allison & Matt are Married!

As this summer was such a whirlwind in general for Twin Ravens Press, I've really been enjoying going back over the photos and samples of wedding invitations that we did all summer and getting to show off the ones that got missed on this blog earlier this year. The wedding set you are about to see in this post was designed and printed for a wonderful couple who were married in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 8th of this year. Allison found me through a post on Wedding Bee by a blogger, Mrs. Coconut, that we had done invitations for the November before. I was then contacted by Allison and Matt's fabulous wedding planner, Alia Kennedy of Parasol Events. Alia was really great to work with and I would highly recommend her if you're looking for a wedding planner in Hawaii. I worked with her with another set of clients shortly after working with Allison and Matt (whose stationery I'll show off soon), and she's totally great! Check out Parasol Events' blog here, if you'd like to see more!

Anyway, back to Allison and Matt! They were really a fabulous couple to work with and I love the photos from their wedding that Alia sent me last week! That's them at the top of this post, and there are more photos from their wedding further along in the post. You may recall hearing about them here before if you've followed this blog for a while. I did a post in March about their Save the Date Cards that we designed and printed, which you can find here. Allison loved the blind-embossed scroll pattern and pink hibiscus motif that we used for her Save the Date cards and wanted to continue the theme throughout the rest of her invitation suite.

Allison and Matt's invitation suite included a 6.25" square invitation, a 4bar size reply postcard, an A2 size directions card and a lined 6.5" square invitation envelope. All pieces were printed on Crane Lettra 100% cotton paper in Bright White with 2 ink colors: black and hibiscus pink and all the pieces included blind embossing details.

Here is Allison & Matt's invitation and envelope.

We kept the layout for this piece fairly consistent with their Save-the-Date card design. A wide blind-embossed scroll pattern adorns the whole left side of the invitation and their pink hibiscus detail is featured prominently on the top left. We used black ink for the main body of their text and the same pink for their names. The return address on the envelope was also printed in hibiscus pink. Their envelopes are a European Pointed Flap style from Waste Not Paper Company.

Each envelope was hand-lined with a very light magnolia pink envelope liner created from paper made by Green Paper Company. I think the touch of light pink on the inside of the envelope added just a little extra touch of sweetness and elegance to an otherwise very traditional envelope. Here are a couple of detail photos of the invitation so you can see the blind embossing, impression, colors and fonts a little better:

I love the design of their reply postcard! It is a 4bar size and really keeps with the design of the invitation and save-the-dates. To switch things up a little on this we used the blind-embossed scroll pattern and hibiscus on the bottom edge instead of on the side.

I also love the tiny hibiscus detail next to the line about saving seats in the shuttle. That was Allison's idea and I thought it was too cute!

For their directions card I created a map of a portion of Honolulu and their venue, Lanikuhonua, from some sample maps of the area that Allison and Matt's wedding planner, Alia, sent to me.

We also included written directions on this card and some information about Allison and Matt's wedding website. I continued the blind-embossed scroll and hibiscus motifs on this card and we also blind embossed the area of the map that is the ocean for a just a little bit more texture!

I absolutely love how gorgeous this suite turned out! I also love how we were able to create a design that was tropical for a destination Hawaiian wedding, but also very elegant at the same time. Check out this amazing photo that Allison & Matt's photographer took of one of their invitations with their rings:

(Photo via dulcephoto.com)

Gorgeous, don't you think? Allison and Matt, as well as their ceremony, looked absolutely beautiful and everyone look so happy! Check out the photos below from their wedding (all photos by Dulce Photo, courtesy of Alia Kennedy at Parasol Events).

I love the above photo, it's so tropical and romantic! Aren't the flowers in the photo below, just gorgeous?!?

I also love these group photos (particularly the very casual one of all the guys! Cheers!)

Gorgeous! Thanks so much Allison and Matt for having us do your stationery! It was wonderful to work with you! Congratulations and all the best!