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!!

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!

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!

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.

The Wedding Invitations of Mr. & Miss Ramen

Let me preface this post by saying that no, I didn't print wedding invitations for a couple whose last name is actually "Ramen". As this particular couple asked me not to reveal their real names on my blog, I will be referring to them by a pseudonym they chose for themselves. You see, Miss Ramen is a blogger over on WeddingBee, and the fifth WeddingBee blogger that we've printed invitations for. If you are a follower of WeddingBee, you may have already read some blog posts she's done about her wedding there. If you aren't, but like what you're about to see of her invitations, you can read more about her wedding here. Despite having to be a little sneaky about the information I show off to you about their wedding on this blog, working with the Ramens was an absolute joy and their invitations are absolutely lovely.

The Ramens, being the talented and uber-motivated individuals that they are, designed their whole invitation suite themselves and then hired Twin Ravens Press to do their letterpress printing! I heard from Miss Ramen that she is doing her calligraphy for her envelopes all by herself, which, for a bride who isn't planning a small wedding, this is quite the undertaking. The Ramen's invitation suite included a #10 size invitation, a reply postcard, a small business card size website card, an invitation envelope and a set of small cute tags! Here is their invitation:

As I mentioned above, Mr. and Miss' Ramen's wedding invitation is a long and skinny #10 size, printed on Crane Lettra pearl white paper with metallic silver ink. I love the elegant swirls and scrolls they created for all of the pieces in their suite! It's a little difficult to tell, due to me blurring out most of their names, but the typeface they used for their names and for the line at the bottom of the invite really compliments their decorative swirls beautifully!

Here is their invitation again with its corresponding envelope. The envelope Mr. and Miss Ramen chose is a #10 size, 30% post-consumer recycled envelope in a light blue color called "Cloud" from Green Paper Company. I love how these envelopes add just a subtle hint of color to the suite without being bold and overwhelming. I also love how they continued their swirl motif from the invitation on the front of the invitation envelope. The envelopes were also printed with metallic silver ink and included a very cute, framed return address on the envelope flap.

To save on postage and envelopes, Mr. and Miss Ramen decided to do their reply card as a postcard! These were also printed in silver ink on Crane Lettra Pearl White paper.

They did a fantastic job of keeping the look of their entire suite consistent, while incorporating some unique, fun, and super-cute details into each piece. Check out the little whole and broken heart icons next to their accepts/regrets lines:

Very cute idea, don't you think?!?

Now, I'm not quite sure what Miss Ramen has in store for these little guys, but whatever it is, I'm sure it will be adorable. The Ramens had me print them a set of small letterpress tags featuring their initials, wedding date and the city where they will be wed, inside the same cute kind of frame they used for their return address on their envelopes.

Miss Ramen opted to cut these out herself, in order to save money on die-cutting. Although I'm not sure what she's planning to use them for, they are super-adorable.

This last piece in their suite, is quite possibly my favorite. As Miss Ramen is an avid blogger (hence why she blogs for WeddingBee), she wanted to include a small website card that would direct wedding invitation recipients to their website for further information. This card measures 2"x3.5", which is the same size as a standard business card, and was also printed on Crane Lettra paper in silver ink.

Isn't that absolutely adorable?!? I love the cute little caricatures that Mr. Ramen drew of himself and his bride. So sweet... and such a cute idea for a little website card!

Mr. and Miss Ramen were an absolute joy to work with and I'm so happy that I got to do their letterpress printing! If you like these designs, head on over to WeddingBee and read more about the Ramens. They really are a very sweet couple. Miss Ramen posted a very cute teaser a couple of weeks ago, which you can read here, and she just posted at length about her invites here.

Thanks so much Mr. and Miss Ramen and many congratulations!