Leaving on a Jet Plane...

(Image Source)

There won't be any new blog posts for a while because I'm taking my first vacation since I started Twin Ravens Press.  My boyfriend and I are going to visit a very good friend in Japan starting tomorrow.  I'll be back and the press will be in full swing again starting November 20th!  If you are a client or prospective client and would like to get a hold of me, please send me an e-mail and I will respond as soon as I get back.  See you soon!  Bon Voyage!

Fit for a Gentleman

Here is the most recent custom job from the press!  I think these stylish calling cards for Sebastian St. John: Gentleman of Leisure are downright awesome.  I mean what gentleman doesn't aspire to a title like that?  These cards were designed by the client as a gift for her fiancee's best man for their wedding.  They were printed on Crane's Pearl White calling card stock with silver edging in silver ink.  It's hard to see from the photos, but the ink nearly matches the edging on the cards and is really nice and sparkly.  

I also had the pleasure of printing the wedding invitations for this same client right before I got this blog up and rolling.  Nataliya, the bride, is a photographer and part-time graphic designer in New York, who designed her invitations herself and then hired me to print them.  You can check out some of her photography work here.  The suite included a square two-color invitation, two-color RSVP card, white invitation envelopes with turquoise ink for the return address and turquoise response card envelopes with black ink for the address.  Check out the photos of the suite below:  

Here is the whole suite all together.  It included a 5 inch square invite, a reply card and two sets of envelopes.  

Here is the RSVP Card by itself.  

And the Invitation by itself.

And, here is a detail of the invitation so you can get a closer look at the design.  Beautiful, don't you think?  Stay tuned because there will be more photos of new custom work later this week.

The One that Started it All

The fact that I'm somewhat knee-deep in custom work at the moment kind of got me thinking the other day about the first custom printing job I ever did.  I really, truly love doing custom work for people and have been designing custom letterpress printed items and other personal projects for quite some time now (for at least the last seven years), but this is the first custom job I can honestly say was done under the name of Twin Ravens Press. 

Twin Ravens is still a very young little company and when I started it almost a year ago, I had a good friend, Ashley, who was about to have her first child.   Ashley is also an artist and illustrator and she had seen some of my early Twin Ravens greeting cards and some of the custom projects I had done for other people prior to starting Twin Ravens Press and she really wanted me to design and print her baby announcements.  I was totally excited and thrilled to do so, but I insisted that the project be a joint venture.  This is what we came up with: 

Ashley had just gotten back to Oregon from a vacation she took in Hawaii and really wanted an ocean-themed birth announcement.  She drew the cute little octopus down at the bottom right-hand corner of the announcement and I found the two starfish shaped ornaments in my metal type collection.  All of the words are Baskerville handset metal type.  The announcement was printed on an A7 size card with rounded corners and was paired with a coordinating blue envelope.  Here is a detail of the type (and yes, that is, in fact, their son's real middle name):

 

Pretty fun, don't you think?  Oh, and did you notice that picture of the cute little boy playing in the fall leaves at the beginning of this post?  That's Ares now.  He's already almost ten months old.  I took that photo of him playing in our backyard just a couple of weekends ago.  I guess what they say about time is true: it sure does fly...

¡Ileana y José están consiguiendo casados!

Just a quick little post this morning because I'm going to be thoroughly busy printing pretty much all day.  Remember those cool wedding coaster's that I printed for Lynn & Matthew? Well, Lynn posted about how much she liked them here on Wedding Bee and shortly after that I got an order from a new couple, Ileana & José, for the exact same coaster design - only with their names and wedding date.  So, what's so different and special about this job, you may ask... Ileana & José are from Puerto Rico and wanted their coasters in Spanish.  I just finished them last night.  Check them out: 

I think they turned out really cool.  What do you think?

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!

Good Design

I was blog hopping earlier today and ran across this poster. The first thought that came to my head was, literally: "Dude, that would look pretty cool letterpress printed, with some nice old wood type." The second thought was "Wow, that's sad, but painfully true."

(Image via Design Crush)

Carlos Lascano

I'm headed up to Portland this afternoon to run a few letterpress-related errands and potentially do some shopping.  While I'm away, you can tide yourself over with this lovely stop motion animation.  I recently discovered Carlos Lascano, and I think that I may be in love (with his work).  As another blogger put it: his talent truly runneth over.  More letterpress tomorrow.  Enjoy!

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.