Meet Your Maker Show & Sale Tonight!

If you're in Eugene, Oregon tonight you should come out and support your local artists and craftspeople at the December Meet Your Maker Show & Sale!  The event will be this evening, December 5th at the Broadway Wine Bar (200 W. Broadway) from 5-8 pm.  I will be selling some of our new Christmas & holiday card designs there tonight and there will be a free wine tasting and awesome raffle for cool free stuff!  For those of you on the lookout for awesome holiday shopping opportunities, you will definitely find one here.  Other vendors that will be there tonight include: La Petite Vie, Happy Medium, Laura Long, Lucky Lisp, Skull & Bones Production, Cannibal Eclectic, Twinkle, Bree's Way, Bellybaloo, S. Jane, Practical Rabbit, BeBe Babies & Friends, Secondhand Saints, Things in Stuff and Bliss Monkey Studio.  Admission is free so come down and check it out!  We hope to see you there!

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Happy December Everyone!    Because we were away and closed for a good portion of November we're a little behind on getting our 2008 Holiday card designs out, but if you've been waiting, I think you will find that they're worth the wait.  Below you will find pictures of the computer-ized designs for this year's holiday cards.  All of these designs will be available in my etsy shop, one by one, starting tomorrow, and all of them will be available by the end of next week!  I'll also be offering the cute holiday hedgehogs that you see at the beginning of this post from last year again as well.  They're going to be $4 for singles, $20 for a box of 6 or $24 for a box of 10.  The larger boxes of 10 are new, and they're a great deal, which is pretty exciting!  If any of you wonderful readers out there would like to pre-order any of the designs you see below (available for shipment or delivery next week), please send me an e-mail at twinravenspress@gmail.com with the Subject line "Holiday Cards" and I will get back to you soon!  Happy Holidays everyone!

Lindsay & Jordan are Getting Married!

I hope everyone out there had a very Happy Thanksgiving!  Mine was very successful, with a quick drive to Portland, great food, wonderful company and lots of Pecan Pie.  

Now it's back to business though:  below you will find photos of the second of three wedding jobs that I completed just prior to going to Japan.  A few months ago I was contacted by a lovely bride-to-be in Corpus Christi, Texas about printing a wedding invitation she designed herself.  The suite included the invitation, a reply card, and two sets of envelopes.  The colors for her wedding were Chartreuse green (with other greens) and light grey.  We ended up printing her invitation and reply card in light grey ink on Crane Lettra Pearl White paper.  The invitation envelope was also Crane Lettra in the Pearl White to match the invitation paper with the return address printed on the flap in grey ink.  The reply card envelopes were from Waste Not Paper and were a grey color that coordinated very well with the ink - the address on those were printed in black.  Check out some photos of the individual pieces below:

The coolest thing about this invitation set, in my opinion, was the blind embossed pattern that we printed on the invitation.  It's difficult to see from the pictures of the whole invite, but you can check it out in this close-up:

In order to create this effect, we used the same kind of printing plate that we normally would for an inked image, but instead, took our rollers off of the press and printed just the impression the plate would make, without any ink, into the paper.  This technique created a really neat blind-embossed pattern in the paper that is noticeable, but subtle, and in my opinion added an elegant touch to this invitation without printing any more colors or incorporating fancy graphics or patterns into the design.  Check out the whole suite below: 

Very nice, don't you think?  I think so.  Congratulations, Lindsay & Jordan!

On another note: for those of you who haven't bought your Christmas or Holiday Cards yet, Twin Ravens Press is extremely late in releasing our new Holiday Card Designs (what with being in Japan for two weeks and all), but the designs will be up on this blog early next week and they will be available for purchase in my etsy store starting late in the week next week.  I'm sorry I'm so late in getting these out to you and I really appreciate your patience.  Have a great week!  

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...

And We're back...

I just thought I would make a really quick post to let all of my readers out there know that I'm back from Japan (It was amazing!!) and Twin Ravens will be back in full swing on Monday.  There will be several exciting upcoming posts on this blog for you to look forward to, including three lovely wedding stationary sets that were finished just prior to my departure and new Twin Ravens Press Christmas and Holiday Card designs that will be hitting the etsy shop hopefully on or before next Friday!  If you haven't gotten your holiday cards yet (or are on the lookout for more), check back soon for our new ones!  Talk to you all soon!

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.