After being enamored with Jessica Morrisy’s business cards and Sweetie’s Bakeshop proofs, Jenn wanted an adaptation for her letterpress wedding invites. Going for a light/dark combo, the next round will explore some brown in replacement of the light blue. Latte maybe? I can’t wait to see how these turn out!

If you are interested in an estimate for wedding invitations contact me and fill out the form, I’d love to work with you!

This was a one color letterpress invitation suite for Penny and Brian. Penny was super easy to work with and so enjoyable. I have to say, the whole time I was designing this invitation I kept humming Penny Lane by The Beatles! I know, original. It’s like when people call out to my “Yo Adrienne!” from Rocky – I digress. Penny’s whole wedding will be wildflowers and outdoors in the wilderness. Since I’ve lived in the bedroom community of Jackson Hole, this was fun to work on because it’s right in the vein of living rural. We have a strip of grass on the outside of our driveway with an 80×6′ garden of wildflowers. It was so amazing last summer to see the California poppies, lupine, aster, hawkweed and more blooming in bright color in my front yard. Can you tell I’m itching for spring?!

If you are a budget bride looking for letterpress, but aren’t sure you can afford it, you should consider a one color invitation. This one is simple and minimalist however I’ve seen some really intricate and beautiful wedding invitations done as a one color as well. If you are interested in an estimate, don’t hesitate to ask!

After narrowing these mod wedding invititations down from the round I proofs and punching color to a brighter scheme, we explored some typeface options. This next round we looked at Memoir and Handsome Pro Classic along with illustration that gave a little more cirque d soleil and 60s vibe. The bride still can’t decide whether to have the layout done by a calligrapher so I tried to reflect in type as close as possible to what style she was going for.

The bride also wanted to explore incorporating a peony motif into one of the designs so here’s what we came up with on that regard. I can’t wait to see where these go for the final piece. They are going to be simply stunning when plated and printed letterpress.

These were inspired from the Beatles LOVE album and promo book for a truly mod wedding invite. The bride is looking for bright colors and handwritten typography. We established the layout first and are now on the hunt for the perfect calligrapher/handwritten touch on the first design.

The second has potential to be done in a calligrapher’s hand as well but I’m really imagining the potential of Buttermilk by Jessica Hische with the knockout and framed impression over the couple’s names…

The last option I revisited the hand-drawn mod swirly stuff (what would you call that – flourishes) with a more minimalist typographic treatment. It’s hard not to go overboard sometimes on these designs because I have to remember that the letterpress will change the whole dimension of the piece when printed. I tend to err on the less side in the design phases. We’ll see what the bride has to say!

Remember these letterpress anemone escort cards and favor tags? Well I just got word back from the bride that they are being featured on her photographer’s website Shira Weinberger along with her amazing wedding! Here’s a sneak peek below, be sure to click through to see the whole wedding!

Photography courtesy of Shira Weinberger.

These letterpress escort tags were shipped out a few weeks back for a bride who was doing a modern holiday wedding. Her colors were brown, plum and cream.  Angela came to me with a few ideas in mind: she was having an Italian and travel themed wedding and was looking for a few different options to explore in the designs. One option was to explore a vineyard illustration, rough and modern as they were celebrating at a great winery and she thought that might be a way to bring across the location in the details.

She had also mentioned the possibility of doing a luggage tag or passport styled tag as they were going to name their tables after cities in Italy – you know, Rome, Tuscany, and the likes.

Our last option explored was to reflect her main floral arrangements, which were going to be made up of roses and anemones so we obviously explored that route as well.

In the end she went with  the anemone favor tags and escort tags that would be hand-calligraphied with guest’s name and table number on them.

Letterpress printed on 110# soft white Lettra in a grey/brown and matched with 1/8″ satin ribbon.

I don’t know if you are familiar with the story of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, so if not I’ll indulge you:

There were these princesses that seduced men and took them to an underground kingdom to dance the night away. The king was offering a reward to anyone who could solve the mystery of the twelve dancing princesses (and find out where all the other princes had disappeared to). The royal gardener wanted a shot at solving the mystery and a chance of winning a princess for his bride – so he befriended the youngest princess in hopes to get invited for a night of dancing. When finally invited, he was required to follow the princesses to the secret kingdom. While underground he passed through a forest of silver and gold and stole a branch of leaves off each tree. In a nutshell, the royal gardener solved the mystery, but only by passing through the underground kingdom and by bringing back proof to the king – oh wait and he stole the heart of the youngest daughter who confessed it all to the king in the end.

These letterpress gift cards/enclosures/escort cards reminded me of what I had imagined the forest of gold to be like. Bright, gleaming, and elegant you can get these as a set of five or order in bulk for an event if you’d like!

This is option 2 for Nicole and Chris, option 1 first shown here. This invitation design came about because Chris wanted to see how we could make a typographic invitation with flourishes work. Here’s an alternate layout with some calligraphic examples of flourish and border that was popular during the time-period. Layout is non-traditional in that there are large and small variations of the border, however typography is kept simple and centered on a horizontal format.

Chris came to me after feeling too much pressure to create his own announcements for his wedding (he’s a designer too) and needed some outside help with getting it right. The brief behind the event was that it needed to reflect Victorian as the wedding was dominantly following that era. It was a Christmas wedding with all things you can imagine of a typical Victorian Christmas. Sleighs, snowflakes, vintage illustrations, amazing historical mansion, you name it – if it was going to be Victorian, elegant and spectacular – they had thought of it. Below is one of the proofs explored. This was a traditional vertical layout with the emphasis on the silhouetted initial. Another dominant design element used in Victorian publications and invitations of the time period, this is the most minimalist of the three proofs presented. This one didn’t make the cut but I just had to show how beautiful the ornamentation was on the initial. Color scheme:

Here’s a sneak peek at some Christmas Invitations I shipped recently…

I’ve been doing small letterpress jobs for some late summer and early fall brides. These were a custom color order inspired by the aspen tags I printed awhile ago in orange. Here’s the escort tags, to be hung on branches with the guest’s name in calligraphy.

and the champagne tags (or sparkling juice, or water, or whatever suits your fancy)

Available in the shop now.

These Indian paintbrush invitations were done last spring for a client “Over the hill” and no I’m not referring to a birthday party. I live just over the Teton Pass on the good looking side of the Teton mountain range. Represented over there at Paper & Grace – a shop that sells fine stationery and gifts – I had the opportunity to design and letterpress these for a Jackson wedding.

Robin was really fabulous to work with and in the end, they turned out gorgeous! She was looking for a modern design with wildflowers and along the whole design process kept coming back to the Indian paintbrush as a focal point. In the suite was invitation/envelope and reply postcard.

Since the postcard was double sided, a printer has to keep in mind the depth of impression so that there isn’t any show-through. Often this is referred to as the dominant side and the subordinate side on a double-sided piece. The favored side is printed with the “deeper” impression and is usually where the dominant information or imagery is used. The back-side is where the lesser impression is used with the subordinate information. In Robin’s case her reply info was the dominant info, and return address subordinate. This was printed on Crane’s lettra 110#/300 GSM paper in soft-white. It’s the standard house paper – or what I like to refer to as THICK! When ordering 2 sided pieces in THICK, keep in mind that there will be one side with less impression to keep the piece printed well and clean (this applies to business card printing too)!

Near the final rounds, this design came about because the bride was having a ceremony canopy made out of trees, and evidently birch trees were either part of the landscaping or just one of her favorites exact details are slipping my mind right now. The blind impression turned out so cool on this invite as the shadowing gave a really great letterpressed element to the trees. This design started out quite ornate and then got simpler as we worked on it more. By the time it printed I just couldn’t believe my eyes! There’s so much mystery in it that I love, thanks Kirstin for such a great letterpress project to work on, this is one of my favorites to date.

To read all about Kirstin’s invitation process and see some of the proofs designed click here.