Congratulations Erin and Mike!

Congratulations to Erin and Mike! Erin and Mike were really open to one of my favorite beach color schemes: aqua and gold! Erin wanted starfish on the invitation, so we worked in our Marbella swirls with some sweet little starfish to give her a perfect beach themed letterpress wedding invitation!

Erin and Mike's wording was a good solution when one set of parents have remarried and all sets of parents are helping to pay for the wedding:

And more pictures of the invites:

As a special gift to my bride and groom, I made them custom letterpress stationery to match so they can get started on their thank yous:

I hope you enjoyed the starfish letterpress wedding invitations with the beach themed colors as much as I enjoyed designing and printing them!

Congratulations again to Erin and Mike!

Congratulations Sharon and Austin!

I printed these back in April. My own personal policy has been not to post invitations on blogs until AFTER the event has taken place (for obvious reasons), but by the time the event happens, I forget where I put my sample of the print run and then it's this whole big thing. So I end up not photographing and blogging the majority of the invitations I design and print. But, I digress. These were printed on Reich Savoy, which I absolutely love.

I remember quite vividly that I was very taken with the bride and groom. They were really great, level headed, and easy to work with. I especially love Austin's statement that he wanted letterpress because it is the most laborious of methods. So true, my friend. So true.

Congratulations, Sharon and Austin!

Sneek Peek: Monogram Letterpress Wedding Invitations

Why, hello, gorgeous! I am totally in love with monogram letterpress wedding invitations. Here are some sneak peeks of our new monogram letterpress wedding invitation designs:

I went in a little bit of a different direction with this invitation, which is less formal. The background will give the invitation a gorgeous texture when letterpress printed.

More to come! Enjoy!

Sneak Peek: Wedding Vows Invitations

We have been at the drawing board at Joie Studio! I think Leigh of hapa | hale asked me once how long it takes me to come up with designs, and in answer to that -- a long time! I think we dream up and discard so many designs and go through so many versions of a design before we decide it is the best that it can be. It's been over 2 years since we introduced new wedding invitation designs, and we're almost ready to debut our new additions to our LUXE letterpress. These two I love. I call them my Vows invitations. I envision these invitation on a super thick and fluffy stock (maybe a 530GSM or 600GSM cardstock), with scripted text in a blind impression and the words in either gorgeous black on pearl white paper or chocolate brown on ivory paper. So so decadent. So so...luxe. Oh, I love just thinking about it!

Here is a sneek peek --

"To Have & To Hold" Invitation

This invitation is designed to be on a #10 card. There is still a lot of internal discussion as to what other sizes "To Have & To Hold" should be offered in.

"Love, Honor, Cherish" Invitation

"Love, Honor, Cherish" is full of gorgeous flourishes. Designed for A7 or a deLUXE A9, it is so classic and elegant, and the script just adds such romance to the design.

Hope you enjoyed the sneek peek! Check back for more designs! We'll be introducing them soon!

Erin's Bridal Shower...Affordable Letterpress

You know, Erin's letterpress bridal shower invitations are proof that you don't have to break the bank to have gorgeous letterpress invitations. Erin's mother hosted a large bridal shower for her and her sister commissioned us to letterpress 75 invitations and reply postcards for the shower. I looked online at a popular invitation website whose name implies that their printed materials are exceedingly small (but they're not), and the pricing was only nominally cheaper. The tradeoff to get letterpress at such a great price is that you are only doing one color as opposed to the digital prints multiple colors. But I personally believe (of course I would) that the paper Joie Studio offers is better and the letterpress invitation just feels more expensive than digital prints.

These beauties were printed with eco-savvy vegetable oil ink on Stardream Chiara Coral (I believe). To save money, Erin's sister and I decided on letterpress printing in one color and bringing in another dimension of color with the paper. We had wanted to print them on Paper Source's luxe blush, but luxe blush has sadly been discontinued (I pleaded with Waste Not to bring it back, but *blah blah blah* "no one ordered it" - which I don't believe at all), and I remembered that Stardream had a very similar color, albeit shiny. I think this would have been gorgeous enough for an actual wedding invitation. Check it out:

I'm not a huge fan of opting towards letterpress reply postcards, but only because you don't save very much in printing them (or at all sometimes) and the postal service is not gentle on letterpress. By using postcards, though, the shower hosts saved about $12 in postage, which honestly is a decent amount. AND postcards are more eco-friendly in that they don't use envelopes.

Congratulations, Erin, on your upcoming nuptials! Be on the lookout here (they will be posted after the wedding) for her fantastic letterpress wedding invitations.

Word of mouth only gets you so far...

For the last year, Joie Studio has been operating almost exclusively on word of mouth advertising. We've had great support from some really rocking design blogs like hapa hale, Paper Crave, and Poppytalk, which has been great for business, and our clients have been so happy with us that we've gotten some really great referrals for new clients. But, you know, at some point, word of mouth can only go so far.

So Joie Studio is now listed on The Knot, The Wedding Channel, and Partyspot! I absolutely love how The Wedding Channel ad is set up especially as the LUXE letterpress logo is on top. I'm excited to join The Knot community, too! I know when I getting married, The Wedding Channel and The Knot were wonderful resources, and I'm excited that Joie Studio is a part of that!

LUXE letterpress on design blogs!

Thank you to Leigh at hapa hale, Kristen at Paper Crave, and Jan at Poppytalk for sharing the launch of LUXE letterpress!

One of the favorites thus far seems to be the Seville letterpress wedding invitation design, which was inspired by all the great Mediterranean tile designs out there. It's one of the favorite LUXE letterpress designs here at the studio as well -- my husband loves this design.