Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween from my Snuggle Puppy and me! Hope you had a fun, safe Halloween! We had a blast holding down the fort, although we ran out of candy pretty quickly!

Newest Member of Joie Studio's Printshop

The newest member to our printshop isn't a press at all - it's a cutter! A gorgeous, 30" cutter - a Challenge Advance to be exact. I have had paper cutter drama after paper cutter drama looking for a cutter for the shop, and it's taken me awhile to find a good paper cutter in my price range. And this one is it. It has original gold leaf design on it and everything. It may seem like a bit of overkill to call our friendly neighborhood press mover for it, but all my friends have been twice bitten, four times shy when it comes to moving my press equipment, and it really isn't that much cheaper to move it yourself anyway. Here she is on the truck waiting to be unloaded:

Jim & Marco doing their thing:

I have yet to take close-up pics of the cutter, but I'll be sure to share with you as soon as I do!

Congratulations Jaime and Patrick!

Working with clients like Jaime is the main reason I love the Your Letterpress program. Jaime loved the entire process, and I was more than happy to transform her design into gorgeous custom letterpress invitations.

Here is the entire letterpress invitation suite:

Jaime chose a gorgeous charcoal color and paired it with metallic gold for her invitations:

Another closeup of the letterpress invitation:

The letterpress response card and letterpress printed envelope:

And, to round off the letterpress invitation suite, the information/map card:

And here is a picture of our new more eco-friendly packaging. It's inspired by the notion of "brown paper packages tied up with string." I'm hoping that Joie Studio's letterpress invitations are one of your favorite things:

If I remember, I also assemble one invitation suite and put them into an envelope. I dressed up the invitation with a little bit of ribbon, which is totally optional, but I had some ivory ribbon to play around with:

Congratulations again Jaime and Patrick!

Congratulations Jean and Jay!

I don't know if I've ever printed so many custom invitation sets for the same wedding as I did for the weekend of October 9th and 10th. I have more custom letterpress invitations to share with you and it will probably spill into next week. Jean was the first client to contact me about the weekend in question, bringing me this lovely invitation suite she had Lucky Luxe design for her. Jean wanted some pieces flat printed, some pieces letterpress printed, and one piece both letterpress and flat printed, and I was more than happy to oblige.

Here is the entire invitation suite:

The invitation, 100% letterpress printed:

A close-up of the letterpress invitation suite:

Jean had two different response cards - one for her tech savvy guests who could respond online and one traditional response card that included a letterpress printed envelope:

And the directions card, where the blue is letterpress printed while the grey is flat printed:

Congratulations again Jean and Jay! I hope your big day went off without a hitch!

Congratulations Sonia & Eric!

Congratulations to Sonia and Eric! Sonia came to me with this gorgeous 1-color letterpress design incorporating two hot trends in wedding invitations - monogram & the ultra deLUXE A9 size (5.5" x 8.5").

Here is the corresponding response card:

Sonia also had us make her a custom return address rubber stamp for the envelopes:

Here is Sonia & Eric's invitation plate on the Vandercook. If you notice, there's a piece of paper sticking out from under the plate. The invite was low in that area so I built it up a little bit to get even impression:

And here are the letterpress invitations all packed up and ready to go to their new home. Sonia and Eric were one of the last ones to get the box packaging as we're moving towards more eco-friendly packaging (and much cuter, too!) for our custom letterpress invitation orders. Here they are, tied up with satin ribbon to help the invites and response cards stay in place during transit (and to dress up the packaging a little bit).

Congratulations again to Sonia & Eric!

Beautiful Vintage Handkerchiefs

Constance Zimmer was so happy with her letterpress wedding invitations that she also had Joie Studio screenprint vintage handkerchiefs for her. (What, you didn't know Joie Studio can screenprint? Well, we've got lots of tricks up our sleeves! ) They were gifts for her girlfriends that she gave out at a pre-wedding event. As in letterpress printing, I am a bit of a control freak about color so I ended up hand mixing the screenprinting ink instead of just using what was available. There is something just so beautiful and delicate about a little cute message from a 2 year old on a vintage handkerchief with little bits of embroidery:

I rather wish I had remembered to screen one on some of the vintage handkerchiefs we have on hand here for projects so I would have a sample, but I have pictures at least! I hope you enjoyed and were inspired!

Congratulations Constance and Russell!

Constance contacted me after I had already contracted three other custom letterpress projects for the weekend of October 9th-10th. When I remarked that it was a busy wedding weekend, she explained to me that she found this out as well because a lot of people wanted to marry on 10-10-10 and it was making the whole weekend busy. It was kind of a "duh" moment for me because I had some custom letterpress invitations (non-wedding) for that day and didn't make the connection.

I didn't know that Constance was Constance Zimmer from Entourage (she plays studio exec Dana Gordon) until my husband convinced me that really there weren't that many Constance Zimmers in the general Los Angeles area. And then it was kind of another "duh" moment. But I digress.

This custom letterpress invitation suite designed by Eliza Chaikin Kenan is so chic, incorporating navy blue ink and custom silhouettes. Constance's design called for the creation of a gatefold with her and her fiance's silhouette in front.

I especially love that the host of the wedding is Constance's 2 year old daughter Colette:

A picture of both the front and inside of the invitation, with the custom scoring that I made to turn the flat cardstock into a gatefold.

The front and back of the letterpress reply postcard. (Yes, I can letterpress print both sides of 110lb cardstock.) Notice that the return address is once again to Colette? So adorable:

Constance was so kind as to send me back an invitation suite so I could see the vintage stamps that she used:

More vintage stamps on the return postcard:

And the custom letterpress invitation suite all together so you can see the front and back of each piece.

Letterpress + navy blue + silhouette + vintage postage + personal wording = awesomely stylish letterpress invitations! As any letterpress printer will tell you, huge solid forms like that are hard to accomplish, especially with darker ink colors, but it came out beautifully.

Congratulations again to Constance and Russell, and happy belated birthday to the ever wonderful Ms. Zimmer!

Baptism Letterpress Invitations

I don't often design baptism invitations, much less baptism letterpress invitations. But my dear friend Bethany and I had talked about baptism invites for her Annabelle. And I think we spoke briefly about her baptizing both Annabelle and Sammy after Sammy was born. And then she had Stella. And then she decided to baptize all three at the same time. A triple baptism! I designed this invitation specifically for the Thies family:

I had it in my head that there should be three doves for each of her children:

A closeup of their names:

I will admit that it took me awhile to get the right yellow for this letterpress baptism invitation, but I think it came out exactly as how I envisioned it in my head.

Congratulations to Bethany and Bob on their beautiful family and the baptism of their children!

Hitched Event Recap

I cajoled my mother to watch JoieBaby on Thursday, September 23rd, so I could go to Hitched at the Smog Shoppe. Now, I've been to the Smog Shoppe for events before and it's just a really neat place to have smaller events. Here are some of the pictures I was able to take. Unfortunately my camera's memory card was near capacity so I wasn't able to take that many photos or else there'd be dozens of gorgeous shots of this gorgeous events on this post!

The make-your-own gift bag area - love the cubby shelf and vintage metal rack - I want them:

Urbanic's gift bag:

Enjoy Cupcake's deliciousness - love the mercury glass accents:

Urbanic brought a gorgeous display of letterpress invitations (shown below are Spark's I believe):

Beautiful floral display at Snippet & Ink's table:

Beautiful table designs:

And beautiful calligraphy at 100 Layer Cake's table:

I loved this event - if you don't want a run-of-the-mill wedding, there were so so many gorgeous idea here, including the use of Otter Pops:

I hope you enjoyed the pictures! If you're sad you missed the party, don't worry, I heard a rumor that the next Hitched Event has already been planned for the new year in Palm Springs but don't quote me on that!