Oh So Beautiful Paper

Archive for September, 2010

Earlier this year, Derek and Kim, the husband and wife designers behind RageHaus, sent over a set of vintage-inspired Save the Dates that they printed for friends Katy and Jason.  Well, after recently relocating to Brooklyn, Kim and Derek are back with Katy and Jason’s wedding invitations!  For the follow-on invitations, Kim and Derek continued with the color palette and vintage typography-inspired design elements from the Save the Dates.

From Kim: Katy and Jason wanted a modern wedding invitation with a major emphasis on strong typography.  The wedding will take place in Boston, so we drew a majority of our inspiration from old Boston signage.

With the ceremony being held at The Hampshire House, an historic Boston mansion, we decided to pull in some luxurious elements to the design.

Between the strong typography and the delicate ornaments and flourishes, we were able to create a modern, yet elegant, wedding invitation.

The entire set was screen printed by hand.  For the the invitation, white and light pink ink was printed on French Paper‘s Wine Speckletone.

For the reply card, we brought in Pink Lemonade Pop Tone to accentuate the light pink ink on the invitation.  Maroon ink was matched to the wine color of the invitation and printed on both the reply card and envelope.

The entire invitation set was finished with a French Paper’s Aged Parchtone belly band.  The monogram printed on the belly band was from their save the date.

Thanks so much Kim and Derek!  You can also check out more from Kim and Derek over on their website and flickr page, and you can see Katy and Jason’s Save the Dates (along with a bunch of others) over in the Save the Date gallery!

{image credits: RageHaus}

Our first set of wedding invitations today comes to us from Stephanie Pryor, a recent bride and graphic designer with a love for typography and letterpress.  Stephanie designed her own wedding invitations, incorporating a blue color palette as a nod to her beachside wedding venue and some fun design elements for an overall design that is both playful and sophisticated.

From Stephanie: Our wedding took place on Memorial Day weekend in Ocean City New Jersey.  The ceremony was on the beach and the reception was held at the Ocean City Yacht Club.  We wanted our invitations to subtly reflect our nautical beach setting but also retain a sophisticated design sensibility.

I’ve always loved typography and wanted the type to be the focal point of the suite.  We choose a nautical blue color theme to give a nod to our reception venue and hand-tied the invitations with a single seashell to symbolize our beach ceremony.

We also wanted to add an element of surprise and excitement to the suite.  Our solution was the typographic envelope liners.  I love that when guests opened the envelope it yelled “You’re Invited!”  The goal was to get our guests excited for our big day!

I also adore the edge painting on the invitation.  It added an extra pop of color in such a delicate and unique way.

Our wedding invitations were truly a DIY project.  I designed them myself and did the majority of printing, cutting, folding, inserting, embossing and gluing!  I can still remember the endless nights slaved over my Epson and the intoxicating fumes of spray mount like it was yesterday!

I did enlist help from Boxcar Press to letterpress print the actual invitation and RSVP card.  I love the tactile beauty of letterpress and I wanted to incorporate it wherever I could afford given my tight budget.

Such a fun invitation – from the bold envelope liners to the long fold-out map enclosure.  Thank you so much Stephanie!

If you’re looking for more invitation inspiration, you can check out Stephanie’s invitations and lots of others in the wedding invitation gallery!

{image credits: edge painting and envelope photographs by stephanie, all others by alyssa andrew photography}

Just in case you were curious, here’s a little sneak peek at one of the projects that I was working on this weekend…

We managed to squeeze some fun in, too, including a trip to our neighborhood festival.  I hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

{photos by me}

How is it Friday already?!  This week has completely flown by for me – which I’m sure is at least partly due to the fact that I seem to be testing my limits regarding the total number of projects that I can handle all at once.  This weekend is shaping up to be a working weekend for me, but this kind of busy is the best kind of busy, so I’m not complaining.  I hope you all have fun plans for the weekend!  But in the meantime…

…a few links for your weekend reading!

• I’m digging these cool graphic black + white prints
• Pinwheel escort cards!  Too cute.
• Cute fill-in kids party invitations
• Have you heard about the 1,000 Crane Mission?
• Simple and sweet mason jar wedding invitations…
• …or for something a bit different, ink splatter wedding invitations

…and just in case you missed it, a quick summary of this week’s posts:

• Twine + cork wedding invitations
• Amy + Forrest’s modern blue + orange wedding invitations
• A tour of Crane & Co. stationery: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
• The most beautiful wedding photography album
• Lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!) birthday party invitations

That’s it for me this week!  I hope you all have a fantastic weekend, and I’ll see you back here on Monday!

{image credits: illuminatedperfume via mary ruffle}

My husband was a history major in college, so we have quite the collection of vintage maps and antique globes going on in our apartment.   Our love for maps doesn’t stop with the antique variety, however, and these personalized map prints from JHill Design are pretty cool!

The prints can be customized with names, a date, and details like longitude and short sentimental memories from an occasion.  Wouldn’t they make lovely gifts for weddings, anniversaries, or even new babies?

Check out more details over at JHill Design!

{image credits: JHill Design}