Since we moved into our new apartment back in January, I’ve been meaning to order a new stamp with our return address to make it a bit easier to send out birthday and holiday cards to our friends and family. I’m really loving these address stamps with beautiful calligraphy from Primele:
Primele has also added a lovely thank you card to their shop – I love the contrast between the charcoal gray and light blue!
{image credits: primele}
There aren’t many invitations that can actually make me catch my breath, but within that short list, these letterpress wedding invitations are definitely at the top.  Designed and printed by Blackbird Letterpress, these New Orleans wedding invitations feature the amazing calligraphy of Betsy Dunlap and a beautiful layout guided by a blind impression map of the Mississippi River banks:
Kathryn from Blackbird Letterpress was thrilled to work with the bride, Riley, who very distinctly wanted a non-traditional wedding invitation. Â And with the combination of Kathryn’s gorgeous letterpress, Betsy’s calligraphy, and an unusual size and shape (8.5″ x 5.5″) for the overall invitation, the entire thing ended up coming together like an awesome art piece that celebrates the wedding location of New Orleans.
Kathryn designed the layout with the map idea, following the banks of the Mississippi River, which was later letterpress printed as a beautiful blind (no-ink) impression. Â Betsy filled the negative space with her amazing calligraphy, rather than following a traditional horizontal or vertical layout, which Kathryn printed in a soft gray ink. Â Betsy also calligraphed the addresses on soft pink invitation outer envelopes.
I was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of these invitations in person at Kathryn’s booth at the National Stationery Show, and of course they’re even more beautiful in person!  This is definitely a wedding invitation that could be displayed as an art print and enjoyed for many years to come.  So gorgeous – thank you so much Kathryn!
{all photos by ak photography}
Before I wrap up my coverage of this year’s National Stationery Show tomorrow, I’ve got a few more booths that I’d like to share with you. First up, another perennial favorite – Fugu Fugu Press – with their incredibly sweet letterpress cards and new fill-in-the-blank letterpress dinner party invitations:
I’m always impressed by the work from Maginating Letterpress – from the adorable characters to the near-perfect letterpress registration on each card, no detail is overlooked:
{quite possibly the cutest card ever!}
{love the spot varnish on these two holiday cards}
I also stopped by the Pearl & Marmalade and The Great Lakes booth to check out their latest cards, prints, and get a sneak peek at their upcoming 2011 calendars:
I spent some time catching up with Carrie and Hal from Red Cap Cards and checking out their latest greeting cards (I always love Carrie’s illustrated Halloween cards), notebooks, and a new series of cards featuring a collaboration with illustrator Blanca Gomez:
{Carrie’s illustrations look even more amazing when letterpress printed!}
Over on the other side of the Javits Center, I probably could have spent an hour just in the Egg Press booth gawking at all of their new cards – not to mention the new wrapping paper!
{a sneak peek at the 2011 desktop calendar}
{love the multi-dimensional elements of this die cut birthday card}
Old School Stationers also had a bunch of new botanical prints for this year’s show – my favorites are the bees and mason jar prints below – as well as new installments in their series of animal prints and cards:
I always love stopping by the Blue Barnhouse booth — Brandon’s letterpress cards are both impeccably printed and completely hilarious:
{love this “build a community” letterpress print}
I always love running into the ladies (and fellow DC residents!) of Haute Papier — their new wedding invitation book is stunning!
Of course, a trip to the Stationery Show wouldn’t be complete (at least for me) without a trip over to the Smock booth to check out their latest wedding invitations and everyday stationery designs:
{smock}
I’ve got a few final booths left for tomorrow, plus a big announcement coming up a bit later in the week!
{all photos by Oh So Beautiful Paper}
*Smock is one of my fantastic sponsors, for more on my editorial policy please click here.
After a warm, sunny, and absolutely gorgeous spring weekend, we're back to cold and rainy – although hopefully just temporarily! I'm trying to keep myself from getting bummed out while I wait for the rain to pass by, so what better to cheer things up than beautiful calligraphy from Nicole at The Left Handed Calligrapher?
For more of Nicole's styles and work, check out her website and blog – which is full of Nicole's recent calligraphy projects. Thanks Nicole!
{image credits: the left handed calligrapher}
It's been a wedding-filled week over here, so I thought I'd help end the week with some gorgeous new stationery from Smock. These town, country and isle lettersheets are blind deboss printed on the front with beautiful offset patterns on the back, all on Smock's environmentally-friendly bamboo paper:
Smock also recently released a collection of equally beautiful gift tags, also with a blind deboss on the front and patterned back:
On a slightly different note — do you recognize the calligraphy text from the first set of photos? The "Dearest Fanny" letter is from poet John Keats to Fanny Brawne, which some of you might remember from the movie Bright Star. I finally saw the movie a few weeks ago and it was everything I had expected it to be — beautiful scenery and cinematography, amazing costumes, and utterly romantic in every sense of the word. Even my husband, who usually teases me about my penchant for sappy period romances, loved Bright Star. Definitely worth adding to your netflix queue if you haven't already seen it…
{image credits: Smock}
*Smock is a sponsor on Oh So Beautiful Paper, but this is not a sponsored post. For more on my editorial policy, please click here.
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