Wedding Invitations — Belamour Design

Victoria from Belamour Design recently sent over a few designs from her portfolio.  Victoria likes to focus on the details (or the “elements of style” as she calls them), often resulting in an invitation design inspired by the style of the event itself.  Since your wedding invitations are usually the first indication your guests will receive of your wedding style (black-tie ballroom, informal backyard, semi-formal garden wedding, etc.), I thought I’d include two designs for two very different weddings. First up, a blue and white ocean-inspired invitation design for a laid-back seaside wedding:

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The second design comes from the opposite end of the design spectrum, with beautiful calligraphy details perfect for a more formal, black tie ballroom wedding:

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Thanks Victoria!  So tell me - how are you incorporating your wedding style into your invitations?

{image credits: Belamour Design}

Kristy + Adam’s Hand-Painted Letterpress Save the Dates

Before we jump back into holiday cards, I just have to share these amazing hand-painted watercolor letterpress Save the Dates created by Kristy at Momental Designs for her upcoming 10-year vow renewal ceremony.  The pop of watercolor detail works so well with the letterpress impressions on thick cotton paper – and Kristy was kind enough to send over the background behind her design.

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From Kristy: Hand-painted details and original artwork are my passion.  While planning my own renewal celebration I knew letterpress had to be included but of course wanted to incorporate my signature hand-painted look.  Thus, hand-painted letterpress was born!  I simply love the very visceral, textured nature of letterpress.  When combined with juicy, romantic watercolor brushstrokes, letterpress, in my opinion is transformed to a whole new level.  The intimate touch of the pressed image first makes an impression but then the washy, romantic quality of the watercolor gives the perfect finish.

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Choice of materials were extremely important for this project.  I wanted to mimic the many natural occurring textures so obvious in Zion National Park, where are renewal ceremony is taking place.  From Crane’s roughly textured cotton stock to the champagne silk ribbon and cobalt blue envelopes, every detail needed to be reminiscent of the crystal clear river, intense blue skies and towering red rock landscape of Zion.  So many of our guests have never traveled to this magical place.  The goal was to translate the Zion experience on paper in hopes of creating great anticipation of the adventure to come!

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Original illustration didn’t stop at the save the date cover!  Each page features one of my sketches with watercolor details added throughout.  At the center of the booklet is a hand-drawn map which is not only functional but seems to unify the look overall.  Envelope liners are reproductions of vintage topographical maps.  I just love the rich orange and blue colors — nothing needed to be altered!

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Betsy Dunlap created a printable file with the calligraphy for my envelope backflap.  This was a great budget option I would add — it certainly doesn’t hurt to save when you can!  I am saving patiently to have Betsy pen all the invitation outer envelopes!  When I first contacted Betsy I proclaimed that this particular lettering style was simply perfect as it really mimicked the red rock landscape of Zion!  Thank you Betsy for your artistry!

Thanks so much Kristy!  You can read more about Kristy’s design process right here and see some of her other recent projects here.

{image credits: Momental Designs}

Best-of Real Wedding Invitations РVan̩ + Chad

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but one of my very favorite things about the blog world is the sense of community that develops over time with your readers and other fellow bloggers.  I’ve been very lucky to meet so many amazing women through this blog and The B List, and one of my absolute favorite people that I’ve met so far is Vané from Brooklyn Bride.  Just to show how nice she is, Vané was kind enough to share some of the details from her modern wedding invitation design for one of my first-ever real invitation features:

Brooklyn-Bride-green-white-modern-letterpress-wedding-invitations

The thing I love most about Vané’s invitations is the way she incorporated key design details – like the Brooklyn icons, green and white color palette, modern calligraphy and an architect-designed typeface (for her architect husband!) – to create a completely unique and personalized design, and one that was 100% perfect for Vané’s modern design aesthetic:

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Brooklyn-Bride-green-white-modern-letterpress-wedding-invitations-calligraphy

Another cool detail?  Since the invitations were letterpress printed, the tiny sesame seeds on the bagel were left white, and so popped up above the rest of the bagel.  Those kinds of little details are one of the many reasons that I heart letterpress.

Check out the original post right here.

{image credits: bethalee photography via brooklyn bride}

Quilled Marriage Certificate

Quilling is one of the few paper arts that I actually know very little about — but I’m definitely curious to learn more when I see the results of this amazing technique.  Quilling expert Ann Martin sent over this beautiful wedding certificate that she recently created using silver-gilded black paper:

Quilled-Marriage-Certificate

Can you see the subtle silver detailing on the floral elements below? The calligraphy on the marriage certificate was done by Carole Foster.

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Luckily for us, Ann has posted tutorials on her blog for anyone interested in learning about this beautiful technique – like this one on how to create a beautiful filigree flower card.  Thanks Ann!

{image credits: Ann Martin}

{happy weekend!}

Well, hello Friday!  I can't believe that this is the last weekend before Thanksgiving!  Next week I'm heading down to my mom's house in Florida – the first time I've been home in more than 3 years, and the first Thanksgiving that I'll be spending with my mom since meeting my husband.  See, my dad lives just outside of New York City and my husband's family lives in upstate New York, so we mostly end up splitting our holidays between those two sides of the family.  Now, for this year's Thanksgiving holiday, I'm really looking forward to nice weather and sunshine instead of snow!  But in the meantime…

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…here are a few favorites from the week:

I'll be here on Monday and Tuesday of next week, and then for the rest of the week I'll be re-running some of my favorite past invitation and save the date features.  So don't forget to stop by next week!

{image credits: cassia via mary ruffle}