01/18/2018

Purple Watercolor Floral and Calligraphy Wedding Invitations

These beautiful wedding invitations combine two major trends for 2018: Pantone’s 2018 Color of the Year (Ultraviolet!) and a beautiful vellum overlay! Victoria of Design House of Moira created these vibrant purple watercolor floral and calligraphy wedding invitations with intricate floral illustrations on handmade paper. And that gorgeous hand painted envelope liner! Such a fun way to bring rich color to a wonderful winter wedding.

From Victoria: The bride was torn between two different design paths: a simple suite with monochromatic lettering and artwork and something more moody to reflect the winter wedding…so we did both! She wanted to keep the invitation formal, elegant, and subtle while still incorporating some of the darker tones that reminded her so much of winter.

Created on Arpa paper, a Spanish handmade paper with gorgeous, soft deckling on the edges for a natural and organic look, we designed the main pieces of the suite with modern calligraphy, simple type, and line botanical artwork. To bring in the moody feeling, we created watercolor artwork in deep plums and burgundies as well as a contemporary landscape tree painting reflective of the bride and groom’s hometown and the views from the bride’s parents home, where the wedding was held. We incorporated the darker tones into the vellum overlay, envelope liners, and custom postage.

The save the dates were a tri-fold design, slipped into a small envelope lined with the berry artwork and bound with a thin band of vellum printed in the floral pattern. The ceremony program design, a personal favorite of mine, consists of a vellum cover and is on a smaller scale at 3×5 inches. The booklet was stitched along the spine in pale blush thread.

The entire suite was mailed with custom postage featuring two different artwork styles: one with the darker plum tones and one featuring the line botanicals used throughout the printed pieces. Each of the three envelopes in the suite featured different envelope liners: the save the date opened to the plum artwork, the reply card to the line botanical art and the main invitation featured the landscape painting in dark purple and plum hues.

All of the line and watercolor artwork and modern calligraphy was created by hand for this suite by Design House of Moira.

Thanks Victoria!

Design & Calligraphy: Design House of Moira
Arpa paper: Orange Art

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more talÂented wedÂding inviÂtaÂtion designÂers and the real inviÂtaÂtions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Design House of Moira

01/16/2018

Classic Neutral Italian Destination Wedding Invitations

The invitations from Rachel Kim of Fourteen-Forty include all the goodies: hand calligraphy, a wax seal, gorgeous vintage stamps, and spot illustrations. The classic and clean neutral palette with pops of blush and gold is the perfect choice for these Italian destination wedding invitations. Clean, classic, and executed to perfection!

From Rachel: Cayla and Brian celebrated the end of summer with their friends and family by planning a destination wedding in Ravello, Italy just above the Amalfi Coast. Ocean views and traditional Italian architecture made this wedding one of the most beautiful weddings we’ve ever seen!

Cayla and Brian wanted to keep a neutral palette with touches of blush and gold here and there. After their very first meeting us, it was clear that their invitations would include all of our favorites: hand calligraphy, a wax seal, and vintage stamps. In keeping with the elegance of their venue, we went with a double thick letterpress invitation complete with gold edge painting for a little something special. To top it off, we designed a beautiful monogram using their first initials and tied all the pieces together with a blush ribbon. We like to think that any type of wrap whether it’s made of vellum, string or a bellyband makes guests feel like they’re unwrapping a present!

For their main envelope, we sourced a variety of travel inspired vintage stamps in shades of pink, red and burgundy. In addition to charcoal ink calligraphy, we sealed every invitation in our classic gold wax. As much as we love all the other colors we offer, you canâ€™t go wrong with a gold seal!

Day-of pieces like menus, programs, napkins, matches and welcome notes are opportunities to have a little more fun, especially for a more classic wedding. We always recommend a map and events card to our clients getting married abroad. Theyâ€™re a great way to get your guests excited about the trip ahead! Cayla and Brian fell in love with our accordions and so we designed two different maps; one that gave guests a general idea of where Ravello is and another that combined the weekend events, transportation details, and hotel options.

Thanks Rachel!

Design: Fourteen-Forty
Planning: Exclusive Italy Weddings
Calligraphy: Papersoul

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more talÂented wedÂding inviÂtaÂtion designÂers and the real inviÂtaÂtions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Greg Finck

01/12/2018

Happy Weekend!

Happy Friday everyone! We made it through the first FULL week of the year! Before I get to this week’s links, if you haven’t already â€“ please take a couple minutes to fill out our 2018 Reader Survey! We use the survey to help determine our content for the year (and beyond!), so your input is enormously helpful. And after you complete the survey, leave a comment on this post to enter to win a pack of stationery from me! Yay! But in the meantime…

Image from Ms. Vintage Nicole via Wild Hart Paper in #dailydoseofpaper

…a few links for your weekend!

Serena Williams on marriage and being a new mom. My favorite line: “I think sometimes women limit themselves. Iâ€™m not sure why we think that way, but I know that weâ€™re sometimes taught to not dream as big as men, not to believe we can be a president or a CEO, when in the same household, a male child is told he can be anything he wants. Iâ€™m so glad I had a daughter. I want to teach her that there are no limits.”

Totally obsessed with this gorgeous tassel chandelier

Feeling the love for neutral vintage rugs

10 of the world’s most beautiful road trips (who wants to go with me?)

These blush pink dining chairs are so pretty â€“ I wish I needed new chairs!

Interesting: Facebook says it will start showing more content from friends and family, less content from brands and advertisers. What do you think? Is this a move in the right direction?

This modern cut glass decanter would look so lovely on any bar cart

The holidays may be over, but that won’t stop me from enjoying this mulled latte (it sounds delicious!)

This week on Oh So Beautiful Paper:

Glamorous mixed metals wedding invitations

Behind the Stationery with Baltic Club

Did you sign up for the Blueprint Model 2018? Let me know!

Beautiful first birthday party invitations inspired by The Little Prince

So much inspiring calligraphy from Hello Maurelle

Don’t forget to take our 2018 Reader Survey!

That’s it for me this week! I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you back here next week! xoxo

01/11/2018

Inspiring Calligraphers: Maurelle Calligraphy and Design

Hello to the new year (and finally some non-freezing temperatures here in New England!). As dependable as a blizzard in Maine (the great children’s book Blizzard Wizard is written by a Maine author, after all), it’s safe to assume that looking at beautiful calligraphy from the most talented and inspiring calligraphers puts you in a good mood. So here goes with today’s inspiration, Maurelle Calligraphy. Let’s take a peek! â€“ Jen

Maurelle was introduced to calligraphy when she was just fourteen â€” and fell in love with the art. “College happened, and I never picked up the pen again until six years ago,” she says. “This time around, I discovered script calligraphy (Copperplate), and I fell in love the second time around.” Maurelle channeled her natural entrepreneurial spirit and started her design business four years ago.

Photo Credit: Christine Pienaar Photography

How Maurelle describes herself in her own words:

“A creative soul, lettering artist, designer and teacher. A full time mother to three children (with a new baby that arrived 2 months ago) and wife to a very supportive husband living in the beautiful British Columbia.”

Photo Credit: Rachel May Photography

Maurelle first learned the traditional Copperplate calligraphy, with all of its rules to follow. “Along the way, I have used these essential rules to transition to a modern style of calligraphy,” she shares. “My lettering style is inspired by nature, the natural and delicate movement of foliage. It is now a culmination of old world charm, minimalism and beauty in imperfection.”

Photo Credit: White Linen Photography

Photo Credit: Maru Photography

One of Maurelle’s favorite projects was a custom invitation for a wedding in Iceland. The invitation included a hand-drawn painting of the venue and church. “It was an incredible experience because I stepped out of my comfort zone when I used acrylic as a medium to draw,” shares Maurelle.

Photo Credit: Mackenzie Jane Photography

Photo Credit: Melissa Gidney Photography

What happens when you make a mistake as a calligrapher? People make mistakes, right? Here’s what Maurelle shared:

“Mistakes are opportunities to learn! Since calligraphy is usually done using traditional dip pen and ink, sometimes errors are just unavoidable. For wedding invitations, it is more forgiving since I have to digitize my design first and edit it with a program before sending it to the printer. For place cards and envelopes, I usually require at least 20% extra stationery, and I have learned techniques from past experiences to minimize mistakes. For custom work like a wedding vow sometimes an ink blot or wrong spelling can get in the way at the very last sentence, I just take a deep breath and start all over again!”

Photo Credit: Erin Sousa

Photo Credit: Minted Photography

I just love when calligraphers dabble in illustration, too. So pretty! A big thanks to Maurelle of Maurelle Calligraphy and Design for sharing a sweet roundup of her lettering work. See you soon!

p.s. Check out all of our past calligrapher features right here!

01/11/2018

The Little Prince First Birthday Party Invitation

Hi everyone! Just a quick housekeeping note before we jump into today’s post: Registration for the Blueprint Model 2018 closes at 11:59 pm TONIGHT! Check out my blog post with all the details from earlier in the week, or go here to register!

We can all agree that The Little Prince is one of our all-time favorite children’s books, yes? I love that artist Kristy Rice of Momental Designs used this beloved book as the inspiration for her son’s first birthday party invitation! If you’re familiar with Kristy’s work, then you know that she always goes the extra mile to create the most special and thoughtful invitations. You’ll just have to read below to see all the details she incoporated into this “The Little Prince” first birthday party invitation â€“ it’s absolutely dreamy!

From Kristy: Izzyâ€™s beautiful and unique first birthday invitations were a high art twist on Antoine de Saint-ExupÃ©ry’s beloved childrenâ€™s story â€œThe Little Prince.â€ All of the artwork for the stationery was developed in a more detailed and realistic style compared to the original bookâ€™s illustrations.

Perhaps the most special piece for the whole event was a calligraphy backdrop written by Sarah of Flourish Grace. We wrote a letter to Izzy and gave her the text, so all guests could share in our sentiments to him. Here is what we wrote:

â€œDear Isaac our Izzy Wizzy baby guy,

You’ve shown us what it is to live, really live…to love bigger, to trust more, to make time for what matters, to pay attention, to put our phones down, to listen to God more, to love mornings, to marvel… to blow raspberries and let it be the best part of the day.

Love, Mama and Papaâ€

For the invitation itself, we created a custom game board-style box inspired by the Little Prince. At 17 inches by 10 inches, it was even the size of a board game! A spinner asked guests â€œWhat will the Little Prince teach today?â€ and allowed them to indulge in a bit of play as the explored the invitation. Each box had specially sized compartments to hold a copy of the book, a sheet of custom watercolor stickers, and small trinkets inspired by Antoine de Saint-ExupÃ©ry’s beloved words.

And we could not send our guests home without special favors! We curated a case full of fun stuff, with the title â€œA Visual Map and How-to Guide to Seeing with Your Little Kid Eyes.” Each mini suitcase was stuffed with time-honored goodies guaranteed to turn back the hands of time, even just for one afternoon; candy cigarettes, garbage pail kids, balsa wood airplane, bazooka bubble gum, Lip Smackers lip balm, Pop Rocks and a Slinky!

In the lid a watercolor map was custom fitted, calling out the “steps” to revisiting your childhood fun! To name a few: “Pop some rocks and swig some soda if you’re brave”, and “Read The Little Prince, it’s weird and wonderful and witty, just read it…k?” We really wanted our guests not only to read the book, but to experience the lessons of this classic story in a fun and interactive way, and to take a child-like perspective on life, even just for a few minutes.

Thanks so much Kristy! BTW â€“ you can see Kristy’s whimsical adoption baby shower invitations right here!

Design: Momental Designs

Calligraphy: Flourish Grace

Momental Designs is a member of the Designer Rolodex â€“ you can see more of their beautiful work right hereor visit the real inviÂtaÂtions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Dolci Momenti Photography