Happy Weekend!

Happy Friday everyone! And a Friday the 13th at that! It’s finally starting to feel like fall here in DC, which… well, I was really starting to wonder if we’d be having 80-degree days into November! We’re in full Halloween costume planning mode over here, since Sophie has asked to be a “Winter Fairy” this year. I’m not really sure where she got the idea, but we’re planning to DIY an icicle crown and experiment with some white and glittery make up. I’ve been spending lots of time on Pinterest looking for inspiration, and I think this is going to be lots of fun! But in the meantime…

Bright Room Studio / Pumpkins

Watercolor illustration by Bright Room Studio

…a few links for your weekend!

Did you see Jenny’s tutorial for painting your fridge? I went with white for our studio fridge, but maybe I’ll try painting it a pretty mint green!

Yay for sweater season! This slouchy cardigan looks cozy.

Definitely feeling the natural wood trend in the kitchen! 

I’m loving all the planters at CB2 these days. This one might be my fave, or maybe this one?

DC area folks! Pub Dread is offering timed entry tickets to benefit disaster relief efforts in Puerto Rico. You should go!

Sigh. How our current president thinks the U.S. government works. 

I’ve been meaning to get a legit first aid box for my little family – how cute is this one?

 

This week on Oh So Beautiful Paper:

Romantic wedding invitations with a vellum overlay

Halloween cards, part boo! (aka 2)

Behind the Stationery with Yao Cheng Design â€“ I love her beautiful watercolor florals!

Such pretty gray calligraphy wedding invitations with deckled edges

Beautiful calligraphy inspiration from Angelique Ink

 

That’s it for me this week. To everyone in northern California, please stay safe out there, friends. I’ll see you all back here next week. xoxo

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Hey everyone! I’m super excited to shine a spotlight on today’s calligrapher, because I’m a fan not just of her paper projects – but also her non-paper lettering work (hint: ink for the body!). Meet Angi Phillips of Angelique Ink. She’s a calligrapher, artist, designer, and teacher (she teaches calligraphy workshops!). Let’s take a look at her mix of work, including some designs that have me re-thinking whether I should get a tattoo… â€“ Jen

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Angi likes a blend of traditional and modern style in calligraphy, as you can see in these wedding invitation collections. “I love it when a client asks me to do something a little different, and I can be creative with the styling,” says Angi.

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Every artist gets inspired in different ways. I loved hearing what most inspires Angi as a calligrapher. “Much of the inspiration behind my style comes in the form of poetry, which may sound odd since it’s not really a visual form of inspiration. I find depth in words, particularly poetic verse, gives my style a sense of mystery and longing, desire, romance and introspection.”

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

And here’s a cool mural showing off her lettering work! “I like that calligraphy is an art that gives words a second meaning, an extra layer of depth and emotion,” shares Angi. Large scale murals are one of her favorite non-traditional surfaces for calligraphy. “Bringing the words from pen to paper and then bringing them to life in a larger than life setting makes for a fun day’s work and it’s extra satisfying to take it in once it’s finished,” says Angi.

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

Another cool example of calligraphy in a non-traditional place — tattoos! Angi shares, “I’ve been doing quite a few wedding date roman numeral designs for couples tattoos lately.”

Calligraphy Inspiration: Angelique Ink

And a peek of traditional calligraphy on paper seems like a pretty place to pause. Big thanks to Angi for sharing her work!

Photos via Angelique Ink

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges

As much as I loooooooove color, there’s just nothing more classic than soft gray monochromatic letterpress. Combine that with whimsical calligraphy and romantic deckled edges and you’ve got the ingredients for a seriously beautiful wedding invitation suite. Meghan of 200 Spring designed these romantic gray calligraphy wedding invitations with deckled edges for her own wedding, and you’ll definitely want to read below to see the enormous DIY escort card display that she made for her reception!

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

 

From MeghanIt was a dream in the making to actually be able to design my own wedding invitations and day of stationery! I am a huge fan of neutrals and greenery, which is what my wedding style was built around. So for the invitations I went with a really classic crisp white cotton paper with letterpress printing in a soft gray ink.

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

While keeping our names as the focal point, I used a sans serif font to balance out the suite. My actual trifold invitation was quite large, so I had them printed on 100% cotton Crane Lettra paper and hand deckled the edges myself.

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

I had this idea for a while that  I wanted my invitations to be more then a piece of paper – I wanted them to be an experience. From peeling off the wax seal, to opening up the trifold invitation wrapped in vellum, to the feel of the paper and the indent of the letterpress printing. I just think the details are what makes it so special.

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

The day of details were also very important to me. As an artist I can definitely be a perfectionist. I had this idea in my mind that I wanted a large escort card display. It started at 8ft x 8ft display….but when  my now husband and I walked into Home Depot and pulled the wood from the stack….cue the blank stares. lol. Then there was my overly exaggerated “BUT I HAVE A VISION” speech. Lets just say I was talked down to an 8ft x 4ft escort card display.

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

I did some spot calligraphy for the words “our favorite people” and had that laser cut, leveled and hung all of the paper pockets, hung the deer head – and voila! Our wedding was in a barn and my husband is a big hunter, so the deer head was pretty important, and the pockets were something to make it a little more fun and interactive!

Romantic Gray Calligraphy Wedding Invitations with Deckled Edges by 200 Spring

Thanks Meghan!

Design and Calligraphy: Meghan Trimarco of 200 Spring

Paper: Crane Lettra with hand deckled edges

Ribbons: The Poetry of Silk

Check out the Designer Rolodex for more tal­ented wed­ding invi­ta­tion design­ers and the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Lauren Fair Photography

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Our next installment of Behind the Stationery take us to Columbus, Ohio to visit Yao Cheng’s design studio. She’s not only the owner and watercolor artist, but also the calligrapher and graphic designer of all things Yao Cheng Design! Over time, Yao has found that designing for custom clients versus her product line requires different creative processes and dives into how she approaches each of them. With a new baby and a growing team, she navigates through the changes in her business and talks about the reality of coming back to work after maternity leave. Here’s Yao! —Megan Soh

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

From Yao: Looking back, it’s been a very interesting journey of what I thought my business was going to be and what it has become. When I first left my full-time corporate design job to start my own venture in 2012, I thought my business was going to revolve around my interpretation of hand-painted Pysanky eggs. At the same time, I was playing around the idea of art prints and greeting cards because I really loved painting watercolor more than anything else. As I was figuring all of this out, I applied for my first craft show. It was at that show that I had everything displayed and it became very clear to me what people were gravitating towards. Customers felt more connected to my art prints and cards because it’s a natural interpretation of my paintings. After that show, I shifted my focus into the direction of art prints and stationery.

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Our business is unique in both the style of watercolor that I create and also in the way that it is structured. We offer giclée art prints, greeting cards, wedding stationery (custom, pre-designed, and calligraphy services!), and gift wrap in addition to our line of textile products. We also have an exciting collaboration with Chronicle Books in which you can find my watercolor designs on a line of notebooks, notecards and the latest One Line a Day journal!

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Photo by Chancey Charm

It wasn’t until 2013 that I really dove into the world of wedding stationery. The Style Me Pretty post of a styled autumn wedding featuring some of my first wedding invitations was really the beginning of our wedding business. As a creative, I love being able to touch and hold things in my hands. The tactile quality makes me feel like I have a tangible connection to something real. Whenever I’m designing wedding invitations, I try to replicate this feeling. I think of wedding invitations as more than just a piece of paper, they are small pieces of artwork that really captures a special moment in a couples life and all the memories of that day!

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Photo by Lily Dent for the Metropreneur

Everyone knows that as a small business, you wear many different hats. That is certainly true with us! We are a very small team at the moment as I am very careful about how fast we grow. Because I have a little one, my days are limited to an 8-hour day. We plan out our next week’s calendar the Friday before, so when I come in in the morning, I have a pretty concise agenda of what needs to be done. Still, I am known to be overly ambitious with my tasks, so I almost never finish all of my tasks for that day! I could be spending the morning answering emails or questions from my team, then jumping on calls with clients or new manufacturers, or even doing a styled shoot for an upcoming newsletter. In a week, I try to carve out an afternoon or a full day to paint, but I wish I had more time devoted to painting!

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

I spend 70-80% of my time running the business, but it’s my dream to flip that so I am able to spend that amount of time painting new work. Don’t get me wrong — I am fascinated by the business side of things because I think learning about strategy, planning, pricing, bookkeeping, etc is all empowering. I think it’s crucial, as the owner, to understand the basics of all the facets of the business before delegating it to others. However, I recognize my strength is in painting, so that’s where I’d like to focus my time on one day.

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Photo by Lily Dent for the Metropreneur

Our design studio is located in downtown Columbus, Ohio. It’s a space that I am very proud of because it is almost exactly how I’ve envisioned my dream space! We are in a very unique building that is zoned both commercially and residentially. This gave us the opportunity to have our own kitchen and bathroom, offering us the privacy that I knew I’d need in order to focus on the day-to-day! My favorite feature about this space is the large windows that bring in so much natural light, which is great for painting. Half the space is an open loft, and that’s where we spend most of our time. I love that this studio inhabits every step of the design process from painting the original artwork to designing the final product or design. I even had a custom table made by a talented local carpenter so that it would be large enough for us to host our workshopscreative meet-ups, and other events!

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

My design process for wedding stationery is different from how I approach our product line in that I include sketches during the process. For custom bespoke work, I have an initial chat with the client to get a feel of the style and colors that they are looking for. Once I have some visuals to work from, I start sketching with a black pen different layout options of what I think would work. This is actually the most involved part of the design process because I am fully designing out multiple versions of the invitation suite so that all of the layouts and wording are in place before I move into painting. Once we have the layout and color palette approved, I will start painting and adding color in the pieces. It’s sort of magical to see something black and white come to life in watercolor! Designing wedding invitations requires this type of process because I want to make sure our bride can get a visual understanding through every step.

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

We really value working closely with our brides through every step of the process! Having planned my own wedding, I know how special and important this day is to each person. One of our most unique custom wedding pieces is my custom maps because the couple gets to highlight what they love about and around the place that they are getting married. I really enjoy creating each one of them because they are more illustration-based and different from the rest of my work. I also create the calligraphy script, making our invitations a complete package. Everything feels cohesive because I can match the calligraphy style to the feel of the entire suite. I think addressing envelopes might be my favorite part of wedding stationery, actually! It’s mindless and a different translation of my love for the free-flowing, fluidity of watercolor.

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

However, outside of our wedding work, I take a different approach. First of all, I skip the sketching in black and white phase because I find it much more liberating and challenging to work when I am not really sure of where I am going. My work is very connected to the idea of intuition and improvisation. I like to respond and be in the moment with my paintings, and often find that this is where I find happy surprises! Watercolor, as a medium, lends itself very well to my approach of painting because of how quickly it dries. This allows me to paint fast, usually within an hour or two, and move on to the next idea. I am usually painting 3 different things at once because of this. I love this way of “sketch painting” because it takes away the expectation that this artwork will be the masterpiece. I am free to explore new ideas, expound on them or move on to another and not feel too attached. So in the end, I might make 3-4 painted versions of the final design. Once a piece is finished, we will scan them into the computer and then minimally edit it in Photoshop.

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

One of my business struggles of this year has been ramping back up to speed from taking almost 6 months off for maternity leave. I am so grateful that we were able to keep everything running while I was gone, but I would have never expected the kind of challenges I’ve faced coming back. Having turned down many projects and going months without creating new work, I do feel like I “fell behind” in some ways. I have found the panic of feeling like we might not be relevant at any moment to be a common experience for small business owners! Still, it was a fear that became very real as my overhead increased with a studio space and payroll to run every month.

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

Another daily struggle is learning how to be a good boss. Managing employees is not something I learned in art school, and it is definitely unique to each business. I’ve also had to learn not to allow my creative “monkey” brain to get side-tracked with all of the ideas that I think of in a day. This is definitely something I’ve recently learned and happens when you expand to more than just yourself. When it was just me, I didn’t have to plan my calendar out for the year — every product release happened when I had the time to get to it. After all, it was just me, so if it meant working longer days, I could do that. But now, strategies have to be made and clients are committed to far in advance because there are other people involved now. I can no longer just throw a curve ball last minute and think we can stay on schedule with everything else!

Behind the Stationery: Yao Cheng Design

The way my business is structured really reflects the person that I am. I am never satisfied with doing one thing, and I think my strongest work comes from doing multiple projects at once and allowing my ideas for each to bounce off of one another. I truly believe in the work that I do and see so many avenues that my watercolors can go, so it makes sense for me to have every product or project culminate in watercolor, but take on lives of their own.

Photos by Christa Kimble Photography except where noted.

Want to be featured in the Behind the Stationery column? Reach out to Megan at megan [at] ohsobeautifulpaper [dot] com for more details.

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations

These invitations combine two of my current favorite paper trends: dreamy vellum and romantic deckled edges! Michelle Castle of Honey Paper designed these gray vellum wine country wedding invitations, with a beautiful vellum overlay on invitations printed on the dreamiest Italian paper with deckled edges. The juxtaposition of crisp vellum and textured paper in this suite is simply stunning. More please!

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

From Michelle: Guests gathered for an outdoor summer wedding ceremony and reception at The Velvet Bee Vineyard in one of California’s picturesque wine regions. The couple wanted their love and appreciation of the arts to be reflected in every aspect of their wedding day from the hand moulded paper of the invitations to the elegantly handcrafted ceramic dishes.

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

Texture and nostalgia were integral to the atmosphere. Sheets of white linen the color of cut radish covered the tables and each vase held the velvety, pinnate leaves of silver ragwort, clutches of white zinnia and thick downy roses. Bread and butter plates, saucers and glasses resembling 18th-century creamware enhanced the dreamy ambiance.

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

We used a combination of hand moulded Italian papers and vellum for the invitation suite and menus emphasizing the polarity of the textures. The dense, fibrous invitation and reply card were printed with a soft gray ink in a font suggestive of a carefully handwritten letter. The invitations were overlaid with wafer thin vellum printed with drawings of garden roses in gray and wrapped in silk ribbon, an orchestration of texture and tone. Creamy white wax seals impressed with a bee stamp finished the invitations. Envelopes were lined with a drawing of a single rose in gray repeating the botanical style of the vellum pieces. Envelopes were addressed in a thin line calligraphic script in gold ink.

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

A spectrum of gray, cream and white unified the paper details and ceramics – the slow, rich beauty of stone, slate, ash – gray and its association with the passage of time, memory, storms and wisdom. The menu repeated the vellum of the invitation and was printed with a pale, stone gray ink. Focusing on texture and the subtle tone on tone of transition from white to gray was a nod to the beautifully crafted Astier de Villatte ceramics at the table. Menus were placed atop plates with either gilt edges or beaded rims.

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

The polarity of the clay and glaze, as well as the lightness of the ceramic objects, was something we wanted the stationery and menus to reflect. The lucid, ephemeral quality of the vellum and the feathery edged moulded deckled paper carried those qualities from the invitation suite to the menus.

Gray Vellum Wine Country Wedding Invitations by Honey Paper

Thanks Michelle!

Design & Calligraphy: Honey Paper

Paper: Arturo Italian

Honey Paper is a member of the Designer Rolodex – check out more of their beautiful work right here or visit the real invi­ta­tions gallery for more wedding invitation ideas!

Photo Credits: Cara Robbins Studio