Happy Weekend!

I don't know if it's the new chilly fall air or what, but I am sooo ready for this weekend — and for Crafty Bastards tomorrow!  Anyone also planning on going?  You can check out the vendor list right here.  But in the meantime…

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…here are a few things making me happy right now:

That's it for me this week!  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend — and if you haven't already, don't forget to check out the first part of my 2010 calendar round-up.  I'll see you all back here on Monday!

{image credits: Sloan Photographers via Once Wed

Real Invitations — Isabel’s Graduation

That's right — these aren't wedding invitations, but rather a graduation announcement and party invitation from recent art school grad Isabel!  I love that Isabel celebrated this momentous, six-years-in-the-making (see below), occasion and the beginning of her new graphic design career with an equally monumental booklet invitation:

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From Isabel: I felt my invitations should reflect the career path I'd chosen, as well as tell a story about my education.  And, since I love small keepsakes and all things paper, I wanted each invitation to be a mini souvenir of sorts.  I was very inspired by a couple of my professors at Portland State University, Precious Bugarin and Kate Bingaman-Burt, who encouraged me to use a more hands-on approach to design.  Everything was printed on my home printer.

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To make the smaller RSVP envelopes, I took apart and traced one of the large kraft paper envelopes I purchased for the invitations, scanned it in, adjusted the size, then printed, cut out, and glued them together.  I then used that file to correctly size my envelope liners, which were just lightly glued inside the envelopes.

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With some tweaking, I was able to print the booklets double-sided.  Once each page was printed and cut to size, I measured the width so I could score the covers to fit around them properly.  I also marked hole-punch guides to save guesswork.  My crocodile hole punch went through all the layers no problem, then I just tightly glued the ribbon on to bind them.  I was able to use the scraps from the booklet pages as envelope sealers, then made stickers to wrap-around seal them as well. 

In addition to the fabulous booklet-style invitation, I love the mix of the neutral kraft paper with brightly colored patterned papers for a more modern design.  Congratulations on your graduation Isabel — and thank you so much for sharing your fabulous invitations!


{image credits: Isabel Cattadoris}

Danielle + Greg’s Vintage Cinema-Inspired Wedding Invitations

So last week was all about music-inspired invitations, and this week I’ve got some totally awesome real wedding invitations inspired by foreign cinema!  Kathryn featured Danielle and Greg’s wedding a few months back, and I was so smitten with her vintage cinema inspiration that I asked Danielle, the talented designer behind Tallu-lah, if she’d be willing to share her invitations and paper ephemera in greater detail.  Lucky for us, Danielle was more than willing to oblige, so let’s get right to it!

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Danielle and Greg’s foreign cinema invitation theme was inspired in part by their wedding venue and in part by their shared love of vintage lettering and illustrations.  With these two ideas they started the creation of a vintage movie themed event:

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From Danielle: Since we’re both in the wedding industry — I work as an event planner for Samantha Smith Productions and Greg is a wedding photographer — we knew we wanted something unique and fun.  After a year and a half of being engaged and looking at venues all over the United States and Mexico, we finally found a place very close to our personalities and home, Foreign Cinema.  More then just one of the best-known restaurants in the city, the venue includes an outside courtyard where movies are shown drive-in-speaker style and a modern art gallery.  The décor is industrial chic meets Northern California.

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Once they settled on their vintage cinema theme and wedding venue, it was time to get to work on their Save the Dates.  To give their guests their first glimpse into the cinema theme of the wedding, Danielle and Greg created a Save the Date in the style of a movie poster:

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We created the look and feel and Hatch Show Print of Tennessee made it come to life though old vintage images and the process of letterpress printing.  We used words on the save the date to give guests the feel that they would be coming to a show.

Danielle’s designs for Tallu-lah are all letterpress printed, and she knew she wanted the wedding invitations to be letterpressed too.  For the invitation design, Danielle and Greg turned to Hello!Lucky to help bring their vintage cinema inspiration to life:

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The rest of the paper goods (invitations, playbill, ceremony programs, cocktail napkins, seating cards/tickets, menu, reception cards and parting gifts, Poco Dolce candy boxes, thank you cards) were created by both Danielle and Eunice Moyle of Hello!Lucky.

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I asked Eunice if she would take on the project of designing for us, I couldn’t think of anyone better to ask — she was the perfect designer for the project and was already a great business friend living in the same town as me, San Francisco.  She out-did herself, they were perfect!

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Once designed, my stationery company, Tallu-lah, printed the invites on over-sized, extra thick paper and included special details like a hand drawn map of San Francisco by calligrapher Mo Seder, a list of the top 10 things to do in San Francisco, hand stamped RSVP envelopes, and customized postage stamps – all assembled in a glassine sleeve packaged in a star-studded lined and letterpressed envelope.

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Other vintage movie items were added into the wedding like truffled popcorn before the ceremony and “hooray flags” for each guest to wave when Danielle and Greg walked back down the aisle at the end of the ceremony:

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I love that Danielle and Greg carried their cinema theme through to the escort cards – which were designed to look like vintage movie tickets and then hung for guests to find on their way to the reception:

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Danielle and Greg printed cocktail napkins to match the flow of their wedding, from the ceremony (“The Show”) in the outside courtyard, to the cocktail reception (“Intermission”) to the dinner and after-party (“The Final Act- It’s A Wrap!”) in two separate lounges – one for Mr. Piché and another Mrs. Piché – that the newlyweds created:

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Mr. Piché’s lounge (in the courtyard) is where our guests could watch “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” on cozy furniture and snack on movie treats from the “concession stand” or mini cones with salted caramel and lavender ice cream (Ed note: yum!) – while singing along to the live music of Syd and Matt York. For guests wanting to dance, Mrs. Pichés lounge (in the art gallery) offered a hip local DJ, as well as the opportunity to watch “Grease” and try treats from the dessert bar including a wedding cake covered in 300 truffles, Poco Dolce chocolate tastings accompanied with port, and an array of French macarons baked by the chef.

The vintage cinema theme was also incorporated into these reception cards, which were provided on each dinner table and contained both the menu and details for each lounge:

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As a final touch, favors from Poco Dolce chocolates packaged in a little paper box printed with the saying all old movies end with “And they lived happily ever after.  The End.”  Such a nice touch!

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Do you all love Danielle’s invitations and wedding stationery as much as I do?  I love the foreign cinema theme – and both Danielle and Hello!Lucky did an amazing job in translating the inspiration into a beautiful design.  For more photos from Danielle and Greg’s wedding, be sure to check out their feature on Snippet and Ink right here – and a huge thanks to Danielle for sharing her wedding stationery with us!

A Few Favorite Wedding Invitations

Vané from Brooklyn Bride asked me to guest blog over on her column at Bridal Buzz last week – so I decided to pull together a few of my favorite wedding invitations. 

Among the list are some newer favorites that you'll probably recognize, as well as some older favorites, like Katie + Ben's silhouette wedding invitation booklets and Julia Rothman's hand illustrated letterpress invitations:

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Check out the full post over on Bridal Buzz right here.  And thanks so much to Vané for the opportunity!

{image credits: Chellé Paperie and Jen Causey for Julia Rothman}

Happy Weekend!

Hello again everyone!  Do you all have fun plans for the weekend?  I'm actually looking forward to taking it easy this weekend – well, that and the National Book Festival on Saturday.  It's one of my favorite DC annual events and it looks like the organizers have got a bunch of really great authors lined up this year.  In the meantime…

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…here are a few of my favorite links from this week:

That's it for me this week – I'll see you all back here again on Monday!

{image credits: Flowertoss Photography via Snippet & Ink}