12/20/2013

Happy Weekend!

Happy Friday everyone! Less than a week before Christmas! I’ll be back on Monday and Tuesday with a couple of quick (but very fun) posts before heading off for our annual holiday hiatus. But in the meantime…

Our New Year’s Eve Cocktail Dinner Party with St-Germain

…a few links for your weekend!

The original Christmas card
Some of the prettiest bouquets you ever did see
Pretty poinsettias!
Love these printable Christmas gift tags
Jordan has the best holiday DIY ideas

This week on Oh So Beautiful Paper:

A New Year’s Eve cocktail dinner party with St-Germain â€“ and all the recipes!
Phoebe’s floral and gold foil baby announcements
New Year’s Eve party favors, with printable tags!
Two ideas for personalizing hand delivered envelopes: hand painting and rubber stamp borders (more to come next week!)
Lovely hand lettered prints from Oh My Deer
Pretty Paper in the Office:Â Notebooks!
Lots of ideas for incorporating signature drink signs into your wedding
Well Said Type: Radikal
These DIY handmade notebooks make wonderful gifts or wedding favors

Check back soon for this weekâ€™s cocktail! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and Iâ€™ll see you back here early next week!Â xoxo

12/19/2013

DIY Tutorial: Handmade Patterned Notebooks

A handmade gift (or wedding favor) is always such a special way to show someone how much you care. With the holiday season in full swing, we’ve been brainstorming what handmade gifts to make this year for family and friends (an Antiquaria tradition!). This year, one gift that will be under the tree of all of our loved ones are a set of these patterned journals. They’re small enough to be carried around in a handbag which is ideal so that they’ll always be there to capture a great idea or quick thought.Â â€“Â Bailey and Emma of Antiquaria

We will be bundling them into sets of three but any quantity would be lovely! Six would be so luxurious for a friend who loves to write or sketch! While the process of making these journals has quite a few steps, they are fast and easyâ€¦we promise. You can easily knock out making them for all of your loved ones in a day if you work in an assembly line process!

Step 1: First, you will need to cut your cover sheets (we used our “Annabelle Violet” Floral Patterned Paper) and your text interior sheets (we used 4 sheets) to size. For ease, we just cut the 8.5″x11″ into 2 pieces (final measurement 8.5″x5.5″) using a metal ruler, craft knife and self healing mat. This way, there is not any paper waste! This also makes a wonderfully small pocket notebook size.

Step 2: Next, you’ll fold both the cover and interior pages in half. In order to make a clean fold on our cover paper we scored it down the center (at the 4.25″ mark). The interior sheets (8 in total) we just folded in half and used a bone folder to make the fold crisp.

Step 3: We will be stitching these notebooks together, so we’ve got make holes to thread our needle through. Position your ruler over the center fold in the text paper stack. Make marks at 1 inch, 2.75 inches and 4.5inches. We’ve used a dark pen here so that you can see the dots…but feel free to use a pencil or whatever you have on hand.

Step 4: After you’ve marked your holes, you will need to punch through them with an awl. Stack your cover and interior pages together before making clean puncher marks though ALL of the sheets. This doesn’t take much force. If it helps, you can use binder clips to hold the pages and cover together and keep it straight.

Step 5: Now you’re ready to sew! This step contains many sub-steps that go quickly once you get the hang of it. Thread your needle with bookbinding thread. We used approx. 18 inches for each book because it’s better to cut off extra than to come up short! If you’re having a hard time threading your needle, you can run a little beeswax on the tip to make it stiff and easier to thread through.

Step 5a: Thread your needle through the center hole on the outside of your journal as shown above. Pull through, leaving a tail that is approximately 6 inches long.

Step 5b: Now sew through the top hole in the inside of the journal as shown above. Make sure you still have your 6″ tail on the outside and you don’t pull it through!

Step 5c: Next, you’ll bring your needle down and sew through the bottom hole on the outside of your journal.

Step 5d: Now, you’ll sew through the center hole once more, ending up on the outside cover.

Step 5e: Once you’ve pulled your thread through the center a second time, you can take your needle off of the thread. Make sure that there is one thread end on either side of the spine thread (the one that’s down the center).

Step 5f: Pull your thread taught (not too hard or you’ll rip the paper) making sure that there is no slack on the outside or inside of the journal. Loop one thread under the other into a knot to tie off the binding.

Step 6: Now we decorate! Instead of having loose string on the binding or tying it into a bow, we decided to secure it with sealing wax! Pull your two binding threads across the center front of the journal. Drip hot wax (we use a wax formulated for a glue gun-for ease) in the center over the threads (see above). Using your wax seal of choice, press it into the hot wax until it cools and releases (see below). Trim off and make the thread ends even, if desired.

Step 7: We’re not going to lie… this may be the trickiest step out of the whole process! Once the journal is finished and Â folded, you’ll need to make the edges of the book even so that they’re crisp and clean, like the journals that you buy in a store. The trick to this is using a REALLY sharp, new blade on your craft knife. If you’re making a lot of these journals, you may need to change your blade more than once!

Line up your ruler with the edge of your front cover. Make sure that all of your pages and the back cover are flat and pressed down (we kinda lean on the whole journal and ruler at the same time so that it doesn’t shift). Now, start trimming off the excess. It will take a few passes but will eventually be a clean, straight edge!

Et voila!Â Now your journal is finished and ready to give! We guarantee that your loved ones will cherish these little pretties for years to come. They may even ask for them year after year.

Materials

“Annabelle” Â Patterned Paper, in Cover

“Annabelle Violet” Â Patterned Paper, in Cover

“Watercolor Stripe” Coral Patterned Paper, in Cover

Text PaperÂ for interior pages

Metal Ruler, Self Healing Mat and Craft Knife

Scoreboard

Needle

Sealing Wax and Glue Gun

Scissors

Beeswax (optional)

Photos: Antiquaria for Oh So Beautiful Paper

12/19/2013

DIY Rubber Stamp Patterned Envelopes

Earlier this week, I shared a couple of ways to personalize hand delivered envelopes with paint. Today I’m back with another favorite idea â€“ this time with rubber stamps! Rubber stamps are one of my most tried and true DIY tools. I’ve used them on everything from handmade holiday cards to DIY envelope liners (like the liner inÂ our New Year’s Eve cocktail party invitations). They’re also a super quick and easy way to create a quick and colorful pattern on the outside of your envelopes!

This time around, I used a fun triangle stamp from Hunter & Co. along with my secret weapon for perfect little polka dots â€“ a pencil eraser! But you could easily use whatever stamp you have on hand, make your own stamps using this stamp kit, or improvise with homemade potato stamps.

I used a simple color palette: gold paired with either mint green or bright coral on light gray linen Mohawk envelopes. Just make sure you thoroughly clean your stamp between colors (or have one pencil eraser for each color you plan to use).

I found it easiest to apply one color first, then fill in my pattern with the second color â€“ rather than alternating between the two colors while creating the pattern.

So easy â€“ and so much fun to create!

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

12/17/2013

A New Year’s Eve Cocktail Dinner Party with St-Germain: The Recipes

New Year’s Eve. Is there a holiday that more loudly calls out for a cocktail party? (Hint: no.) Ring in the new year in style, impress your friends with interesting and well-crafted drinks, and celebrate without trudging outside in the cold. So here are some St-Germain cocktail recipes to try â€“ or to spark your creativity. You still have a couple weeks left. Send out some invitations and start stocking up your home bar!

Alliance Club Punch

1 Bottle (750 ml) Genever
1/3 Bottle (250 ml) Cognac or Brandy
8 oz St-Germain
4 Lemons
1 Cup Sugar

First, thinly peel the lemons and muddle the peels in the sugar to extract the lemon oils. Let this sit for an hour, then remove the peels, squeezing out as much sugar as possible. Juice the lemons, combining about 8 oz of fresh juice with the sugar, then muddle again to combine. Pour the sweetened lemon juice along with the Genever, Brandy, and St-Germain into a punch bowl. Add two quarts of cold water and top the bowl off with ice. Invite your guests to serve themselves from the communal bowl.

Punch is pretty much the most perfect party drink you could wish for. It’s not particularly laborious to make a tasty, solid punch; a single punch can be enough to serve an entire party; and it brings your guests together to mingle as they refill their glasses. (This is why punch glasses should be tiny and demand frequent trips back to the punch bowl.) Punch has a terrible reputation thanks to years of abuse, so your guests might take some convincing. But a punch like this â€“ boozy and sweet but not obnoxiously so, malty and complex from the Genever and St-Germain standing in for the punch’s traditional spice â€“ should convince them. And feel free to play around with the recipe â€“ just make sure to use full-bodied, pot distilled spirits. (You could replace the Genever with whiskey or maybe even rum, for example, but please don’t use English gin in its place.)

* * *

The Entente Cordiale

2 oz Cognac or Brandy
1/2 oz St-Germain
Champagne
Lemon Juice and Sugar to Garnish

Add a splash of lemon juice to a chilled cocktail glass and swirl to coat the interior. Discard the lemon juice, then fill the glass with finely powdered sugar. Discard this too, leaving the interior frosted with sugar. Combine the Brandy and St-Germain in a mixing glass filled with ice, stir until chilled, and then strain into the sugared glass. Top with champagne and serve.

The Entente Cordiale is a play on a classic drink, the Buck and Breck, named somewhat improbably for the winning presidential ticket in 1856, James Buchanan and John Beckenridge. Despite all that fancy brandy and champagne, it’s actually a pretty fun and bubbly drink â€“ smooth from the brandy, crisp and fizzy from the champagne, with the champagne’s dryness balanced out by the floral sweetness of the St-Germain and the sugar garnish. It’s also a lot easier to make for a party than it sounds. Just measure out your ingredients into a large mixing glass and sugar your glasses before the party begins. Then, once it’s time to serve, add the ice, stir and strain into the prepared glasses, and top with champagne in front of your impressed guests.

* * *

French 105

1 1/2 oz Gin
1/2 oz St-Germain
1/2 oz Lemon Juice
Champagne

Combine the Gin, St-Germain, and lemon juice. Shake with lots of ice. Strain into a chilled cocktail glass or champagne flute, top with champagne, and serve.

The French 105 is our take on a classic drink, the French 75, invented in 1915 at the New York Bar in Paris. Like the French 75, the French 105 is named after an artillery piece â€“ because this drink can pack a kick. It’s crisp and light and effervescent, and the gin and St-Germain lend a bit of floral flourish, but still boozy. This is another drink that’s pretty easy to prepare ahead in a big batch. Measure everything out ahead of time in a large shaker. Then, just before serving, add your ice, shake well, strain into chilled cocktail glasses, and top with champagne in front of your very impressed guests.

* * *

Sparkle + Shine Mocktail

1/2 Lemon Juice
1/2 oz Lime Juice
1 oz Grenadine
Sparkling Water

To make your own Grenadine, combine two cups of pomegranate juice and two cups of sugar, heating gently and stirring frequently until the sugar is dissolved. Then add two ounces of pomegranate molasses and a teaspoon of orange blossom water, again stirring until fully dissolved. Let the Grenadine syrup cool, then combine all the ingredients in a highball glass filled with lots of ice and serve.

Ok, so not everyone drinks, but everyone can still enjoy the party. Sweetly-tart Grenadine syrup is a great way to whip up a fun mocktail â€“ Shirley Temple, anyone? â€“ but making your own Grenadine is a quick and easy way to elevate what could be a a phoned-in drink into a mocktail worth serving your guests. I like this one with tonic water, adding a bit of bitterness and depth. If you do this, I recommend adding a dash more Grenadine for balance.

All illustrations by Dinara Mirtalipova for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Calligraphy Cocktail Menu Cards: Meant to Be Calligraphy

Photo Credits: Nole Garey for Oh So Beautiful Paper

This post is brought to you in collaboration with St-Germain. All content, photos, recipes, and words are our own. Thank you for supporting the sponsors that help make Oh So Beautiful Paper possible!

p.s. In case you missed them, you can see our first three cocktail party posts right here: a housewarming cocktail party + recipes, a backyard summer cocktail party + recipes, and a bon voyage cocktail party + recipes.

12/16/2013

Quick Pick: Oh My Deer

Chelsea from Oh My Deer combines two of my favorite things: inspirational quotes and beautiful hand lettering! With both large posters and small prints, there’s a little something for everyone â€“ and even a few special things for the holidays. Now I just need to figure out how to make room in my office for the flower poster. So gorgeous!

Oh-My-Deer-Hand-Lettered-Art-Holiday