Best of 2014: My Favorites!

I love doing these “best of” round up posts because they help me see just how much we really packed into a single year. When you’re publishing new content on a daily basis (10-15 times per week!) and you’re constantly focusing on what’s next, it can be easy to lose sight of the posts that made an impact in the previous months or weeks. So here are a few of my personal favorite posts – from guest posts to Emily’s Brick + Mortar column and a few others along the way.

Envelope Address and Hand Lettering Tutorial by Ladyfingers Letterpress for Oh So Beautiful Paper

Envelope Address and Hand Lettering Tutorial from Ladyfingers Letterpress

A Peek Into the Process of Swiss Cottage Designs

Caroline’s Strawberry First Birthday Party

A Day in the Life with Erin Austen Abbott of Amelia

Brick & Mortar: Raising Your Baby and Your Business

10 Tips on Opening a Retail Shop from Urbanic

Where to Find Vintage Stamps for Wedding Invitations

Paper Party 2014!

DC Guide: The National Postal Museum

Best of 2014: Baby Announcements + Shower Invitations

Baby announcements and baby shower invitations have come a looooong way over the years. I love that I now see everything from modern design to hand lettering to vintage-inspired – and everything in between! Here are a few of my favorite baby announcements and baby shower invitations from 2014!

Jackson’s Black + White Birth Announcements by Lauren Chism

Jen’s Nautical Baby Shower Invitations by Bright Room Studio

Caroline’s Strawberry Storybook Baby Announcements by Cynthia Warren

Penelope’s Floral Baby Announcements by Lauren Chism

Eva’s Hand Lettered Baby Shower Invitations by Goodheart Design

Cooper’s Modern Whimsical Baby Announcements by Paper & Parcel

Happy Weekend!

Happy Halloween weekend everyone! Today is the annual Halloween parade at Sophie’s daycare – and if you haven’t ever seen dozens of babies and toddlers in full costume all in the same place, well, it’s pretty much the cutest thing ever. This year, Sophie will be rocking a homemade costume of sorts: she’ll be a snail, which is just about the extent of my limits with a newborn at home. We don’t get many trick-or-treaters on our street, so we’ll be hanging out with friends and their adorable daughter tonight to help them pass out candy. Best of both worlds! But in the meantime…

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Photo by Shannon Kirsten

…a few links for your weekend!

This week on Oh So Beautiful Paper:

Check back soon for this week’s cocktail! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and I’ll see you back here next week! xoxo

Harley’s Modern Black and White Baby Announcements

Designer Blake Eagle worked with the talented folks at Mama’s Sauce to create these letterpress and gold foil birth announcements for her son Harley. Blake incorporated design elements inspired by the traditional birth certificate and standardized forms along with astrological symbols – all wrapped up with thin gold wire. So cool!

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From Blake: My husband and I decided to go all out and design a multi-piece announcement suite for our soon-to-arrive little guy. We were very much inspired by the birth certificate, astrological symbols, and standardized charts like the periodic table. We wanted to design something that was sophisticated, but also whimsical. The idea was to redesign elements of the birth certificate, but focus on personalizing all of the small details.

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In the beginning we wanted to keep everything black and white and very minimalistic, but we became obsessed with the idea of adding a foiled element to the suite. After finishing the larger card with the birth details, which was letterpress printed on 220# Crane Lettra, we decided to add a smaller gold foil piece.

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Keeping with the theme, we included things like Harley’s astrological sign and element into the design, as well as the weather and moon phase as a sort of homage to the day he was born. To wrap it up (literally…) we used a very thin wire to hold everything together and tie in the gold from the smaller card to the rest of the suite. It was then all placed in a black envelope complete with a letterpress printed address wrap and personalized stamp.

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Design: Blake Eagle

Letterpress and Foil Printing: Mama’s Sauce

Photo Credits: Blake Eagle

Introducing…

Hello again! Introducing our newest addition: Alice Evelyn! We couldn’t be more in love. I’ll do a longer post about her arrival when I have a bit more time to sit down and write – so maybe a year from now? Kidding! – but I thankfully avoided a repeat of my postpartum experience with Sophie, so I’ve been able to spend the last few weeks enjoying this sweet and tiny baby. Not that everything has been sugar and rainbows so far – we’re definitely still adjusting to being a family of four and having a newborn in the house again. But it’s all worth it. Two girls! I love it.

 Photo by me via Instagram

I’m so excited to dive back into my lovely world of beautiful paper and will be easing myself back into my routine over the next couple of weeks. I’ve got a ton of wedding invitations to share – not to mention 2015 calendars coming at you real soon! But first a huge thanks to the wonderful guest bloggers who helped out while I was away – from Hello!Lucky to Audrey, Erin, Lisa, and all the other amazingly talented mamas – and my wonderful team of contributors! Thank you all a million times over!

Since I haven’t been able to do my normal Friday posts for a few weeks, I thought I’d start off with a few favorite links from the last month:

I’ll be back with more soon!