Cavallo wedding #2

Finished these Save-the-dates for another Cavallo wedding this time in August. Vintage/Americana themed paper goodness with a folded map and custom pattern inside. Lovely calligraphy in gold by Neither Snow with an assortment of vintage stamps collected by the bride.

Envelopes were hand-made, just folded text weight navy paper, glued the seam in the middle and ran one side through a sewing machine. We closed by folding the other end and sealed with custom letterpressed address labels.

We came across this envelope addressed to the White House while assembling. Apparently if you send the president an invite you will receive an official congratulatory letter. How fun, right? The bride and groom have a great sense of humor. I love this notion :)

Will be walking these up the street to the post office tomorrow. After spending so much time designing and crafting a set like this, letting them go is always so bitter-sweet. But the idea that people will be receiving these lovelies in the mail always makes me smile. So all the hard work is always worth it.

Cavallo wedding #1

Just delivered this Japanese-inspired wedding suite for clients Rachel and Blake who are getting married at Cavallo Point this spring. When we first met a couple of months ago the gingko trees just started to shed their pretty leaves and the image resonated with me. This design is organic from it's conception to final product. Love it when things just happen naturally :)

Stitching by Mira Aster -- Anne's attention to detail is exquisite.

envelopes were individually hand stamped

These were my setups, trying to get the yellow just right. The top ones were too dark for the job but I still really love the copper color base.

belly band with their monogram double "SS" that created a heart shape. cute.

Palm Desert Suite

Kyla and Michael's invites from this past spring, more to come from my website currently in the works...

This design inspired Kelsey (The Whole Cake) to make this 3-tiered interpretation during our spring soiree in April:

In progress...

Sorting through my new portfolio photos for my website re-design--so much to do still! Just a sneak peek of what's to come from Christine & Jeremy's wedding this past May. (Thanks Design Lab for taking such great photos!)

Julia & Dan

My intern Julia Neises just got married recently and I thought it would be great to share her wedding invites. They turned out absolutely amazing, so proud of her :) She started planning early this year around the same time she started her apprenticeship--Julia splits her time at my shop and nextdoor which gives her a unique blend of both worlds.

All the text was set in metal, the image carved from linoleum blocks then hand-printed on the Vandercook. Definitely labor-intensive but worth all the work!

What's great about this project is that she was able to take it from concept to production and learned quite a bit during the process (i.e. what makes a design suited for letterpress, basic typography and composition, how to mix inks, trim  and prep paper, etc..). And her hard work shows. This wedding suite is classic and beautiful, you can tell she poured her heart into this one. Good work lady!

On Press: Harbour Island wedding

We're at it again! Busy getting this awesome wedding suite together. Chock-full of beautiful beachy letterpressed colors and of course, more book binding!

Design + Print: Sonya & Micheal

Sorry for the lack of posts lately! Up to my neck in wedding production and other various projects that I can hopefully blog about soon. In the meantime, enjoy this Healdsburg wedding invite I made last year for clients, Sonya & Michael :)

Jen & Karl at Playa del Carmen

It took only about a year and a half for this post--sometimes it just takes that long for me to get my act together and gather the photos! Without further ado, here's my reveal of one of my most fun (and production-heavy) weddings. Jen and Karl put together a wonderful event, I enjoyed their enthusiasm and love of adventure--they even own and fly their own plane!

Viola of Chewing the Cud designed their invites and I printed them. She was also very pregnant during this time and had to go on maternity leave mid-project. Super-sweet Viola decided to hand off the project to me to finish off, so I did and continued on to design & produce the rest of their wedding collateral...

Her design was based on a travel ticket, complete with itinerary for the weekend event:

I thought it would be nice for the guests to have a little takeaway gift from the wedding so I turned the program into a pocket notebook. Their logo was letterpressed on a velvet cover and they were individually hand-bound by Anna Ji with a leather twine. All photos below were taken by the talented Jennifer Skog.

Carolyn & David at the De Young

Lush and sophisticated museum wedding designed by Gloria Wong and photographed by Lisa Lefkowitz on Style Me Pretty this week! Lots of eye-candy...

Paper goods by yours truly--and I even got the chance to design some awesome large-scale installation panels (see below) as well as the graphics on the custom pillows. Gloria orchestrated the whole thing along with Jubilee Lau Events. Props to everyone involved!

For more pics and vendor info, click here.

Design + Print: Ellie + Pete

I just found out one of my wedding clients just got featured on the blog Green Wedding Shoes! This was one of my favorite projects last year and I've been meaning to ask my client Ellie about the photos. She and Pete got married on a ranch in Utah last October, and I'm a total sucker for ranch-y rustic weddings :)  You can check out the post here.

She was sweet to mention me in the article, thanks Ellie! So I thought I'd include pics of her paper goods here on my blog. She had some great ideas and got me excited about designing, I really loved their traditional yet laid back vibe and I think the invite suite captured their style well.

Here's the inspiration board I put together for them, lots of Aspen trees and yellows with woodsy touches.

I carved an image of the trees on a linoleum block for their Save-the-Dates which set the tone for the rest of the invites pictured below. Ellie likes to ride horses so I added the horseshoe and rope motifs to personalize and bring in the ranch setting. These little details make all the difference :)

On Press: Scandinavian Design-Inspired Invites

I had a great time printing these envelopes...

that I decided to make notecards out of the motif!

Design + Print: Healdsburg Garden Invites

Here's another August wedding from last year for clients Laura & Thanh. They got married at the Madrona Manor in Healdsburg, CA which has such a specific Victorian feel. We went with this theme but wanted to keep it from feeling too dated. So we went with the non-traditional stitched vellum pocket design with the postcard tear-off for the rsvp. The color palette also had a fresh, California vibe to it--neutral browns paired with summer berry hues. This was a fun collaboration with the couple and it's really rewarding to see it come full circle with the final wedding pictures which can be seen here.

Behind the Scenes

Thought I'd share some production photos of the New Buffalo wedding I worked on last year. I find that sometimes the process is just as interesting to see as the final design. This invite in particular was very involved in terms of assembly. Almost every piece was custom, down to the postage stamp. The envelopes were handmade, I had a monogrammed wax seal (in hot pink!), a hand-bound booklet, stitching on the invite (by Mira Aster), calligraphy in yellow ink (by Georgia Deaver)...You name it, we made it work!

Lake Michigan Wedding

More posts and photos can be seen from this dreamy Lake Michigan wedding I had the pleasure of working on on the AE blog this week! Make sure to check out Part 1 & Part 2...

Photos by Thayer Gowdy

Design + Print: Shelter Island Invites

The temperature dropped a lot today, it was a brisk morning and now a chilly evening (at least by my standards--I get cold pretty easily!). So thought I'd warm things up a bit by posting this summer wedding invite for clients Jackie & Mike. They got married this past September in Shelter Island-- a town at the eastern end of Long Island in NY.

They were inspired by Moriya & Jon's invite design and wanted to use similar elements (map, stitching, monogram...) and infuse their colors and east coast-beachy vibe into it as opposed to the original country-farm look. They have the same initials as Moriya & Jon so I was able to reuse the existing monogram for the most part and only ended up tweaking the letters with the new font they chose.

Flat-printed map on the pocket and stitching by Mira Aster.

Martha Stewart feature Kathryn & Jeff

This past spring I worked on a wedding with the AE team for Kathryn & Jeff. The event took place at the Solage Resort in Calistoga and was featured today on the Martha Stewart website! Kathryn had a specific style in mind--something in between traditional and modern, graphic but not ornate, simple but with a little bit of unexpected thrown in. Inspired by bold patterns with a cool palette of blues, greys and pops of yellow, I was definitely up for the design challenge :)

Here are some photos of the entire wedding suite taken by B&N photography--some of the paper good shots were styled by my sister :)

Invite & thank you card suite (calligraphy by Nancy Hopkins)

Off the Press: Kelly & Edward Invite

I printed these over the summer for a lovely couple from Berkeley. I letterpressed the invite and rsvp cards and they screenprinted the envelope and digitally printed the enclosures themselves. I think this is a great way to create an invite if you're hands-on like they are or are on a limited budget but don't want to lose any of the beautiful details of your design. If you're crafty enough, there are many ways to make a set look cohesive without having to letterpress each piece. I encourage you to talk to your printer and ask advice on different options--mixing printing techniques isn't against any rules of etiquette. I think if anything, it gives it a lovely, handmade look when done right like Kelly & Eddie's invites. You can definitely tell when something is made with TLC :)

Design + Print: Big Sur Wedding

This was a simple and sweet invite done in 2-colors with a halftone screen of a cliff photo provided by the client. I love the neutrals we used for each piece, not matching to the exact color but all very complimentary.

Design + Print: Yosemite wedding

I posted about the production process of this invite set sometime over the summer. I finally got around to taking some pics of the final outcome!

Stephanie for Sarah & Ezra

Definitely proud to see my previous intern, Stephanie, show off her first official wedding invite design & letterpress! She worked on this for her friends' wedding during her stay here at Olive-Route which gave her the chance to see what it's like to work on something from design to production.

To see more pics, visit her blog here. And make sure to check out the rest of the work she's posted up--lots of fun letterpress inspiration!