A few years ago, I took a letterpress class at the San Francisco Center for the Book (lovely center, I recommend it to anyone in the SF Bay Area!) and that’s when I fully realized why letterpress costs the ka-ching! amount that it does. It took me nine hours on one Saturday to make one thank you card design, one envelope design with my address, and print over two hundred copies. And this wasn’t some complicated design, it had a bird and “Thank You” written on it. My eyes were basically cross-eyed by the time I got out of there, and my hands and clothes were totally filthy from playing with ink. Letterpress is labor intensive and crazy detail-oriented, and I bow down to all the masters of it!

So you can imagine my skepticism over this brand new product from QuicKutz. The examples are gorgeous, and the price is pretty decent at $150, but can something this small and affordable churn out the same quality as a Vandercook press? I don’t know myself, but I’d love to get my hands on one and play with it!

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So here’s a picture of what my morning is looking like so far:

{ photo by me }

Along with finishing off the puppy collars that I knitted for FMIL’s dogs (you can kinda see the buttons I’m painting in the photo) and several other chores around the house, I’m also going through a bunch of cardstock color swatches for our invitations.

Going with of our lack-of-”wedding colors” idea, I had this idea of a multi-colored invite but now that I see all of the colors together I definitely feel like it’s going to be too much. So, now I’m trying to figure out how to use more than 2 colors without making it seem like an invitation to a circus!

Some things I KNOW I want to include with our invites:

• vintage stamps
• pocketfold
• a cool font
• some nod to something Spanish - either a Spanish tile pattern as an envelope liner, iron scroll work as detail on the invite, or the orange tree my mom drew for our save the dates.
• natural-colored envelopes addressed with white calligraphy
• color

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I loves me some vintage stamps. Tell me that by next summer they won’t be overdone?

{ image via Wiley Valentine }

{ image via Wiley Valentine }

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I never actually planned on having a wedding poster…it just kind of happened…here’s how it all went down.

Back toward the end of September I won a free poster size print from a blog giveaway!!!  (hooray for winning!!)  When I got the email with the info on how to redeem this free print…I noticed I only had ONE MONTH to come up with something!!  Well there goes my grand plan of waiting till after the wedding and having one of my favorite pictures printed.  I briefly toyed with the idea of dressing my two cats up in little outfits and taking their picture and having that printed*…but I quickly convinced myself that no…I should really use this for something WEDDING related!

That’s when I remembered all the lovely wedding posters I had seen on Etsy!

via ello there on Etsy

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If you followed my wedding plans, you know there’s nothing I love more than custom illustrations. They add a level of personal flair and uniqueness that truly befits a wedding. We had custom drawings done for our save the dates, our invitations, and even for our maps and thank you cards (more to come on those later) - but if I could go back and do it again (or run into a future project that could use our cartoon likenesses), I’d have Sara from Stinkerpants Celebrations do something for us, too!

I love her sunny style and rich, colorful backgrounds! All her characters have tons of personality infused with the classic Stinkerpants touch. She makes a point of including little things that help define a couple’s style, and I love how quirky and sweet all of the designs are! Ultrafly!

Check out this cutesypie Venice themed Save the Date

Or this feast for the eyes tri-fold invitation - aren’t the settings the sweetest?

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I realized I haven’t posted pictures of our invitations yet! And I wasn’t even paranoid about wedding crashers. Anywho, I really wanted letterpress invitations more than anything else and it was my big splurge. But really, not that bad. I used someone local, Jenny Barry from Press Charming, and I brought in some art nouveau books I’d bought to try and figure out a design. Jenny sent me back so many possibilities and this is what we finally decided on!

We got a 5×7 invitation with a postcard size reply card (saved on postage for the envelope and the reply! One regular 44 cent stamp was enough for the invitation (we liked the king & queen so that worked out) and we used polar bear postcard stamps for the postcards (not my favorite but we didn’t really have an option and the colors didn’t clash).

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Got our save the dates in already! Not sending them out until January, but I won a contest and had to get them printed by the end of September. One less thing to worry about!

On the left is the original, and then on the right is the final version after I used the corner punch (Fiskars “something old, something new”, purchased with my michael’s coupon of course!)

My mom did the drawing! The orange tree was meant to play off the whole Spain thing. I love what she did and I love the fact that my mom designed it!!

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UPDATE: Congratulations to our winner Julie!

I am so excited today to partner with the wonderful letterpress shop Don’t Press Me to give away 75 sets of letterpress invitations!

The lucky winner will receive 75 one-color letterpress invitations and reply cards, printed on 100% cotton paper by Don’t Press Me.

So how can you win? First, click on over to the Don’t Press Me site to see some of their fabulous custom design work and drool over what you have the chance to win. Then come back here and tell us in the comments why you love letterpress but aren’t able to fit it into your wedding budget. Don’t Press Me will choose one lucky and deserving winner to receive 75 sets of custom letterpress invitations.  Contest closes Friday Nov 6th at 12pm central.

And for extra credit, follow @dontpressme on twitter and link to this post. Don’t forget to @dontpressme and @amiatead in your tweet!

Good luck!
E.

Last you heard, I was making the tough decision of deciding how many bridesmaids I should have, 2 or 11.  Well, we (my fiance and I) decided on all 11, and we’re sticking to it and very happy with our decision.

I wanted to ask my bridesmaids in a special way, and found so much inspiration on wedding blogs  it was hard to choose.   But when I stumbled upon a fantastic post about Elise’s Envelope Pockets, I knew I wanted to do the same, but different :).  Again, I am so thankful that I don’t have to re-invent the wheel but rather just refurbish it to suit my own taste.  Thank goodness for wedding blogs!

The front of the Envelope Pockets.  It looks like I have a pretty equal showing of blondes and brunettes!

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The Save the Date dilemma is over! Hooray!!

Of course you remember my incessant indecision, here and here regarding our save the dates. I promise this is the last you will hear about it.

After pulling my hair out over which “look” to go for, I finally came to and realized that most people who will receive these won’t think twice about them.  Our guests won’t care if they match the style of wedding we were going for or if they were the coolest piece of mail that they have ever received.  Why spend another few weeks mulling over them?

With that, I went online and ordered our save the dates!   We decided to go with the Wedding Paper Divas “Park Bench” style.  It was fun, non-DIY and completely us.

{Wedding Paper Divas}

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I’m a huge admirer of the gorgeous stationery that Heather, the creative genius behind Maida Vale, creates.  Maida Vale has recently relaunched their website and Heather shared some photos of her collection!

{Punctual}

{Bloom}

{Wren}

All of the designs are available in both offset and letterpress printing.  So what are you waiting for? Run and go visit Maida Vale’s new site - full of eye candy galore!

E.

As promised here are some photos of the new Papeterie studio. We are so excited to finally have a place where customers can come and sort through samples, give us their feedback, and interact with us one-on-one to create the perfect stationery item! Our studio is located in Monterey Park, California, about 15 minutes from Downtown Los Angeles. We welcome anyone who is interested in learning more out Papeterie to stop by. You can browse our various products and designs and even see how our antique letterpress works.

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