Happy New Year!

Hello friends – I hope this post finds you well and enjoying the holiday season! Since 2013 is about to arrive, I thought I would do an end-of-year post with a few updates.

First, I am happy to announce that Sunlit Letterpress was a finalist for Best Wedding Stationery for the 2012 British Columbia Professional Wedding Awards. The photos below are of the invitations that placed us in the top three for the British Columbia.  These invitations were for Sharon and Faizal, a great couple from Vancouver that was married in Waikiki, HI, earlier this year.

This was the most technically difficult invitation I have designed and printed to date – with envelopment printing and very tight (hairline) registration for the pieces with the background pattern and borders. Forgive the printer jargon – when one color is printed first and the second color is printed on a separate pass, and the two colors meet exactly at a point and the inks cannot overlap or be separated by a gap – this is hairline registration. With a 100+ year old Chandler and Price printing press, getting the registration right is nightmarish to say the least. Although you can’t see it on the paper or in the photos, there was a lot of blood, sweat and tears in these pieces!

A special congratulations to my friend and fellow invitation designer Tammy of Uniquity Invitations who was also a stationery finalist this year!

Although I had hoped to get back to work in mid-December, I have not quite made it back. As I mentioned in my previous post, we welcomed our second daughter in mid-October. As wonderful as having a second child has been, I was unprepared (or just had unrealistic expectations) for how much less time and energy I would have left for work/studio time with two young children. Most days I struggle to find time to fit in a shower, let alone get any work done. Our baby girl has had some gastrointestinal issues that have made things much more challenging than with our first. I am hoping that as we settle into more of a routine after the New Year that I will find a bit of time to head back to the studio – just in time for the start of wedding season. However, this year I will definitely have to cut back on the number of projects/clients that I take on because I just won’t be able to handle a heavy workload like before.

This year has been a very tough one for our family on a personal level, and I am very much looking forward to it being over. Other than the birth of our second little girl, watching our oldest daughter grow and change, and attending a private party in Vegas hosted by Michael Jordan and Alan Thicke (a story for another day!), this year will go down as one of my worst. I have experienced struggles and challenges in many areas and they have tested my strength and resilience. I am very grateful to those who were there for us during the hard days – especially when my husband was very ill - and who continue to be ready to help. We are working with a neurologist and hope to have more answers about my husband's condition soon.

I hope 2013 will be better for us all!

Best wishes to you and Happy New Year!