Invitations for a Summer Winery Wedding in Penticton

It's almost the New Year, and here I am getting caught up on posting summer 2015 wedding invitation photos! I hope everyone is enjoying the last few (busy) days before Christmas. Are you done your shopping? I'm this close to being done, and am dreading a final (please God) trip to the mall to finish up. On a positive note, I've managed to take my kids skating this morning, bake some holiday treats with them, and get a bit of work and present wrapping done. #Winning.

So...back to summer weddings!

This custom letterpress wedding stationery suite was designed and letterpress printed in-house for White Rock couple Samantha and Daniel. The couple was married at the Painted Rock Estate Winery in Penticton - a very special venue for the foodie and wine aficionado bride and groom. Their wedding would include reserve and vintage wines expertly paired with each appetizer and meal course, as well as locally sourced and prepared dishes to be served on the vineyard.

I've never been to the Painted Rock, but doesn't it look beautiful? Vineyard photos © and courtesy of the Painted Rock Estate Winery.

Our clients were seeking wedding stationery that married clean, crisp and modern styling (much like their venue), and referenced the vineyard in an abstract way (without being too cute). The bride and groom also wanted the stationery to use only grey ink and a blind letterpress impression (letterpress printing with no ink) to keep the finish simple and to focus on the tactile impression provided uniquely by letterpress printing. The pieces were printed on our thickest 220 lb. Strathmore Pure Cotton cover to provide the extra weight and sturdiness that only a thicker stock can offer.

We created the circle pattern that appears on all stationery pieces by brush painting the circles with Japanese sumi ink. The pattern, suggestive of grapes, is simple and organic, and reminiscent of the Painted Rock Estate Winery's logo. Once the pattern was complete, we scanned and digitized the artwork so that it could be transferred to magnesium printing plate and printed on the press.

Vineyard photo © Adrian Photographers and via The Painted Rock Estate Winery.

In all, we designed and printed the invitation, outer envelope, RSVP, RSVP envelope, BBQ event invitation, accommodations card, oversize schedule of events signage, oversize seating chart signage, and coordinating place cards where the guests' names were written and a meal selection circled (to assist catering staff with delivery of plated entrées).

With the exception of the oversize signage (schedule of events and seating chart), the entire wedding invitation suite was printed by hand on our studio's 104-year old antique cast-iron Chandler & Price printing press. We do not farm out our printing or finishing work and pride ourselves on using the highest quality materials and experienced craftsmanship to create one-of-a-kind stationery pieces for our bridal clients.

Are you getting married in 2016? We are already booking stationery clients for next year, so please contact us early to reserve your space in line for press time!

"Love Is" Typographic Print Corinthians 1:13

Due to popular demand (and feedback at the September Etsy Made in Canada event), our popular "Love Is" letterpress art print is now available in a larger size at 8" x 10". The print is still available at the original 5" x 7" size, and we are also now offering a framed version:

You can purchase the typographic "Love Is" letterpress art prints in our Etsy shop:

5" x 7" Unframed "Love Is" Letterpress Art Print

8" x 10" Unframed "Love Is" Letterpress Art Print

5" x 7" Framed "Love Is" Letterpress Art Print

Enjoy!

Midsummer

Happy August 1st! I consider August 1st to be the midpoint of summer because it leaves us just one month before everyone heads back to school. I hope this summer has brought you some wonderful memories and fun times so far! Our family has spent a great deal of time at the beach now that we live within walking distance, and it's been great. As my friend pointed out today, the beach is somewhere you can let the kids get dirty, throw toys everywhere, drip juice and food at will, and generally do things you can't do inside the house without consequence – and tide pools make for quick and easy clean-ups!

This summer has been busy as we moved our family and studio to a new home in late spring. We are still (#ugh #makeitstop) unpacking random bits here and there and doing some renovation work. My office space will undergo an overhaul in the fall and I am looking forward to finishing the space and implementing some new organization systems to streamline inventory, packaging, and shipping. If I remember to take photos (mental note!), I will post some before and after shots.

The studio printing space and equipment was moved to our new home with ease by our friends at Salmon's Transfer commercial division. This was our fourth (OMG!) commercial move with them and we are on a first name basis with the guys now. Crazy. These guys KNOW what they are doing and I highly recommend them if you have commercial equipment, awkward items, or heavy pieces like safes or pianos to move. This move took our equipment from ground level to ground level, so the move was swift and uneventful – the best kind of move!

In addition to the custom wedding stationery orders we've been working on this summer (photos coming soon), we've been busy preparing inventory for the Etsy Made In Canada Vancouver Market, which will take place at Robson Square on September 26, 2015. Did you attend last year? Over 5,000 people shopped the market in 2014, and I am looking forward to another fun event this year! Oh, and there is a Chipotle's across the street. And we don't have one out in the burbs. So yeah, Chipotle's while working a show = bonus!

Here are a few new items that will also be available for purchase at the Etsy Made in Canada Market and are also available now in our shop for purchase:

Enjoy!

New Custom Feminine Business Cards

Here's a new custom feminine business card for all you floral and pink-obsessed paper lovers out there! Customize your own set of modern floral business cards, with your name and contact information. These girly business cards make a perfect impression for branding your personal business, lifestyle brand and/or blog, photography business, and so on. Beautiful pink and white script on the front of the card, and a gorgeous pink flower petal image (photography by Erin McCall) on the back.

Send us your name and contact details, review a proof, and we digitally print the cards and ship to you – it's that easy! Buy a set for yourself or as a gift set for someone special. Makes a great high-end, modern and useful custom gift!

{ DETAILS }

• each order includes 100 business cards customized with your name and your contact details 
• cards measure 3.5" wide by 2" tall (standard size)
• digitally printed in pink ink for your name, white ink for your contact details, a black background, and a floral back/reverse side of the card
• printed on ultra thick 130 lb. cover
• perfect for branding your photography business, lifestyle blog, lifestyle brand, personal brand, stylist business, make-up artist business, etc.

We look forward to printing a set just for you!

HUSH Wedding Soirée 2015 | Terminal City Club

Are you ready for Vancouver's best kept wedding secret? Terminal City Club will host the 2015 HUSH Wedding Soirée on Saturday, March 7th – doors open at 7:00 PM. Two floors of TCC will come to life with extravagant décor, roaming models in beautiful wedding gowns, bubbles and bites, a special men's lounge (grooms like to plan for their weddings too!), and endless inspiration to help you celebrate your special day in style! You can order tickets ($30) via EventBrite, or enter to win 2 tickets from us (see info below).

We designed and printed the special HUSH 2015 invitations for Vancouver wedding planners above. This is a three-color invitation in blush, gold, and black ink. It was so much fun to design (I just love incorporating architectural details from a venue into an invitation – and Terminal City Club has the most beautiful stained glass dome (installed circa 1912), that we used as the main inspiration for these invitations.

Sunlit Letterpress will have a table at the show with information sheets and samples of our work for all you brides and grooms getting married this year (or next!). I won't actually be there in person because I will be travelling, but we encourage you to contact us with any questions you have about our products and services – we're happy to help! Many of our talented and highly experienced Vancouver wedding industry friends will be at the show, so don't miss out!

Are you interested in attending HUSH 2015? I have two tickets to give away, so be sure to enter the random draw by answering the following question as a comment below – Which wedding shows will or have you attended this year? Draw closes Saturday, February 28th at 12 PM. Winner will be announced in the comments below!

The next few weeks will be nuts as our family and the studio are on the move to our new home and studio space. We just closed escrow and I am excited (and a little anxious) for this move; but seriously, moving is truly the pits. I counted last night how many times I have moved in my life, and I arrived at 13 moves. Is that a lot? It seems like a lot. And we all know how much I love moving, especially when you have a studio with 1,200 lb. printing presses, 400+ lb. paper cutters, tons of paper and supplies, and lots of greasy and inky items to carry move. Thank God for my commercial movers!

Be sure to check back for the update on the HUSH 2015 tickets winners :)

THANK YOU FOR ENTERING DINA, YOU ARE THE WINNER! PLEASE SEE COMMENTS BELOW TO RECEIVE YOUR TICKETS!

Brush Script Logo Development for H & Field

Don't you just want to jump into the above photo (photo © and courtesy of H & Field)? The colors are just so beautiful – and perhaps you share my fondness for a stark desert against a bright blue sky?

We were recently contacted by Julie from H & Field, a California-based maker of small batch handmade goods created with organic indigo using a resist technique inspired by Japanese shibori (photos below © and courtesy of H & Field).

Julie had seen our custom brush script stationery and lettering in our Etsy shop and asked if I could create a logo for her using this bold brush lettering style. I was happy to help and love logo development projects, so we got started right away.

When I do lettering work, I like to prepare my ink, brushes, and papers and spread out. As you can see, I tend to write out the text I've been commissioned to letter more than once or twice. I like to provide my clients with options (i.e. different styles of capitals, stroke thickness, different brushes, etc.), so this requires some playing around. When I was working on the H & Field project, I was also creating lettering for another client, Hannah, who had ordered a set of our custom-lettered business cards from our Etsy shop.

From there, I take the custom brush lettering and scan it, and then create vector artwork in Illustrator on my computer. I'll adjust spacing/sizing and clean things up a bit in Illustrator (sometimes ink splatters or looks a bit rough in some places, so a little touch up can be needed). Once the variations are finalized, I present the client with a few options to choose from, like this:

Choosing a favorite is what my clients often find to be the most difficult part of the process. You can see above how within the 5 different options, there are variations on thickness of stroke, brush, ampersand and/or + sign, the "F", curves and the end of strokes, and so on. These little differences can really change the overall look of your logo.

Once the client has made a selection, I take the logo and prepare it in many different formats for print and web, and provide these to the client along with vector versions for their future use. It is very important to have a library of file types to choose from for your logo, since different output methods (web, desktop vs. commercial printing, etc.) require different resolutions and color spaces, and you should have easy access to all of these files.

At this point, clients often wish to have their new logo applied to stationery and marketing collateral such as business cards, web graphics, brochures, note cards, and so on. This style of script looks beautiful when letterpress printed, and also works nicely for flat (digital or offset) printing as well.

If you are interested in having a custom brush-lettered logo created for your business or personal brand, please be in touch! We look forward to working with you!

We're On Pinterest!

Did you know that Sunlit Letterpress is on Pinterest? Come find us and check out our pins @sunlitpress! We'll be adding new photos and behind the scenes shots soon. Enjoy!

Free Letterpress Thank You Cards | 2014 Weddings

Some restrictions apply. Please contact our Vancouver letterpress studio for details and to book.

Letterpress Giveaway (Closed) | "Love Is" Art Print

Hello Letterpress Lovers!

Has Spring sprung where you live? I was away for a few weeks on vacation and returned home to a much greener Spring than when I left (and luckily managed to skip the worst of my allergy season while away – thank goodness!).

This Spring we are putting together a few letterpress art prints; something new for Sunlit Letterpress. Up until now we've focused primarily on custom stationery and letterpress wedding invitations, and some ready-to-wear stationery products. I'm not sure why I've never ventured into art prints until now, maybe a lack of time to sit and put something together?

I wanted our first art print offering to incorporate a passage that was important to me. This is a very well-known Bible passage; probably because it is so often used as a reading in Christian weddings. But if you really study the reading you see how it truly is a road map for unconditional love – no matter your faith. Our patience is often tested by our significant others, our children, our family members – and yet we must learn to stay the course and be kind. True love does not insist on having things go our way all the time – sometimes we have to embrace compromise and sacrifice our wants and needs for others. True love endures the most difficult challenges of everyday life and the struggles of difficult times of sickness and loss. True love has no limits and never fails.

This piece was printed on our Chandler & Price press using black and a light pink ink on Crane Lettra 110 lb. 100% (tree-free) cotton cover and measures 5" x 7".

We are giving away one of these prints to a lucky reader! To enter, simply leave a comment below and tell us where you would place this print in your home. Entries must be posted by May 5, 2014, at 7 PM (Pacific) and one winner will be chosen at random. Open to entries worldwide. Winner will be announced as an update to this post after the draw. Sorry, personal friends and family of Sunlit Letterpress are not eligible. 

This print is also available in out Etsy shop for purchase – makes a great wedding gift, or addition to your gallery wall! If you are a wedding industry vendor, this print would make a great thank you gift for your clients.

Enjoy!

Free Letterpress Greeting Card!

While supplies last, receive a free letterpress greeting card in our pink Vine design with any purchase from the Sunlit Letterpress Etsy shop. One free greeting card per order. To receive your free card, enter "SPRINGVINE" in the Notes to Seller. Enjoy!

FAQs: Can letterpress wedding invitations be affordable? Can I save money on letterpress stationery?

Hello letterpress lovers!

Today I am going to address two big questions I hear from many paper-loving brides and grooms:

1. Can we afford letterpress stationery for our wedding?
2. How do you save money on letterpress wedding invitations? (a.k.a. is it possible to get cheaper letterpress wedding invitations?)

So let's start at the beginning. Can you afford letterpress stationery for your wedding? Right off the bat I want to dispel a big myth about letterpress wedding stationery: letterpress is not always ridiculously expensive or totally beyond your budget. Yes, letterpress is synonymous with luxury and is definitely a higher-end product; but it isn't always out of reach. Because it's our business to know how our prices compare to pricing for alternative stationery options, I can tell you that some alternatives (including digitally printed wedding suite collections you find in wedding stationery albums in wedding boutiques) are just as expensive, and sometimes even more than what you could do with letterpress. It might take some creative thinking or some small changes to your specifications for your wedding stationery, but letterpress can still be an option for your big day!

This leads us to question #2 – how can we save money on letterpress wedding invitations? How can we keep our costs down and fit letterpress into our budget?  We've got ten tips to help:

1. Know what you want. This tip actually applies to the preparation you should do before working with any wedding vendor. As a designer, my work involves taking your style, preferences, aesthetic, tastes and overall vision for your wedding day, and then putting all these things to paper. The more details you provide me (or your floral designer, wedding photograher, wedding planner, chef, etc.) with, the better and easier it is for me to understand what you want for your wedding stationery. The clearer you can articulate your vision, the better it will be for your stationery designer.

A few years ago, there was no such thing as Pinterest, Bo.lt, or Clipboard, etc. Today there are many tools available to you for collecting your ideas for your big day, pinning colors, highlighting flowers and making design and mood boards. Luckily, anyone can easily and quickly make a design board to show their designer/wedding vendor and make sure he/she understands your vision. I even recommend that my brides and grooms make mood boards of stationery/designs they dislike – sometimes seeing what a person dislikes can be as useful as knowing what he/she likes.

Example Pinterest Beach Wedding Board via Rosslyn {SampleBoard} 

The more you can communicate about the kind of stationery you want, the easier and faster we can meet your stationery design needs, and the less time (and resources) will be required to do so.

2. Have good timing. I always recommend ordering your wedding stationery as far in advance of your wedding date as possible. One reason for this is etiquette (we recommend inviting guests at least 3 months in advance of your wedding date, and up to a year [or more in some cases] in advance of destination weddings), and the other reason is to make sure you have lots of time for the design and printing of your invitations. If you do not leave enough time for the design and printing of your letterpress wedding stationery (letterpress pieces take longer to print than digital or offset options), and you have say two weeks to get your stationery ready, this will unfortunately mean paying rush fees. No one wants to pay rush fees!

3. Watch for letterpress wedding invitation deals. Throughout the year we offer specials and booking bonuses (on this letterpress blog, at VanCity Blog and on our Facebook page and Instagram feed), so keep those eyes peeled!

4. Decide which letterpress wedding stationery pieces you can live without. How would you feel about having a reply postcard instead of a reply card and reply envelope? Could you live without a separate reply piece entirely? Are you open to having the reply information (i.e. via email or a website) on the invitation itself? We've had brides and grooms that have sent invitation postcards only, without envelopes or reply pieces whatsoever. Savings can be found if you are open to non-traditional wedding suites and can eliminate a piece or two from your wedding stationery order.

5. Consider alternative sizing for your letterpress invitation pieces. Most brides and grooms opt for a traditional 5" x 7" (A7) invitation + outer envelope, and a 5" x 3.5" (4-Bar) reply card + reply envelope for their letterpress invitation suites. However, no one ever said that smaller sizing is not allowed! For example, consider an A2 (4.25" x 5.5") invitation instead of an A7 invitation for savings on your paper costs.

6. Drop the extra ink colors and include color in your stationery in other ways. For each ink color on a letterpress stationery piece, the piece has to be run through the press one time x total number of copies. So for a 100 piece two-color letterpress wedding invitation, the invitations would be run through the press once for the first color and once for the second color (or 200 passes total). This also means two separate printing plates, two separate press set-ups, and two separate press clean-ups. So as you can guess, this means two times the labor costs and time, and two times the ink costs. If you stick with one ink color you can eliminate all the extra costs involved with extra inks.

If you want to use more than one color in your letterpress wedding stationery, there are alternative – and more cost-effective ways – ways to do this. One option is to print on colored paper instead of white paper. You can use two of your wedding colors this way without the added costs associated with an extra ink color. Another option is to include a colored belly band printed in your one ink color with your names or wedding date, or even a favorite quote. Yet another option is to add in color by using colored envelopes instead of white, or by adding in colored ribbon or other colored detail without it actually being an extra printed ink color.

7. Consider a less expensive paper. Our more expensive house stocks are Crane Lettra and other thick cotton artist papers, especially at the higher weights (i.e. 150-220 lb. and up). These thick papers are wonderful for taking a letterpress impression; however, there are many other papers that still take a nice impression even if they are not as thick or as textured. Paper itself rarely makes up a huge portion of letterpress printing costs, but a less expensive paper can mean a little bit of savings overall. We have many paper options for your letterpress order, so ask for samples to find what works for you.

8. Consider some partial DIY. You can save yourself some money here and there if you are able to take on some of the work for your letterpress wedding stationery. You can't really help with the printing, but if you want extra finishes like tying ribbon or folding or gluing belly bands yourself, then that is a cost that can be saved. If time is short however, or if you are not the crafty type, then this might not be a cost savings option to consider. Sometimes the frustration of DIY is just not worth it!

9. Trim the fat. This sounds really harsh! But if you really want letterpress and your budget is tight, consider ways to cut down your guest list. Can you invite multiple members of a family that live at the same address with one invitation instead of multiple invitations? Are there guests that are on your list that you really never wanted to invite in the first place – like your third cousin in Norway that you've never met but that Grandma insists has to be invited? This tip is really one you can apply to the entire planning of your wedding celebration if budget is of great concern. Be honest with yourself and your parents and anyone else who insists you should invite someone you don't want to invite – and trim the fat.

10. Consider look-alikes. If you are head-over-heels in love with the look of letterpress but just cannot make it work in your budget, all is not lost. We can always take a letterpress design and print it digitally for you. You might not have the textured impression of the letterpress print, but the design can be the same. We were designers long before we were letterpress printers and we want to work with you on your wedding invitations – letterpress or otherwise. We're happy to help find options that fit your budget and make a lasting impression!

I hope this information has been useful for you! If you have any questions or would like to discuss the design and printing of your letterpress wedding stationery and how to stay on budget, please contact us. We look forward to working with you!

Free Letterpress Business Cards for Wedding Industry Members | Referral Rewards

Did you know we have a referral reward program here at Sunlit Letterpress? Open to members of the wedding industry worldwide! Please be in touch for details about our referral reward program – we look forward to working with you and your clients in 2014!

Happy New Year!

BC Professional Wedding Awards Finalist 2013 | Best Wedding Stationery

Did you know about the WOscars? a.k.a. the Wedding Oscars? As per their website, The Professional BC Wedding Awards "is an independent, unbiased organization dedicated to finding and awarding the best of British Columbia's dynamic and creative wedding industry. These awards have established a platform to recognize some of the amazing creative talent, companies and individuals that make up British Columbia's wedding professionals".

This year Sunlit Letterpress was recognized as a finalist in the Best Wedding Stationery category – and we are beyond thrilled. And let me tell you, the WOscar gala is always a fun night! Surrounded by the most talented and creative professionals in our industry, my friend and I enjoyed the yearly catering competition and the antics of the MC Fred Lee – who this year wore a wedding dress. Unfortunately, none of the winners were particularly long-winded in their acceptance speeches that night – which was a real shame, since Mr. Lee promised a Rob Ford tackle of anyone who spoke for too long. I really wanted to see Fred Lee's Rob Ford tackle. Maybe next year...

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists in all categories! I'm already looking forward to next year!

Natural & Rustic Letterpress Wedding Invitations

 Hello Letterpress Lovers!

And just like that, it's November! This year really feels like it is speeding along, doesn't it? Yesterday I saw my first Christmas TV commercial and when I ran to the store today the Halloween leftovers were being packed up to make space for Christmas decorations and other holiday items. We also just had our first frost this morning, so it seems winter is on its way.

The photos in today's post are from letterpress wedding invitations we designed and letterpress printed (in-house on our cast iron printing presses from the late 1800s and early 1900s) for Alberta couple Emily and Allen. The couple married in July 2013 in Glacier National Park in beautiful Montana, USA.

The wedding ceremony took place at historic Lake McDonald Lodge, which at the time of building in 1913 was one of the largest timber frame buildings in North America. The couple spends much of their time at Glacier National Park and in the outdoors, and wanted to incorporate the woodsy, outdoor, and rustic feel of the park and their midsummer's wedding into their stationery suite.

The flower arrangements and bridal bouquets/corsages for the wedding party were made solely of lavender from a local Montana lavender farm, and so the silhouette of the couple's favourite flower was also incorporated into the pieces.

The invitation is printed on Crane Lettra's luxurious 110 lb. cover, and the envelopes are a rustic 32 lb. kraft stock. We included a wood grain pattern on the invitation cards and envelopes, and you can see in the photos that the impression from the letterpress print provides a timeless, tactile quality that other printing methods cannot.

Our family was thrilled to be invited to this wedding and we had a wonderful time. We took a week off and drove from the burbs of Vancouver through Washington, Idaho and then on to Montana. Although the long drive was challenging at times (with two kids under 4); we had a lot of fun. I drove the whole way and back (partly because my husband cannot drive due to health issues, and partly because I bore easily on long car trips so I prefer to drive) and we saw some really beautiful sights along the way. We also had a few pit stops for some tasty Southern BBQ, sampled world-famous Montana huckleberry ice cream and pie, and my husband loaded up on excellent whiskey at the Glacier Distilling Whiskey Barn.

Before visiting Montana I always imagined it a certain way – rocky, cold, grey...I'm not sure why. It was really none of those things, and I was amazed by summer heat, the rolling hills and the beautiful sky. I get the whole "Big Sky Country" thing now. I think part of the reason why Montana's landscape is so impressive is because for the most part (on our drive), there were few points of reference in terms of scale; no large buildings, and in some places nothing on the road for many, many miles. The speed limit in Montana is quite a bit higher than at home, so when you combine this with no sense of scale, everything feels huge in comparison to yourself.

The photo below is from a rest stop where I found some telephone poles against the landscape, to give some perspective.

 

The above photo was taken from Lake McDonald beach where the wedding was held – such a beautiful spot to exchange vows!

This week we are finishing off the ordering guide for our Ready-to-Wear letterpress notecards (just in time to order for that special someone for the holidays!) and we will be printing a limited run of letterpress holiday greeting cards as soon as the magnesium plates come in. Visit the blog again soon for photos and ordering information.