Wedding invitation – Barbara & Aaron

Much to my pleasure, my brother and sister-in-law gave me carte blanche when designing the invitation suite for their Cape Cod wedding. They didn’t have any specifications other than the colour palette and that they didn’t want a typical nautical “Cape” style. I knew I wanted to create a design that was very much focused on illustration, so came up with this toile pattern that included a gristmill and a windmill (the venue had a water wheel outside), with some fall foliage thrown in because it was a fall wedding and fully illustrated type. Everything in this suite was hand drawn, including every letter. All pieces were then letterpress printed (also by me) except for the envelope, which was digitally-printed. 

I’m so happy with how this invitation turned out. It’s great when clients let you do your thing and have fun with a job. Fun wedding too!

Specs: Design Papillon Press (Chantal Bennett) | Paper Crane Lettra, 600 & 300 gsm, flo white | Size 5×7″ double-sided, 3.5×5″ reply card | Ink Colour Cobalt Blue & Silver | Extras custom digitally-printed envelope

Darryl & Alexis – custom wedding invitation

This could be our favourite wedding invitation YET. We designed a custom wedding invitation for Darryl and Alexis for their destination wedding in Mexico. The area where they are having the wedding is known for its whale migration, so they wanted to include an illustration of a whale on the invitation. We love clients who let us do our thing and these guys did just that. The result is a super fun, original invitation. 

Printed on Crane Lettra, pearl white 300 gsm in Red and Cerulean Blue. 

Custom wedding invitation – Lara & William

In late 2013 we were approached to design a simple and elegant, yet very elaborate invitation suite. This one had all the pieces: the typical 4 piece suite, pocketfold, vellum, lined envelopes, plus illustrated map, favour tag, belly band, valet card, and thank you card…most of them with painted edges. 

Then announcement card was printed in black with a blind deboss starfish header and Relais & Châteaux logo, on pearl white double-thick 600 gsm Lettra with robin’s blue painted edges. We illustrated the map and printed it in black on pearl white double-thick 600 gsm Lettra, also with painted edges. The reply card was printed in black and a blind deboss on pearl white 300 gsm Lettra. The favour tag was also black and blind deboss, trimmed in a square shape with painted edges and striped b&w baker’s twine. The thank you card was A2 size with a 2 colours printed on the front and a one-colour greeting inside, also with painted edges (a first for us for a thank you, but why not?) All envelopes were lined with robin’s blue printed liners. The final package was assembled in a pocketfold, the announcement held in place with an open vellum pocket. The pocketfold was then sealed with a band featuring a blind deboss of the recurring starfish illustration.

And there it is, our most elaborate invitation suite yet!

Christa & Robert custom letterpress wedding invitation

This was an incredibly fun wedding invitation to work on and our first pocketfold invitation…ever! Pocketfolds seemed to be all the rage a few years ago but oddly enough this is the first time a client approached us for a custom invitation to be contained in a pocketfold. Christa and Robert decided that a modified version of our Scrolling Vine invitation would suit their Niagara-on-the-Lake wedding just fine, printed in gold and black inks. We also designed and printed a reply card, event timeline, map and gift enclosure card. 

The whole package was finally wrapped together in a custom printed letterpress band. 

Printed on Crane Lettra Ecru, 300 gsm. 

Custom invitation design – Claire & Robert

We’re so thrilled to have the chance to be working with more local clients lately. This custom invitation comes courtesy of a lovely couple living in North Bay, Claire and Robert. They came to visit us with the idea of having the chapel where they were going to be wed featured on the invitation. They also loved our Hivernale invitation and so wanted some of the elements of that invitation incorporated into theirs.

Chantal gave three sketches (below) each of which featured a different aspect of the chapel.

Initial sketches for Claire and Rob's invitation

Claire and Robert chose the 3rd sketch, which features an illustration of the chapel and a lovely decorative border, printed in light grey ink with the text in fuschia. The result is a lovely, soft invitation with matching envelope. Thanks for being such fanstastic clients, Claire and Rob!

Printed on Crane Lettra, 300 gsm, pearl white in light grey and fuschia. 6.5×6.5″.

Final letterpress invitation for Claire & Robert

 

 

 

 

Custom note card – Sandy

We were so pleased when Sandy discussed having custom note cards designed and printed with us. Sandy is a fan of Victorian-style monograms (and ironically, so is Chantal) so we went with a few different sketches and Sandy chose one.

The result is an elegant note card with matching envelope, printed on Crane Lettra, 300 gsm, ecru white in Yellow Ochre.

Initial sketches for Sandy's monogram

Custom wedding invitation – David & Zuimei

This has to be one of our favourite custom invitations to date. Dave contacted us to produce a full suite based on specific types of birds, the chickadee and the western tanager. Put a bird on it? Absolutely! We love drawing birds.

We also had the chance to design a more fully illustrated piece to be used as an insert for the Starbucks mug that would be handed out as a guest favour.

Printed on Crane Lettra, 300 gsm, pearl white in Cobalt Blue and Yellow Ochre.

Vintage stamps courtesy of sendmoremail.blogspot.com

Custom Invitation – Sofia & Jeffrey

The best kind of client are the ones who let you “do your thing”, and that’s exactly the kind of client Sofia was. Sofia wanted a custom invitation that included a pair of lovebirds like our Starlings invitation, a few specific types of flowers and a silhouette of a couple holding hands.

The result is a gorgeous 3-colour announcement complete with coloured envelopes, rendered even more lovely by Send More Mail vintage stamps.

Thanks Sofia and Jeffrey for letting us run with our ideas!

Printed on 300 gsm pearl white Crane Lettra.

 

We are Twilight fans

We have a confession to make, we are closet Twilight fans. We are very much looking forward to Breaking Dawn, the 4th instalment of the Twilight movie saga, coming out in mid-November.

However when we saw the trailer a while ago, we were stunned when they showed the actual Bella & Edward invitation in the trailer. Why? It was so….blah.

Thus came the idea to redesign the Twilight wedding invitation. We asked our Facebook fans which motifs they thought we should take inspiration from, and they mostly agreed that the meadow was the best motif since Edward and Bella spent so much time there together.

We didn’t set out to create a real wedding invitation, but rather something the fans could get excited about which is why we decided to include the actual characters on the wedding invitation. We rarely illustrate human figures on our wedding invitations, but in this case we thought it would be more fun for the fans to feature the characters on the invitation.

And thus the Twilight invitation was reborn, by the hand of Chantal herself (who illustrated the whole thing), complete with New Moon font.

The Papillon Press version of the Twilight invitation

The invitation from the movie version. BORING.

Now comes the really exciting part…you can buy it!

We’re currently taking pre-orders in our Etsy shop. The last day to order will be October 28th,  and the invitation will ship on November 1st, just in time for all your Twilight wedding parties (no pun intended). We’re also offering your name handwritten in calligraphy on the front of the envelope and offering the shipping option of having it sent directly to you as if you were one of Edward’s and Bella’s guests.

It’s a limited edition and the amount of pre-orders we get will determine the edition number (meaning once that deadline is up, this invitation will never be made again!) So make sure to tell your fan friends!

Check it out in the shop

Glitter sold separately 😉

A couple letterpress calling cards

Here a couple calling cards we printed for our $150 for 300 deal. In this deal you get to choose one of our calling card templates, choose a colour from our palette, plug in your info and voilà! A calling card all to yourself.

Our Twitter contest winner Vanessa choose this template and customized the colour to blue:

Calling card template #5

Vanessa's calling card

Melanie, another Ottawa-area photographer, choose to have this template printed in gunmetal grey:

Calling card template #4