First Communion Invitation

Last Spring, when my dear friend Annie told me that she had to get First Communion invitations out for her son pronto, I offered to help.  We came up with the idea for her to take a profile picture of her son and use that as a silhouette, which is much more personalized than the generic boy/girl silhouettes you see on traditional First Communion invitations.  We had great fun designing this together and Annie was an absolute delight to work with.  I die cut Cole's silhouette and used a backing layer to let that image pop through.  I lined the envelopes with a handmade paper with a coordinating gray chevron pattern, and made custom return address labels to finish it off.  These came out so amazingly beautiful.  I usually don't get this excited about paper goods that are not letterpress printed, but the way the silhouette lays on the two papers adds a dimension similar to what I love about letterpress.    

Jason + Grace

I have lots of great memories growing up and spending time with my four cousins on my mom's side.  Jason is about 4 years younger than me and I always loved being with him and my other boy cousin Vince because they both had such a great sarcastic sense of humor.  Jason was also a runner, as was I in high school and college.  I remember when Jason was in Jr. High, he told me that one day he'd run in the Olympics, and I thought, "yeah right, kid!"  Well, J went on to run in the Jr. Olympics, and later ran for Stanford and actually went on to the Olympic trials for the 10,000 meter run!   

Having moved from California to Chicago I didn't see my cousins all that much after college, especially since many of them moved out of state as well.  Jason went to medical school in Ohio and would come visit us every year right around Thanksgiving so we were able to keep in touch more often.  In the fall of 2008, Jason came out to Chicago for a conference and stayed with us.  It was right around the time I found out there was a Vandercook press near me for which this woman was trying to find a new home.  After boring Jason with a full explanation of what letterpress was and how excited this opportunity could be, he came with me to this woman's house to take a look.  So naturally, four years later when he became engaged, it seems like a "full-circle" moment for me to be printing his wedding invitations!  This invitation suite was completely designed by his uber-talented fiancée Grace, just wait until you see this map!  We also used a QR code for the rsvp--that was really fun to be able to mix such old and new technologies. 

Kari + Neal

This custom invitation suite was loosely based off of another invitation suite I had done about a year ago with the Japanese wrap and layered invitation card mounted on a 5x7 card, which gives a beautiful 1/4" border and adds depth.  Some of the brides for whom I design and print choose something they like based off of something they've seen in my custom collection and modify it to suit their taste, which is what we did here.  Kari loved the idea of a wrap around the invitation and mounting it onto a colored card, so we based this suite off of that.  She drew the beautiful flowers that we used on both the invitation and the rsvp postcard.  I scanned it in, imported it into Illustrator and then converted into vector art so that it would print best.  Also, once something is in vector format it can easily be resized larger or smaller without losing quality.

For the rsvp postcard, Kari also drew the large rsvp wording and again I scanned it in the same way I did the flowers.  What's great about this set is that by using her artistic talents we were able to really create something personal.  Plus isn't it kind of fun to say, "Hey, I drew that!" for your own invitations? 

Valentine's Day

A little sneak peek at a few things I'm working on for Valentine's Day....

Fiore Press featured on Oh So Beautiful Paper!

Click on the above photo to check out the entire blog entry! Or click here.

The fabulous Nole Garey Oh So Beautiful Paper featured Gabby's 4th birthday party invitations that I printed last Spring. It was so exciting to see my work featured on someone's blog--especially this one! If you've never heard of it, you must check it out. Nole features lots of talented printers' work, mostly letterpress. Thanks Nole!

Poppy + Fuchsia Party Invitations

Homemade cupcakes for the special four-year-old! Recipe & frosting courtesy of Georgetown Cupcake--SO delicious! Marshmallow fondant was super easy to make too!