And this card did require some crafting. We started with the making of a custom duplex paper – 160lb Mohawk Loop Ivory Smooth pasted to French Construction Nightshift Blue 100C – totaling a thick 260lbC card. Next we letterpress printed them with two colors on each side, silver and tonal navy inks on the blue side, then blue and gray inks on the ivory side.  We printed a couple 8up forms to meet all the employee name versions needs and then die cut them with small inverted corners. Viva tactility and technology.

The cards were letterpress printed on 200lb Eclipse Black Wausau with silver ink, then the press sheet was laser cut. The laser cutting was used due to the complexity of the cutting die and the size of the print run. Laser cutting does a really nice job, especially on darker stocks were the edge burn is less evident. With lighter colored and white stocks, a mask is sometimes sometimes required to prevent burning marks on the face of the sheet.

This invitation suite was designed by the bride, Stacey Averbuch. It is an elegant invitation in it’s typographic texture, mixing a coarse script font with a finely serifed engravers typeface. The ink is dark brown letterpress on Crane Lettra cotton paper. A cement green envelope color from French Paper was used for all the envelopes in the set. Email Stacey if you really like the design and would like her to work on a custom stationery set for you.

This a good wedding tip: Colored Envelopes. We like the simplicity of adding color to a wedding invitation set by using a colored envelope. It’s a great way to put some color in the set without the expense of letterpress printing more color.

The same dark brown color is printed on both the cards and the envelopes. We printed the invite cards together on a single press sheet and trimmed them to size after printing. That keeps the cost of all the cards more friendly. Also, don’t forget to include a thank you card while printing your inviations. That saves time and money in the long run. We specialize in printing custom sets brought to us by other designers and event planners. Thanks Stacey for a sharp looking invitation.

If you aren’t sure what a “meat raffle” is you should really look it up to fully understand the heritage of this design. It’s good to see a fine establishment carry on this noble tradition. Our friends at Fame created this cuss-worthy design for an invitation to party in their brand new office. Sam Soulek did the design and pattern work reminiscent of vintage beer ephemera.

The two oversize cards are printed with metallic gold ink and an orange pms on 60pt blotter board, both front and back. This fantastically pulpy and coaster-like stock gives the artwork a unique texture in addition to the letterpress impression. The cards fit together and mail in a French Paper Brown Speckltone A10 size envelope, also printed with the same gold ink. Note how the envelope design wraps from the face of the envelope and covers the flap on the back side. Since we fold open the pre-converted envelopes to print them, we are able to print the face and the flap at the same time. This invite is hot off the presses and is hitting mailboxes this week.

Such a pulpy stock material is not without problems. The blotter board stock is a wood fiber stock with very little sizing during the papermaking process. That makes printing on this sheet a bit like running a shedding rabbit through the letterpress. With such a raw surface, the fibers from the stock surface build up on the ink rollers like bunches of hair. That means extra wash ups during the run to keep the ink clean and free of hickies on the artwork. This stock also sucks up the ink, so you need good heavy ink density going down, which makes it a balancing act to keep the small type from filling in on the coarse surface. The paper formation produces a very mottled and salty looking texture in the ink coverage. But we think it’s a unique and vintage look that matches this design perfectly.

Of course, simple design doesn’t always mean simple production. We printed these on 220lb Pearl White Lettra, 100% cotton. Flooding a dark color like this on letterpress is difficult to lay down and keep consistent over the course of the print run – especially on a stock that has some texture to the surface. When we print a solid like this, we generally go to our Paul Bunyan of Heidelberg Windmill presses – the 13 x 18. Even so, there is still a salty, weathered look to how a stock like this will take a solid coverage on letterpress. But we like it that way, it ain’t offset.