Those little metal clips are something we get asked about a lot. They are called #2 Petite Fasteners, made by GEM Office Products here in the USA. They have a little point that pierces the paper and holds the sheets together. You can buy them wholesale here. ($7 per box of 100 clips, 10 box minimum) They come in two sizes – the #2 is the bigger one, the #0 is smaller. And no, we do not sell the clips. But if you are in need of some top notch Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah invitations we’d love to hear from you.

We letterpress printed all the cards on a sheet together in two color on Cordenons Canaletto Grana Grossa Bianco 111lb C . It is a 20% cotton blend stock with a textural finish. The A7 folder is sized to fit inside an A7 envelope. It is letterpress printed in a coral pattern with a tone on tone blue ink and then die cut. The folder stock is a bright color 100lb cover stock from French Paper‘s Poptone line. The Save the Date Envelope is also a matching stock color, printed tone on tone.

The invite is a massive over sized 12 x 19 inch card printed on Crane Lettra 220lb Flo. White paper stock. The card is printed with silver and a light silver tinted opaque white ink and the text area is die cut to remove as a ticket to the event. If this is what basketball is about, I’m in.

The cards were layed out together on a large 13 x 18 Flo White Crane Lettra 110lbC press sheet. These were printed on our Vandercook Uni III. We letterpress printed two passes of the gold ink for better ink density . Here’s something to keep in mind when running a double pass on a cylinder press – don’t adjust the packing on the press between pass one and two. By adjusting the packing, you also change the circumference of the cylinder, making it very difficult to register the second pass. We like to run two passes of ink metallics to give a little better sheen. Metallic ink, especially on an uncoated cotton stock will never be shiny like a coated stock or approach the mirror finish of a foil stamp, but it is crisp in details and does offer a small amount of shine.

We printed the letterpress portion of the project with 220lb Crane Lettra in an Ecru color and returned them to Erin for finishing. (They needed them quickly, and yes we are always doing some sort of rush custom letterpress work) These cards then had a unique small envelope afixed to them which contains the digitally printed red invitation. Also worth a produciton note is the perf that separates the map and the rsvp card into two parts. We used a fairly coarse perforating rule – about 20 tpi. (teeth per inch) A very thick stock needs enough paper left intact on the perf so it doesn’t just accidently fall off. It’s always worth having several kinds of perf rule around to test the stock and use the one that works best. The difference between a perf that just won’t tear clean and one that falls apart to easy can be tricky to balance. We keep rule around from around 18 tpi up to 100 tpi micro perf.

Check out Erin Jangs blog for more sweet design work. And if you want more, this invite has also been bloggity blogged on some of our favorite sites including Design Sponge, Black Eiffel and Mint Design Blog.