We know, we know, this is supposed to be a blog about letterpress, but we thought you’d like these beautiful photos from one of our favorite places, Grindstone Farm. Not only does Grindstone provide delicious, nutritious, organic fruits and veggies to the Bella Figura staff through our CSA partnership, they are also a prime example of why farms make great wedding locations!

Of course, planning a wedding on a working farm can be tricky. You need to plan ahead so you are not stuck without power or lights (or bathrooms!), you’ll need to make sure grandma and grandpa do not have to walk a mile in dress shoes, and if you want the ultimate local experience of using food and flowers grown onsite, you’ll need to get the details to the farmer a year in advance.

When the details come together, it’ll be worth the trouble. Your guests will be able to share in an incredible one-of-a-kind experience, creating memories that will last a lifetime.

Interested in finding a farm like this near you for your wedding or big event? Or do you want to use locally grown produce or flowers for your special event?  Check out localharvest.org to find CSAs, U Pick Farms, Farmers Markets, Grocery Co-ops in your area!

We just love when magazines and blogs decide to showcase the beautiful letterpress printing we get to do every day, so today we’re sharing some of the amazing features Bella Figura has been spotted in over the past few months. One of the most recent spotlights was found in the fall 2011 issue of Inside Weddings, where Kamal‘s majestic Bejeweled design sparkled.

A few months back, Brides magazine highlighted our Nouvina design by Heidi, which features modern, whimsical flowers and fun, bold colors.

Stationery Trends also decided to feature one of our invitations this fall — the ever popular Irving invitation (designed by Ben Whitla).

We were also thrilled to see one of our calligraphers, Patricia Mumau of Primele, featured in Martha Stewart Weddings a few months back!

We’d also like to thank Oh So Beautiful Paper, Once Wed, Modernly Wed, Chic Vintage Brides, Wed Haute, If I Must Say So, and I Love You Too for highlighting our work — thank you, thank you!

You may have heard that starting this month you can now find Bella Figura at your favorite local stationery store! It is with love and and great excitement that we sent the first batch of Bella Figura letterpress wedding albums out into the world late last week. We are proud to have teamed up with some of the world’s best stationery retailers and thought we’d share a little glimpse at what went into making this album possible…

So now you find Bella Figura in California, New York, Texas, New Hampshire, Nashville and beyond! Of course, we always love working with you directly so be in touch to chat with one of our stationery experts. To see the album live and in person, find a Bella Figura retailer near you and pay them a visit!

Title: Motivation a la Amos
Photographer: Chris, letterpress client coordinator champ
Medium: iPhone
@ Bella Figura since: 2010

Title: Design Assistant
Photographer: Jess, letterpress designer
Medium: Hipstimatic for iPhone
@ Bella Figura since: 2009

Title: Sweet Treats
Photographer: Cyd, letterpress marketer
Medium: iPhone
@ Bella Figura since: 2009

With the new year here, we wanted to show off a few photos from our recent open studio event, which took place a few weeks ago. We had the most fun introducing the local community to letterpress and showing off our print shop and new offices! We invited the local public, media, clients, vendors, friends, family and anyone with an interest or passion for printing and the arts to come pay us a visit. In return, we had printing demonstrations, tours, giveaways, an excess of sweets and goodies from a local bake shop and loads of letterpress fun. We decorated with DIY paper chain garlands for the Christmas tree and colorful paper bunting strung from the cross beams in our office, all of which were created from gift wrap from our sister company, Smock. Our friend and amazing wedding photographer Alice G. Patterson spent the day with us and captured these snippets from the day and her photos already have us excited for next year!

All told we had over 300 people come out to pay us a visit! It blew us away and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome everyone back again next year. We are honored to have the friends and clients that we do and we look forward to making this an annual event. Stay tuned for 2011!

{Photos by Alice G. Patterson.}

Check out this great post on Weddingbee by Cyd, a Bella bride who visited our upstate New York letterpress shop recently to plan for her own wedding invitations. Looking for more glimpses of what goes on in a real letterpress print shop? Check out our cool letterpress music video featuring all that is good and beautiful about our presses, and also this other great video of our print shop, made by professional wedding videographer Luke Walker. And yes, we love visitors.

Check out this very cool video about….our letterpress print shop! The video comes from Luke Walker Photography, one of the best wedding photographers (and videographers it turns out too!) out there. We met Luke back in 2006, when he lived nearby in the Finger Lakes and (gorgeously and beautifully) photographed the weddings for two of our Bella couples. (You can see Luke’s photos from Megan & Matt’s Aurora, NY wedding here) Luke visited our print shop a little while ago with his video equipment in tow, and it was a true pleasure getting to chat with him over the afternoon. Thanks for making the trip out to Syracuse, Luke, to see Bella Figura! (Want to see more letterpress printing videos right now? Check this one out too….)