Bella Figura’s letterpress invitation designs for 2012 have arrived!  We’ve added 6 brand new designers and 83 new letterpress wedding invitation designs – which means you’ve now got over 300+ incredible designs to choose from! We’ve added new embellishment options, too — think metallics (foil stamping and foil edging now available in 12 dazzling colors – choose traditional metallics like gold, silver or copper, or go for something a little more daring, like fuchsia, indigo, forest or teal!). Metallics and shine will be a huge wedding trend for 2012, so mix foil stamping with letterpress for a hint of glamour, create a show-stopping look with a powerful pair of foil stamped colors (think two tone gold or gold with silver), or add foil edging for a splash of sophisticated flair.

Counter clock-wise from upper left: Aria by Maybelle; Canto by Kelle Anne McCarter; Fugue by Kamal; Traditional Script by Beth Barr; Moroccan Romantic by Lindsy Aragona; Unique Minimes by Gina Dean and Lauren Richel Kelly. 

New designs and metallics aren’t the only thing we’ve got that’s new for 2012! We’ve got new calligraphy styles, new options for pocketfolds, envelopes + envelope liners, and more. There’s a wide variety of artwork, cartouches, and monograms in our motif library.  Let Chris – one of our knowledgeable invitation experts – walk you through all of the amazing new offerings (just check out the video below!)

We can’t wait to show you our new offerings for next year — we’re introducing over 80 new trend-setting designs that are must-haves for the 2012 wedding season. Our new collection won’t be available until later this month, but we thought we’d give you a little sneak peek to let you know what’s in store for the new year. Think foil stamping (gold! silver! colored metallics!). 7 incredibly talented new designers and calligraphers. Colored envelopes. Letterpress on pocketfolds. Foil edging. New custom calligraphy styles (7 of them!). New inks. New fonts. 2 and 3 color liners. Take a look — it’s true love.

Bella Figura calligrapher Debi Zeinert shared this close up look at her amazing work, a video that features her various calligraphy styles. Her elegant calligraphy can be found in her wedding invitation designs, and her calligraphy accents can also be found in other popular Bella designs (such as Loretta Formal and Calligraphy Monogram). In addition to beautiful, hand-calligraphed letterpress stationery and invitations through Bella Figura, Debi is also available for calligraphy addressing through her business, The Blooming Quill. Your envelopes, escort cards, and other wedding day stationery pieces can all be hand-done to match your letterpress printed suite! Check out this video to see Debi in action, and for more details on working with her, visit her website.

We’re pretty excited about Election Day 2011 around here (it’s today! Tuesday, November 8), so we’ve decided to hold a vote of our own! From now through November 30, four of our letterpress invitation designs will be in the running to become the next Bella Figura Design of the Month. The winning design will go on sale for 20% off during the month of December, so be sure to vote! (And tell your friends to vote, too!) The 20% off applies to save the dates, thank you cards, coasters, place cards, menus, programs, invitations, and any other piece that uses the winning design.

Voting is easy: simply visit this page to view the nominated designs, then ‘like’ your favorite (you must be logged in to Facebook to do this). Already dreaming up ways to customize your favorite design? Check out these gorgeous customizations our in-house graphic design team dreamed up to get some extra inspiration.

Alice by Tara Hogan

Carte de Visite by Ben Whitla

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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!

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Born on December 16th and weighing 7lbs 5oz, we’re ecstatic to get to extend a warm welcome to baby Petra Juliette. Our very own Chris (one of our esteemed client coordinators) is a new daddy and we couldn’t be happier for him. Congratulations, Chris and Theodora, on the new addition to your family! She’s absolutely beautiful.

This fall Bella Figura, our parent company Boxcar Press and our sister company Smock got a lot larger and moved into some shiny new digs. Our expansion (17 letterpresses, 55 employees, 24,000 square feet) makes us one of the largest letterpress shops in the country. For the past few months we have been packing up, building new walls, moving presses, expanding our print shop and moving our operations from one end of an old warehouse in downtown Syracuse, New York to the other. Now we’ve cleaned up our dust and we’re inviting you to come check us out!Come for shop tours, printing demonstrations, free giveaways, holiday shopping with Smock, refreshments, live entertainment and more. Letterpress lovers of all ages are welcome – we’ll have lots of fun activities for kids, too! We look forward to seeing you on Saturday between 10 and 4 – see you soon!

If you follow us on twitter, you may already know that for the past few months we have been packing up, building new walls, moving presses, expanding our print shop and moving our operations from one end of an old warehouse in downtown Syracuse, New York to the other. We are newly settled in our new space and working on cleaning up our dust (and, trust us, there has been a lot of dust), but we wanted to let you know that we’re going to be hosting an open studio (aka a really fun party) next month and you’re invited! We do hope you’ll join us – friends, clients, general public, and the curious at heart are all welcome. There will be many more details to come so stay tuned!

We were so excited to see one of our newest Bella Figura designers, calligrapher Maybelle Imasa-Stukuls‘s beautiful studio space featured on Brooklyn Bride last week! We loved reading more about Maybelle’s inspiration and the beautiful space she works in and know you will, too. Check it out on Brooklyn Bride! Also, don’t miss Maybelle’s beautiful calligraphy letterpress wedding invitation designs exclusively for Bella Figura, Sonoma and Belle.

{Photos by Maybelle from Brooklyn Bride.}