We are excited to announce the introduction of two new Trendsetter sample packs! Holly of decor8 and the ladies of Southern Weddings Magazine have each curated a Bella Figura sample pack of their favorite letterpress wedding invitation designs, joining the ranks of other Bella Figura trendsetters including Style Me Pretty, Oh Joy, Snippet & Ink, and Brooklyn Bride. Holly’s favorites include Estrella, Linnea, Urbanity, Maja and Dewdrop while the gals of Southern Weddings Magazine include Estrella, Nonpareil, Nigella, Dewdrop and New Calligraphy among their favorites.
New Calligraphy Letterpress Invitation
Nigella Letterpress Reply Card
Maja Letterpress Invitation
As always, when you purchase a Trendsetter sample pack ($20, including shipping), 100% of the cost goes to environmental causes near and dear to our hearts as selected by the Trendsetters. Be sure to check them out!
We just found out about Green Weddings, an event to be hosted by Housing Works on April 13, 2009 in New York City by way of our friend Vané at Brooklyn Bride. The event will feature an array of advice about planning a fabulous eco-friendly wedding from a wide range of industry experts including Mireya Navarro, author of Green Wedding: Planning Your Eco-Friendly Celebration. Because hosting an eco-friendly event means so much more than just eco-friendly letterpress invitations, we’re thrilled to see a group of knowledgable industry leaders coming together to offer advice and insight. Now, if only we could be in NYC to attend…
It’s worth mentioning that Vané is one of our featured Bella Figura Trendsetters and her fresh, modern style was the inspiration behind our popular Dewdrop design, which we love. You can purchase Vané’s favorite Bella Figura designs, or that of any other Bella Figura Trendsetter, as a sample pack with 100% of the purchase price going to Vané’s environmental cause of choice, The Conservation Fund.
Jordan and Juan Carlos (Juancho) are a truly special Bella Figura couple who married in April 2008 after they fell in love while Jordan was living in Ecuador where Juan is from. This past fall they threw a wonderful eco-friendly wedding celebration in Jordan’s home state of Texas in October, four years to date of their very first kiss, and chose Bella Figura’s letterpress wedding invitations in our Amy design printed with taupe ink to kick it all off. It was a great pleasure for us to work with Jordan and her mother who corresponded closely with client coordinator Tiffany, and we love all of the ways Jordan and Juan Carlos worked to make their wedding green and eco-friendly. Theirs is a wedding that was truly centered on love, family and togetherness while limiting any negative environmental impact and we find that incredibly inspirational. According to Jordan, “…for the green aspects of the wedding, we wanted to have a self-indulgent time but not at the cost of our carbon footprint. ”
To kick off the weekend celebration in true Texas fashion, Jordan and Juan invited their guests from around the world to join them for an evening at the rodeo followed by dinner and then dancing at a favorite local tavern. It was a chance to bring together their friends and family from as far away as Ecuador, Spain, England, Germany, Mexico and from across the United States in a fun and festive way that allowed everyone to forge new friendships and make new memories. Guests camped out and stayed in cabins at a couple of dude ranches in the local area, enjoyed horseback rides, participated in a series of summer camp-inspired activities such as games, tournaments, and scavenger hunts during the day on Saturday before enjoying a hayride before dinner.
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One more sweet letterpress save the date to inspire you….this is our Deveril letterpress design, which looks great in any ink color, but we are partial to this design in a rich black letterpress ink. This is a reply card size save the date as well (3 1/2″ x 4 7/8″) — a great idea which uses less paper (eco!) and also is less expensive than the larger 4.5″ x 6.25″ A-6 save the date size.
We’ve been designing and printing a whole lot of lovely letterpress save the dates lately — here are a few of our favorites! We’ll start with Cartoccio, one of our new wedding invitation designs — it’s timeless, classic, and really cool in the vibrant garden green ink.
Birds is another 2009 design that looks lovely in hot colors (though we think it would be awesome in black as well!).
We loved the elegant Bordure save the date with these ultra elegant serif fonts!
We’ve noticed a lot more clients choosing letterpress reply postcards over the traditional reply card + envelope for their wedding invitations. We’re all for this trend – it’s more eco (less paper!), and also helps keeps budgets down and keeps letterpress more affordable. Reply postcards cost less to letterpress, and you also save a little bit on the postage. We’ve also seen a huge movement to do 2 color letterpress designs as 1 color (see below for some examples) – a great way to keep your costs down as well while keeping letterpress in your budget. While reply postcards are slightly less formal than reply cards + envelopes, it’s still totally appropriate for even high black tie events. Remember, we’re talking about letterpress postcards on a luxurious cotton paper — they’re still really, really lovely, and we know all of your guests will have trouble parting with them!
Here are a few of our favorites, starting with the Boutique letterpress postcard.
The Champagne letterpress reply postcard — this is usually a two color design, but turning it into a 1 color piece helps keep costs down too.
The Vintage letterpress postcard.
The Deveril letterpress reply postcard.
The Somersby letterpress postcard – another 2 color design that looks lovely in one color.
Lastly, the Nonpareil! This is usually a two color design also.
Concluding our letterpress calligraphy love fest (for now!) — here are some really sweet escort cards that feature letterpress printed calligraphy. What a great keepsake this would make for your guests…these escort cards are from our Classic Calligraphy letterpress design. In addition to offering letterpress printed calligraphy, we do offer calligraphy services (for envelopes, place cards, etc.) through our favorite calligrapher ever Debi Zeinert.
This letterpress wedding invitation is printed in a custom dark blue ink and features lots and lots of gorgeous, hand-drawn calligraphy by our master calligrapher Debi Zeinert.
Even the M line on the reply card highlights the calligraphy….lovely! Shows how even a single calligraphy letter can totally make a card shine.
Letterpress accents on the classy letterpress coasters too….
Here’s our New Calligraphy design as a save the date – in moss ink, with moss edge painting, on our ultra-thick 2-ply cotton paper (the 2-ply paper really lets the edge painting stand out). The mix of the modern & the historical in this letterpress calligraphy design is so cool, and the moss ink color is full of personality too.
Go on over to Preppy Wedding’s great blog for a fun giveaway: a $200 gift certificate to Bella Figura for whatever your heart desires. Letterpress wedding invitations, letterpress coasters, letterpress baby announcements, letterpress stationery, etc. etc. All you need to do is write a little about how you’ll tie one of our letterpress designs into your wedding (or your life!). The Preppy Wedding giveaway goes until Wednesday, February 18. Have fun and good luck!
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.
Continuing our letterpress calligraphy love fest…here are a few more calligraphy treats.
Black ink seems so right for calligraphy invitations – it’s the original letterpress ink from hundreds of years ago, and black has stayed in fashion ever since. This is the Classic Calligraphy design using the Spencerian calligraphy style, letterpress printed on our 2-ply cotton paper. Totally timeless. And notice how special each of the first letters of the bride’s and groom’s names are – I love how the “L” of the bride is intertwined already with the “P” of the groom.
We often do calligraphy invitations in one color — but wow, when you add a second color–and add that to a custom monogram in fact — what an effect! The butterfly monogram is sweet and sophisticated and uses the bride & groom’s first letters of their first names. More black ink — how can you go wrong there? — but the garden green ink ads a bit of fun. This is another variation on the Classic Calligraphy design, Spencerian style.
Stay tuned for a very cool calligraphy save the date — in green!
