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Simple love and belly bands - how do you add names to a letterpress invitation?

Today I share a beautiful invitation designed by a gorgeous couple.

Once again, simple and elegant was the brief - and I must say, its also a tiny bit quirky!

This suite also demonstrates a neat work around for adding guests names to the invitation.

Which leads me to a common question:  How do you add names to a letterpress invitation?
Sometimes, only specific family members are invited to a wedding - Adults and not children for example or friends but not their plus one and other potential awkward situations. "Hi Aunty Carole, umm... it's just you and Uncle Harry that are invited to our wedding, not your 4 children and your 8 grand-children and 16 great-grand children... and no Bart the pony can not come - sorry...."

To letterpress individual names would be - well kind of out of the question - as you would have to have a plate made for each name = $$$, so to get around this, we suggest several things:

1. Don't worry about it, each envelope can be addressed with names eg 'To Mr & Mrs Smith' or 'To Rodney & Larissa MacDonald' or 'The Brice Family', even 'Adam and Partner' (or just Adam for that matter)
2. Leave a space on the invitation and have a calligrapher write in the names
3. Tie the invitation up with string and add a swing tag with guest's names
4. Use a belly band! (My personal fave)- A digitally printed belly band also keeps all items in the suite together and states specifically who is invited - Just so happens I have a great example of this below ;-) 

Don't forget to add a 'Name/s' line on your RSVP as well as number of guests, so that any red flags raised can be addressed prior to your event.

Another great idea for belly bands is to use them as place cards - wrap them about your menus and there you have it! (see last image)

 

A little Australian history lesson! Around the time my little press 'Mavis' was manufactured

A little history lesson!

'Mavis' my Golding Pearl Old Style #3 was manufactured in 1893, Boston, USA.  It was shipped to Sydney where it remained until I dragged her over to Perth. I thought it would be nice to research the events that were shaping Australia during the 1890's, when my little press would have been 'brand new' and in full operation!

'An Australian Native' By Tom Roberts, 1888

The 1890's

The British had only been colonised in Australia for just over 100 years!

1890
26 April - Banjo Patterson's The Man from Snowy River is published.
1891
5 January - The 1891 Australian shearers' strike begins, which leads to the formation of the Australian Labor Party.
1893
14 June - Gold discovered at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia by Paddy Hannan and two others.
1894
18 December - South Australia is the first colony to give women equal franchise with men. (See below)
1895
6 April - The song Waltzing Matilda is first performed at the North Gregory Hotel, Winton, Queensland.
 

The printing industry and its role in Australia's women's suffrage movement

Wouldn't it be awesome if my Golding Pearl (Mavis) was a press during the women's suffrage movement and it had a hand in printing 'The Dawn"? It's easy to imagine this elegant press (pictured left) being operated by suffragettes!

The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women was an early feminist journal published monthly in Sydney, Australia between 1888 and 1905.

In the first edition, Louisa Lawson, writing under the name of Dora Falconer, wrote:

"Every eccentricity of belief, and every variety of bias in mankind allies itself with a printing machine, and gets its singularities bruited about in type, but where is the printing-ink champion of mankind's better half? There has hitherto been no trumpet through which the concentrated voice of womankind could publish their grievances and their opinions ... Here then is Dawn, the Australian Woman's Journal and mouthpiece." —Dora Falconer, (Louisa Lawson) 15 May 1888 "The Dawn"

The whole journal was printed by an all female team of journalists, editors and printers. The unionists in the New South Wales Typographical Association, dis-allowed the Dawn printers membership into their all male union, in part because the women were paid substantially less than men. The association argued that the discrepancies in pay were such that men would be unable to compete, as well as arguing that the work was too dangerous for women to engage in. At one stage a member visited their offices to "harangue the staff" – only to be removed after having had a bucket of water thrown on them by Lawson. [http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/The_Dawn_%28feminist_magazine%29]

'The Dawn' January 1895

Wedding invitation digital plus letterpress - 'Off the rack' range

I designed these Letterpress invitations to be suitable for wedding, engagement, or save the date invitations even a special birthday! The product is an 'off the rack' item, meaning while it will be letterpress printed with your details, the image and style of text is left as standard to keep the costs down. There is no design or set up cost as it is template based.

The invitations are available as C6 (medium) or large 125x175mm (Large invitation size)

There are 4 different designs in the range. The digital top portion features
1. Australian eucalyptus leaves or gum leaves from a variety of Australian native flora.
2. Tropical palm leaves
3. Colorful peonies - a pretty peony bouquet
4. Elegant soft pink roses

You can purchase a Molly and Charlie SAMPLE over in our ETSY shop which allows you to see and feel the quality in real life. ROSE sample, GUM LEAF sample, PEONY sample, PALM sample.

The text below can be customized to say anything you like and is printed letterpress.
STOP PRESS - NEW ADDITION! - Also available as all digital (no letterpress)  for a super cost effective invitation!

SPECIFICATIONS: (Medium)
SIZE: A6 - 105x148mm
300gsm
100% cotton rag paper
Full colour - top illustration
1 colour - Letterpress text
1 sided

SPECIFICATIONS: (Large invitation size)
SIZE: 125x175mm
300gsm
100% cotton rag paper
Full colour - top illustration
1 colour - Letterpress text
1 sided

Samples are available for purchase in my ETSY shop HERE

Black and white letterpress wedding invitation suite

Simple and elegant are usually the 2 most common requests I get for an invitation suite. This elegant invitation definitely ticks all of the boxes. For this invitation and more, visit our GALLERY.

SPECIFICATIONS:
Invitation:
Size: C6 Insert
Paper: Gmund 100%cotton
Envelope: black with black and white rose liner

Wedding Etiquette - Who's name goes first?

I often get asked: 'On the wedding invitation, whose name goes first?'

Well, while anything goes and any which way is acceptable these days, it' s more commonplace for the bride's name to be first - it's the 'ladies first' premise.

Also, traditionally, the bride's family are the official hosts of the wedding and therefore they are inviting the guests along with the groom.

Another interesting point is when you address a married couple formally, the husband's name is always next to the surname ie Sarah and Jim Jones.

But, unless someone in your family or wedding party feels strongly about how an invitation should be worded, it's really up to you and your personal taste :-)

There are may websites that offer templates and formatted text for you to use an of course our invitation gallery offers a selection of wording styles and formats too!

Marble and Geo Letterpress invitation suite

This invitation suite was experimental. An excercise in registration and in combining a digital print with letterpress. The angles of the lines had to fit perfectly within the spaces on the digital print - a big ask when each card is manually fed into a 100yo machine! Never the less, it worked and I love it!  It was produced for the Perth Wedding Upmarket in May earlier this year purely for me. To push the boundaries of the letterpress craft and modern design and to challenge myself.

I will be exhibiting at the next Wedding Upmarket:

When: Saturday 29th August 2015
Time: 10am to 3pm
Where: University of Western Australia’s Winthrop Hall Undercroft
Entry: Free

 

SPECIFICATIONS

Invitation - 150x150mm, Digitally printed onto Crane's fl White, Post letterpress in gold ink.

Vintage lace letterpress wedding invitation

This beautiful invitation was inspired by vintage lace.
The lace (blind impression) forms a frame around the script text in silver.
The cool thing about these invitations was the belly bands that addressed the invitation.  They were digitally printed onto matching text weight paper.
The same belly band idea was applied around DL menus and used as place card alternatives.

SPECIFICATIONS:

600gsm cotton - bright white

A5 (148x210mm)

2 colour - blind and silver

Printing for the Million

While trawling through Ebay for some new rollers for a tiny Adana press that I picked up some time ago, I happened across this 1930's letterpress guide. It's so succinct and clear - it has even been printed using a letterpress - you can only just feel and see the indentation of the type through the pages and the photos are reproduced buy using a halftone screen of tiny dots.

I have attached the book below as a super cool reference for anyone that is interested in researching or reading about the finer points of letterpress. (You're welcome ;-)

CLICK ON THE IMAGE ABOVE TO READ

OR

Rails and Bails - fix

One of the great things about owning a vintage press is the visible wear that human hands and error have made on it over 100+ years. Last month I thought it was time to repair a nick on the rails that I had put up with for some time by compensating in different ways, but I'd had enough!

There were 2 'chunks' taken out of the rails where the platen had been shut while the bails were left open.  Several times over the past 100 years it would seem to leave such a mess!

Essentially, the bails hold the tympan and packing down on the platen, so when you change the tympan, you need to lift the bails to take it out. 

The problem with having such damage on the rails, is that in that spot, the rollers can dip down onto the forme and over-ink that part of the image = frustrating!

A little research told me that steel putty could do the trick. Steel putty is readily available in hardware shops and if you happen to have someone handy in the family (like me) then you will find it on your shelf. (Thanks awesome husband for these instructions)

1. mix the epoxy to the instructions of the tub.
2. smear the putty onto the damaged area
3. smooth it over but leave a slight bulge so it can be sanded back
4. once completely set, sand back using coarse grit (~320) then sand again using a finer grit (~500)

We made the conscious decision only to treat the damaged spot as once you start mucking about with the rail height, unless done VERY accurately, you can make a mess out of it pretty quickly.

As you can see from the final results its pretty good!

I have needed to re-tape the rails to get the rollers back up to roller height as is recommended.  I use a special tape called UHMWtape/ slick surface tape (127um) - 18mm. I sourced this from Embossing Tape Supplies here in Australia.

Next step was to re-level the platen.. but that's another story!

Bails and diagram of press parts

The damage to the rail

Damage to the feeder board - I love this nick as it shows the 100's of times someone has lifted the bails up and scraped the feeder board ever so slightly, like footsteps on ancient cobblestones.

Bails left open and press has been run crushing the bails against the rails - not good.

Proper position of bails for safe printing.

The gaps and general unevenness of rails before fix (side view)

After repair, only slight dip and much straighter rails - yay!

Plastic steel putty

Bold script, hand lettered, modern letterpress wedding invitation

A beautiful soft mint green script is splashed across this luxurious invitation. Another instance where these fabulous clients suggested edits and styling to the design which contributed to a perfect final result.
Also, these super kind words make me feel a little bit special!
"I just wanted to say a huge thank you for the most beautiful wedding invitations! The suite was gorgeous, very high quality and beautifully presented. We really appreciate how easy it was to work with you, nothing was an issue and none of my many many emails seemed a bother. We have had so many compliments on how exquisite the invitations were. I have been recommending you to other brides at work and will continue to do so. You do such beautiful work : )
Thanks again Jess & Matt"

SPECIFICATIONS
Size: A5
Paper: 300gsm 100% cotton rag
Colours: grey and mint green

A tropical getaway letterpress destination wedding invitation

A prefect invitation for a tropical wedding escape to Koh Samui Thailand. Aren't destination weddings just the best!

SPECIFICATIONS
110x155mm
100% cotton rag paper
600gsm

Etsy seller profile

Pretty chuffed with ETSY AU and this seller profile.  

If you are a maker of any sort and want to sell online, I can't sing the praises of ETSY enough.  

 

For the uninitiated, its the hand crafted equivalent to Ebay. Anything and everything is at your fingertips, you buy from individual talent and if you care to sell, the interface, ethos and community support is invaluable.

www.ETSY.com

Post by EtsyAU.

She walks in beauty letterpress wedding

The Inspiration for this wedding invitation was from the poem 'She Walks in Beauty' by Lord Byron
It includes a square 140x140mm invitation, an envelope lines, a tag used to embellish the invitation as well as decorate bonboniere, and finally, coasters.

These cake mix bonboniere jars were made by Ce C's Cakes

SPECIFICATIONS
Invitations:
140x14omm invitation
600gsm cotton card
Silver and white
Silver edge painting

Tags:
Silver ink
600gsm
50x105mm
600gsm

Coasters:
Coaster recycled paper pulp
White and silver ink