THE INVITATION
The moment had finally arrived for me to design my own wedding invitations (and also get married)!
After sifting through all forms of media and all the creative possibilities in my head for this one invitation (letterpress? foil press? emboss? watercolors? what else), I decided that I would letterpress and paint with some watercolors.
I knew that my favorite flower, the ranunculus, would not be in season in August, but it is my favorite! I painted several types of florals, inspired by this delicate beauty.
One of the first drafts -- I originally wanted to letterpress the text directly onto the cards with the painted florals printed onto Crane Lettra paper of at least a 110lb thickness. However, the cost of offset printing on this specific type of paper was pretty expensive, so I had to figure out a different approach. The color scheme and font choices were also not sitting right with me.
I focused on creating an image that would be suitable for letterpress. I simplified the sketch of the flowers and narrowed down the color choices to a dusty/slate/french blue and rosey pink. I also chose these fonts that I felt evoked a bit of whimsy.
I rented a Vandercook press at the San Francisco Center for the Book for a few hours to print both the invitation cards and the directions cards. Mixing the paints to create the exact colors you want is not easy! The other challenging part was aligning the paper and polymer plate so that the two colors print in the correct positions.
Cutting all my cards to size with this monster guillotine was very satisfying. :)
So, how do I incorporate watercolors into the invitation? I haven't played with vellum paper for awhile, so I thought I'd test printing out some floral painting onto it...and I loved it! Printed straight from my laserjet at home.
I settled with offset printing the RSVP cards and a couple of Chinese invitations. I wrapped these up with the painted floral sleeve, tied them off with Angela Liquori's dusty blue ribbons and a circular logo (S+S), and they were good to go!
For the envelopes, I did some simple calligraphy with rose gold ink. Finally, they were sealed with a copper wax seal using the Chinese character (insert character) for double happiness. Done!