The life of a boutique print shop.

I had the pleasure of designing wedding invitations for Jennifer and Kelvin, who are getting married this October. I’ve known Jen since she was about 15 years old, through her sister, who is a good friend of mine. Even though she’s only a year younger than me, it’s always strange to see my younger peers growing up and getting married. I’ll always think of them as the little sister!

Since Jen and Kelvin are having an autumn wedding, she chose a classic fall palette for her big day. We went with a 4.25 x 9″ invitation pocket in metallic bronze, which opens up to reveal her ceremony and reception details on a 115# pearlized linen paper. The RSVP is a postcard style, which saves on envelopes and return address printing in addition to being different. We used the monogram that her sister and a friend had designed, and added our own elements to tie it all together.

We first met Vanessa of Sweet Digital when she ordered Papertalk calling cards on Etsy, and we had been in talks about creating custom business cards for her new company ever since.

With a new logo in hand, we worked together to come up with newly branded cards for Sweet Digital, her portrait and event photography business. The cards are printed on a 115# linen with a gorgeous pearlescent finish.

It has been so busy here during the wedding season at Papertalk that we’ve had no time to write! Today’s invitations belong to Kit and Terry from sunny California, and this wedding will surely be stunning. I had the pleasure of working with Cathy from Lumiani Events on these babies, and she was great help and very personable.

The design process started with us trying to match the blue to a pair of incredible satin Louboutins that the bride is going to wear on the big day – awesome, isn’t it?

Kit chose her invites in crisp, which is one of the hottest designs in the Papertalk line. Though lots of brides love crisp, once you incorporate your wedding colours and elements, it becomes all your own. These ones were printed on a linen cover stock, and finished off with metallic blue envelopes that we printed return addresses on.

Natasha and Andrew are Toronto natives who are a couple in the best way – high school sweethearts, and after many, many years together are finally tying the knot. The wedding is a fusion of Canadian and East Indian flavours, and this is reflected in the invitation. The bride’s aunt brought gorgeous gold floral ribbon back from India (which the bride incorporated into the invitation pockets), and we recreated the floral pattern into the invitation.

The invitations and inserts were printed on a metallic Quartz cover stock, which the bride put into metallic gold pockets, to enhance the luxe feeling of the wedding.

Papertalk gets a lot of international traffic through Etsy – I’ve worked with local brides who live down the street, and brides who hail from across the pond. It’s really interesting meeting brides from other countries, because every place has their own traditions and quirks when it comes to weddings. A lot of British weddings didn’t take place on weekends (or maybe that was just a coincidence with our clients?), and most countries aside from Canada and the US don’t use the strange RSVP line that is M________________ (you won’t believe how many people have asked what on earth that line means!).

Today’s bride and groom take the cake in terms of distance, as they are located all the way in Australia. Check out their awesome invitations, which are in Stark, one of my favourite designs in the collection. The die cut rounded corner adds a little detail that makes it different from other invites!

My husband Jon and I spent part of our honeymoon in Santorini, Greece. Apart from the beautiful cliffs and that famous sunset, there was something else just as beautiful that caught our eye: the work of Yorgos Kypris.

Yorgos Kypris is a sculptor from Cyprus whose art we discovered in a small gallery by our hotel called Mati. To be precise, we first saw his pieces in our own hotel Aressana, but didn’t know they were by a local artist.

Bronze and glass fish in Aressana's lobby

Glass and bronze fish installed on a wall, at the Mati gallery

Steel fish in the Aressana lobby

Fish School, at the Mati gallery

So we couldn’t quite afford his art (about €3000 for one of his bronze and glass fishes) but that didn’t stop us from visiting the gallery a few more times while trying to figure out how 5 little fish, instead of 50, would look on our wall. Not quite the same effect.

Our favourite of them all: Entrapped Fish (shown here at the World Bank in Washington D.C)

Mati Art Gallery

Wedding invitations are one of my favourite things, and Papertalk offers both unique template designs as well as complete custom designs. Adore is a classically chic design that I considered a “me” kind of item in the Etsy shop – I thought I’d be the only who liked it, and it would sit in the shop unloved and untouched. I’m happy to say that it’s been getting lots of love this year!

Ashleigh is a bride I have been with working with since the beginning of the year – and I love a bride who is on the ball with her wedding invitations. We went through multiple color palettes for her art deco inspired wedding, and finally settled on a lovely red, black and ivory scheme.

Ashleigh and Wayne’s invitations in Adore.

When you start early with your invitations, you have more time to play around with colors, styles and design. I highly recommend you start looking at invitations at least 4 months before the big day, because that way you aren’t rushing around and settling for a design you may not be in love with. Contingency is also important – what if there is a change in the ceremony time, or you decide that you don’t like the paper?

Remember that the invitation will likely be the first thing your guests see associated with your wedding, so whatever you do with it should reflect in your actual wedding day.

Last week I was playing with some of our inks to see if it’s hard to follow a Pantone formula guide and mix some colours that I want. The fan gives you the formulas right there, so that sounds easy enough right? Negative. I was trying to mix PMS 117, a mustard colour, and my first attempt turned it into a mustard that had been dropped in poop. The second attempt, in my mind, was bang on, but when printed, looked like mustard that had been mixed in milk. Looks like I need to practice lots more with these inks.

I studied colour theory back in first year of university, and back then I never thought I would ever use it as much as I have in the years that followed. To not understand how colours look the way they look makes it very difficult to make changes in order to achieve what you want. It might sound silly to some people, but there really is a depth and mystery behind colour.

In addition to color theory, with all this different technology, there’s also a need for the understanding of colour systems that apply to print and to the screen – and how they are different. When I was in school, everything was based on paper swatches and paint – nowadays I’d imagine a lot of it happens on a computer, too. Are any of you out there colour purists?

An intro to colour theory

This past weekend was very exciting for us – our press (aka adopted child) arrived!

Lonely floorspace:

Happy floorspace:

Cheers to Craig at Don Black for helping us out. Lots more to come on our new baby, stay tuned.

Thanks to social networking tools like Facebook, you’re never really out to touch with the people in your life, even if you haven’t seen them in a long time. Recently an old friend, Shalini, got in touch with me through Facebook, and we’ve been working together on a few projects since. I needed cakes for my upcoming wedding, and she needed some business cards for her business, a custom cake shop. You can’t plan that kind of fateful encounter even if you tried!

Buttercup Bakery is Shalini’s baby, and she has been baking for over 10 years, working with some of the best in the industry. We just finished her business cards, which are deliciously delightful.