Isobel's Birth Announcements

Nearly everyone who reads this blog should have gotten Isobel's birth announcement in the post by now, so I think we're safe to post a few images.

A few notes - I designed the announcements before she was born and filled in the details afterward. My mom came over to watch Isobel while I printed these; it was actually the rest of the prep work, not the printing, that took the most time - cutting and adhering photos (why did I think wallet sized photos would come perforated? isn't this the future?) and tracking & writing down addresses. So, a tip for moms-to-be, address the envelopes before the baby comes!

I thought they turned out rather well, but here's my lovely daughter's take:

Custom Wedding Invitations

I had the honor of designing and printing custom letterpress wedding invitations for my cousin Jessica and her fiance, Tim, who will be married the first weekend of May. This was admittedly new ground for me, and I hope Jessica and Tim are as pleased with the results as I am.

Vintage Valentines

From January's Vintage Paper Faire: 

Marriage, a Journey

This project has been long in coming. In truth, I'm skirting the statute of limitations for getting my gift to the couple within a year of their celebration. The quote here by Frederick Buechner used to be at the bottom of the bride's emails, sent during years abroad with the Peace Corps and the Foreign Service. She now signs her emails with a new quote, but this one seemed apt in relation to marriage.

The gift needed to be small, as the couple moves every two years, and the wooden cutting or cheese board beneath the frame, made by Russell James Ooms, is a small piece of California that can hopefully travel with them.

Portraits from the Past

It's that time of year again, and the Vintage Paper Fair came and left Golden Gate Park's Hall of Flowers the first weekend in January. I was able to swing by for an hour Saturday morning and found many, many postcard vendors, but not much in the way of other ephemera. This year I was mostly looking forward to sorting through boxes of unlabeled, lost-in-time images. My interest was piqued by these two. What, do you imagine, are their stories?

It would be wonderful to sleep in a bed, in a tent, filled with light, no? 

Our 2011 Christmas Cards

The idea this year was simplicity. I was thinking about printing white on white, and I was thinking about snowflakes - perhaps because I began designing our Christmas card while in the mountains over Thanksgiving, where it snowed ever so briefly one afternoon. Our card was nearly finished when my laptop decided to stop working.

Still, perhaps this hiccup was fortuitous. I'd chosen a lovely quote for the card ... lovely but not quite right, the result of a Google Search, and for the rest of our stay in Tahoe, I was forced to stay offline. Instead I walked, took some cooking lessons from my mom, and read. I was doing some research on St. Francis of Assisi and his good friend, St. Clare, when I came across the words printed on the inside of our card. The phrase is attributed to St. Francis, some 800 years ago. The words rang true. They are simple. And it never hurts that they're in Italian. The association with St. Francis is perhaps why I added a bird; I'm not sure. That happened rather last minute when I scrapped the previous card design and started over a few weeks later - at home, with a repaired computer. We got the cards printed and out in the nick of time.






















































































The holidays always feel like a long time coming and then pass so quickly. I hope everyone had a merry, joyous Christmas and holiday season.

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