Leigh found Lunalux while searching the internet for wedding stationery that is both sophisticated and earth-friendly. She wanted invitations printed on 100% recycled paper but didn’t want them to look crafty. It was a fun challenge to work with a long-distance client who had very specific needs! Leigh found a shower invitation on our website that was almost perfect (click here to read our post about it from last February). She loved the composition, but knew that her botany-wise relatives would hassle her for using seasonally inaccurate dogwood blossoms on invitations for a August wedding. Because all Lunalux invitations are custom-designed to suit our individual clients, I assured her it would be no problem to replace the dogwood with a different floral graphic. I created an illustration of trumpet vines and sourced heavy 100% recycled card stock and envelopes from Michigan’s earth-loving French Paper, staying in touch with Leigh every step of the way via phone and email. The trumpet vines are incorporated into the invitation, RSVP cards, thank-you notes and place cards in deep, saturated shades of orange and turquoise. When Leigh received the finished product, she was thrilled – and we were thrilled by her enthusiastic thank-you. “The invitations are perfect! Now everyone will see that is IS possible to have environmentally friendly invitations that are elegant.”

Looking for unique wedding invitations? Click here to read more about our design and letterpress printing services.

I’ve worked with Lucas Saugen in a variety of ways over the past four years. As a rollergirl, I’ve submitted to his photographer’s gaze in various derby-related photo shoots. And he availed himself of our services a couple years ago when we printed his bare-bones business cards, which he rubber-stamped with his trademark red star. So I was happy to see Lucas at our doorstop this spring, on the hunt for ideas. He wanted swag to promote his photography business. Something useful, small, unique. The winning concept: matchbook-style notebooks. He restricted his creativity to our pre-existing notebook covers (over-runs from a wholesale project), composing around blue cardstock that had already been cut and scored to fold down to a 3.5×5-inch notebook. We sourced lovely and affordable stock for the interior pages: Strathmore elements lined 70# text, with its super-smooth surface. His logo and business contact information is letterpress-printed in red ink. We assembled the books for him too, binding about 20 micro-perforated sheets into each cover with our heavy-duty step-down stapler.
If you want to see some of Lucas’s work head to Pizza Lucé in downtown Minneapolis; his beautiful, eerie urban landscapes are on exhibit there through the end of August 2009. Or check out his work on his website: www.saugenphotography.com.

Stationery Trends is a newish trade publication for the stationery and gift industry. We’re fans because the magazine is beautifully designed, and features more fashion-forward products and manufacturers than other industry publications. We’re thrilled that Lunalux owner Jenni Undis is quoted in a new story about what independent stationers are doing to weather these challenging economic times. You can read the story exclusively on their website at stationerytrendsmag.com (click on the Summer 2009 magazine cover; the story is the last item in the table of contents). It also includes a sidebar about the 3/50 Project, a Minneapolis-born initiative that we recently wrote about here in the Lunalux blog (click here to read that post).

Even though it’s practically a holiday, I’m enjoying a bustling and productive day in the studio. Planning to work late, even! We’re expecting a little visit from Blue and Jack, a couple whose unique wedding invitations we printed earlier this year. They’re having a night-before-the-wedding party at the dance studio next door (hello, Four Seasons), and might pop in for a visit before they get their champagne on. The bride and groom live in London, but are enjoying Independence Day nupltials at the James J. Hill Library in downtown St. Paul. The bookish locale inspired wedding invitation booklets with their names pressed into the cover, and pages for the invitation, travel information and response card. Extra booklet covers will be repurposed as covers for the ceremony program (Blue took care of the detailed interior pages) and thank-you notes. We also printed two A2-sized envelopes – the bride’s parents’ address was used for the invitation envelopes, but Blue and Jack’s London address went on envelopes for the thank-yous.

The booklet is made from three folded cards, printed in navy blue and saturated yellow on 100% cotton Lettra cover. The last page, an RSVP postcard, was micro-perforated for easy removal. We nested the pages together and gave the assembled invitations a face-trim. With such thick pages in the booklet, interior pages jutted out of the cover a bit; this final post-assembly trim left the finished piece looking more, well, finished. Blue took on the Herculean task of hand-stitching over 100 invitations. I tried to stitch a few together for sample albums and photo shoots, but kept pricking my finger and messing up the snowy white cover. So our sample shown here is bound with a slim satiny ribbon along the spine.

I’m really proud of how this invitation turned out. Blue and Jack get lots of credit for coming to Lunalux with the idea of a booklet invitation, and for giving me a nice balance of articulate direction and creative freedom. The finished invitation feels substantial and special, and looks like it was meant to be letterpress-printed. The unexpected format executed with classic typography turned out to be perfect for their wedding in the stacks. The ornamentation is bookish, but the exaggerated proportion of the dingbats on the cover add a modern touch to an otherwise simple, classic composition.