Stationery Saturday: icon letter sheets

We’re looking forward to another busy Stationery Saturday this weekend. What will we be printing, you ask? Personalized letter sheets! June 19, customers can choose from four designs: gold fleur de lis, silver moon, red book and blue ship. Pick your favorite or a combination of all four; we’ll print 10 sheets while you wait, for a measly $29. Depending on when you show up, the waiting might be 10 minutes or it might be an hour. You can use this time to learn a little about letterpress (follow us through the steps of pulling the type, setting up the printing form and running our antique press) or do a little shopping while we do the dirty work. We have lots of clever Father’s Day and Graduation cards in stock, and we just received a shipment of Field Notes notebooks that we think are going to fly off the shelves! You might even duck outside for a lap around Loring Park, or stroll down our recently revitalized cobblestone alley.

We are thrilled that Stationery Saturday has been growing in popularity over recent months. In June, we actually ran out of the two most popular designs with a couple of hours to spare in the day. So for maximum selection, you should think about coming earlier than later. As always, we’ll have coffee and homemade cookies for you to nibble. We hope you can stop by! And if you have any Paper Addict friends, be sure to tell them about it too (you can even invite them to the event on Facebook).

Visit our Stationery Saturdays page for more details about the event; to see a schedule of dates for the rest of 2010; and to see what we’ve got planned for next time. Special thanks to letoilemagazine.com for featuring Stationery Saturday in this week’s roundup of the best sales and retail events in the Twin Cities.

Design + Print: unique calling cards

When Mary first visited Lunalux, she had a shop card she’d picked up on a recent trip to France. She loved the classic styling and the blue paper, and asked us design calling cards inspired by her Parisian ephemera. The cards we created for her are letterpress-printed in intense black ink on duplexed cover stock (white on one side, pale blue on the other) – we love the subtle contrast of the paper colors, and the drama of the black ink. We’ve used this fleur de lis motif on wedding stationery recently, and we think it’s equally well suited for classic personal stationery applications.
While Mary’s card has a very traditional feel to it, Yuko wanted something more modern and unusual. She asked us to incorporate her family crest into a simple, sleek composition. The finished card is letterpress-printed with silver ink on a soft black railroad board.

Design + Print: fleur de lis wedding invitations

We created funky save-the-dates for Ashley and Ben a while ago, featuring a super-sized fleur de lis and a simple but asymmetrical composition. I think they’re one of my favorite save-the-dates that we’ve created yet (read more about them in this old blog post). So when the bride reappeared to talk wedding invitations, I was excited for the opportunity to work with her again. Since the wedding would be in New Orleans, we decided to stick with the fleur de lis motif, but she wanted the invitations to feel more fancy and traditional. She also wanted to incorporate bits of French text into the suite, and she wanted the cards to make a strong visual impact when they were pulled from the inner envelopes. Lots of fun elements to consider!

We utilized the same graphic and fonts that appeared on the earlier announcement, but switched to more luxurious paper and a more formal composition. All the cards, including the big square invitations, were printed with antique gold and gray-blue inks, on super-soft 100% cotton Lettra cover. Even the envelopes, also made from Lettra paper, felt ultra-luxe, with their pointed flaps and lovely texture. I love how the cards look when they’re stacked together, revealing just the gold ornaments and the romantic French phrases.

Click here for more information (including pricing) on our custom-designed letterpress-printed wedding invitations. Or dig into our blog archive to read more about other wedding stationery we’ve created.

Design + Print: wedding stationery, start to finish

We’ve been working with Coreil and Charlie on wedding stationery for many months. They first came to Lunalux last November to talk about their save-the-dates. Since then we’ve also printed their wedding invitations, which are dramatically different from the colorful announcements with which they started (and which we wrote about in March). While their save-the-dates reflected the colorful atmosphere of New Orleans, where their nuptials will take place, the invitations are the most traditional we’ve ever done. The classic text was set in elegant script, and letterpress-printed in black ink on the front panel of a folded sheet of thick 100% cotton text-weight paper. Double envelopes, a simple reply card, and a white tissue insert completed this formal set.

Since the invitations have been mailed out, we’ve continued to work on other wedding-related paper goods for the couple, including this invitation to a morning-after-the -wedding breakfast. The color scheme recalls what we used on the save-the-dates. This time, we printed in kelly green ink on yellow and white duplex cover – the double-thick sheet makes for a very substantial postcard, and gives plenty of room for a nice impression without any show-through.

Along with the breakfast invitations, we also printed very simple social stationery for the couple to use as thankyou notes after the wedding. With just their names letterpress-printed on a flat 130# bright white card, the notes are versatile enough to be used for many occasions after all the toasters and china place setting have been dutifully acknowledged. And the project doesn’t end here. As their wedding date approaches, we’re putting the final touches on programs for the ceremony (traditional black-and-white) and tags to be tied to wedding favors (bright and colorful).

Design + Print: Save-the-date, New Orleans style

Lately we’ve worked with many couples who are planning destination weddings. We’ve seen an increased demand for save-the-dates in recent months too. These two trends collided in a couple of projects: two save-the-date announcements, both for weddings in New Orleans, both featuring fleur-de-lis motifs.

Coreil and Charlie knew they would be sending out very formal, traditional wedding invitations, so they wanted save-the-dates that reflect the fun, colorful location of their nuptials. Serif and sans serif fonts were combined with a detailed fleur-de-lis motif and letterpress-printed in kelly green ink on thick bright-white stock. The printed announcement was mounted on a monarch-sized vibrant yellow card, adding another splash of color.

Ashley and Ben’s save-the-date, also for a New Orleans celebration, is much more subtle, which is just what the bride ordered. We printed a large, simple fleur-de-lis silhouette in very pale tan ink, on a natural white A6 notecard. Bare-bones wedding details were printed over the graphic in cloud-blue ink. Click on the image at the right for a larger view.

With so many elements in common, it’s interesting to see how unique each one turned out. Compare these save-the-dates to wedding invitations we created for yet another destination-wedding – again, very different! This is a nice illustration of what we mean when we use the word “custom” to describe the work we do at Lunalux. If you’re planning a destination wedding in New Orleans, we don’t pull out a book of templates and search for the design with a fleur-de-lis on it. We create something that reflects your tastes, your interests, your plans. Whether you need wedding invitations, calling cards or business stationery, we work hard to understand your needs and deliver high-quality letterpress-printed pieces that suit you.