New cards for people who are not me

June 11, 2015May 24, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

Growing up in a homogeneous small town in a fairly homogeneous state, I wasn’t exposed to much in the way of diversity. Sure, I had a few (and I mean few) classmates whose skin was a different color than mine, but real differences—religion, culture, sexual orientation—were few and far between. Let’s just say it was easy to forget that not everyone celebrates Christmas.

I grew up, met new people, made efforts to broaden my horizons. I strive to be more conscientious about being inclusive in life, and in my little corner of the letterpress world. You’ve seen my same-sex marriage cards for years now—those were easy to come up with—but it’s still hard to write and design greetings for occasions you personally don’t have the cultural context for. Lucky for me, I have friends who can fill in the gaps.

So this year, keep an eye out for a more inclusive card collection! The cards pictured are all now available in my etsy shop, and please feel free to leave me a comment with a sentiment you’d like to see!

Card Club: June

June 1, 2015May 22, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

We’re heading out on a tropical vacation today! So this month’s Card Club package is inspired by the sun and the sea (plus a few cards for those inevitable summer weddings)!

Don’t worry, I’ve got a few posts scheduled to entertain you while I’m gone! And, there’s some fun stuff coming up later this month, so stay tuned!

Love is Love

May 7, 2015April 21, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

Before I moved to Bermuda, I got in touch with all my wholesale clients to see if they wanted to stock up. Not only did this save them on shipping costs for future orders, but it also meant I had less stuff to move.

One of the designs that completely sold out were my “congrats” icons. I had tried reprinting them during one my first press days here, but they’re a fairly temperamental design and things just weren’t working out. Since then I’ve been too busy to get to them!

But a few weeks ago during my printing frenzy for Driftless Studio, I also finally got all three designs on press. They’re available in the shop—hetero couple here, and same-sex couples here and here!

Modern Calligraphy

April 13, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

If you follow me on social media, you may remember the Laura Hooper calligraphy kit I received for Christmas last year. It took me three months, but I finally sat down and got started a few weeks ago!

To my own surprise, I’m completely hooked. I’ve spent several afternoons filling up the pages of my practice book until my fingers started to cramp and I feel like I’m starting to get a handle on my own particular style.

At first, it was all about consistency—mostly in width and height of the characters. I tended to start out with very large letters and they shrunk as the line went along. I also tweaked the forms of several letter forms—adding an extra loop inside letters like “a” and “o” and creating a completely different “k”—an important one since it’s in my name!

I’ve recently moved on to addresses, since being able to offer addressing services to wedding clients was the main catalyst for learning calligraphy. I still have some progress to make to figure out the layout and spacing I like, but things are coming along.

I also experimented with the white ink that came in the kit and created this lovely design below. I’m thinking I may sell it as a digital print in my etsy shop… stay tuned!

Warm Gold Wedding Invites

March 15, 2015February 26, 2015 ~ Bess Paper Goods & Gifts ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been reshooting and pitching letterpress projects to various blogs lately, and it made me think about all the projects you missed while I wasn’t blogging last year! So, I’m going to start reminiscing and featuring a few of my favorites over the next couple weeks. Remember: if you see something you like, don’t hesitate to get in touch!

First up: One of the other wedding invitations I had on my plate last year. This one was a little simpler than Amy’s wedding stationery extravaganza, but no less beautiful.

When the bride, Melissa, contacted me, she already had a design for her invitations worked up—and it featured a crest that the groom had drawn himself. I love that the couple worked together to create their invites! I helped Melissa with some of the technical aspects of the files while she had a trial version of InDesign, and converted the leaves to vectors myself.

Since I have two different gold inks (one that prints like shit but is very sparkly, and one that is not so sparkly, but more more reliable when it comes to print quality), I sent Melissa a few test samples with different proportions of each ink to choose from. Then, I spent a couple hours chopping up some lovely Pearl white Lettra paper and got to work!

The invitations turned out beautifully, with the simple design really showing off the impression one can achieve with letterpress.