Silhouette Invitation

With the state fair just around the corner, I thought I would post about Kyra and Robert's awesome silhouette invitation for their upcoming wedding. At last year's NC state fair, renowned silhouette artist, Karl Johnson - cutarts.com was cutting silhouettes. We were able to scan and digitally trace their silhouette cut outs and put them on their wedding invitation and seating cards. The results were awesome, classic black and white paired with a tiffany blue envelope. Karl is quite amazing and has been featured in Martha Stewart Weddings among others. We cannot wait to do another silhouette invitation again!

Check out a VIDEO of Karl cutting a silhouette LIVE!

UPDATE: Yay! Karl will be at the NC State Fair again this year from October 16-26th (look for him in the village of yesteryear).

2008 The Year of the Peony....among other things

So, I have officially dubbed 2008 as the year of the peony and I love it! Maybe I'll do a "year of" every year or just talk about trends in general. Peonies are trendy! It is no wonder as they are such a beautiful romantic flower. So, with that said, I'm going to post some recent peony creations. I am adding the 2008 invitations into the mix also in the coming weeks. Look for lots of new invitation sets.

Trends: peonies, anything green and brown, purple and charcoal gray, yellow and brown, earthtones, "green" (for the environment) invitations.

Reply Trends

A new trend in response cards is to have the reply by date: "Kindly reply by the 1st of July" and then a perfectly blank card. I think this is GREAT! If I cannot attend a wedding I like to write a little something to give the bride and groom my best wishes. This new trend gives you the real estate on the small response card to say whatever you like!

This can be seen in the new Martha Stewart Weddings Magazine on pg 269 & pg 297.

Designing a "Green" Invitation

At Tuesday night's NACE meeting, we were challenged with designing a green wedding and it got me thinking about green weddings.

It's not easy being green...but, letterpress-printed invitations are a great choice for the environmentally conscious green wedding.

We always use thick 100% cotton papers - a renewable resource (no trees cut down for these) and we can use 100% cotton envelopes (thanks Crane & Co.)

For an additional $30 per order you can chose to have soy inks!

Missy McLamb, who was on our team, had the great idea of delivery by passenger pigeon - however they are extinct. Darn it - wouldn't that be cool!

Ta Ta!

Custom Postage, Please

I am on the custom postage bandwagon now more than ever. Caroline called me from the post office yesterday while trying to buy usps postage stamps for an invitation. Oye! Since they have increased rates, let's just say...the pickin's are slim, folks.

We love to design custom postage with zazzle.com. We can take a motif from your invitation, your wedding date, monogram, photo - or custom make something just for you. It just really makes the presentation extra special. The postage is a little bit more, but it is great for that WOW factor.

Icy Elegant Winter White

I was very psyched to see the new Martha Stewart Weddings Winter 2007. It contains a most elegant all winter white wedding invitation suite with - shades of gray! I predicted months ago that charcoal gray was going to be HOT HOT HOT and I am seeing it used more and more. I just LOVE it.

There is another charcoal gray idea I am dying to try out this winter - (I think it would do well with a black tie evening wedding) . Neenah paper makes a fabulous charcoal gray laid paper that I am dying to use with pressed silver ink. It would be so elegant.