New Wedding Inspiration Boards

We're thrilled to announce a new wedding inspiration board area of our website, where you can browse through pretty, creative ideas for coordinating all the design elements of your wedding.

The boards cover a wide variety of themes and were created by the lovely and inspiring Kathryn of Snippet & Ink; they (of course!) feature our letterpress wedding invitations and paper. There are lots of fresh ideas for other wedding vendors, as well - just click on any of the images within the boards to link to its source (note the images shown above are just excerpts - click here to browse the full boards). Happy browsing!

Renegade Craft Fair

Last weekend we participated in the first annual San Francisco Renegade Craft Fair at Fort Mason. Not knowing what to expect, we were blown away by the energy and excitement at the event! There were too many vendors to list all our favorites, but here's a start:

City-themed t-shirts from Campfire Goods :

Apple boxes and tea towels from Miss Natalie:

Mobiles and collages from Petit Collage, and jewelry from Nous Savons:

Not to mention, a fantastic performance from the Mucca Pazza marching band:

Thanks to everyone at Renegade and those who stopped by our booth!

-Shauna

Julia Rothman in San Francisco

We originally met Julia Rothman at the National Stationery Show last year, and have been huge fans of her work ever since. Her first San Francisco show opened last week at Rare Device. The theme of the show is Home, and Julia's pieces illustrate that it's not the space itself, but the items in the space that make one feel at home. For those of us who move a lot, it's easy to relate. Some of my favorite pieces were the pile of chairs and the polka dot bikini. Julia also made incredibly detailed three dimensional houses for the front window display. If you are in the Bay Area, I recommend checking out the show - it's really inspiring. Rare Device is also a fantastic store with one of the best curated selections in San Francisco (they carry our cards too!). The show is open until August 1st.

Julia also stopped by our studio with Jenny and Matt, her partners from Also, to see where her cards were made. Julia, Jenny and Matt - thanks for stopping by!

-Shauna

Borough Market

Hands down, the best part of our neighborhood in London is Borough Market, London's mecca for organic and gourmet foods and produce. We stopped by there for lunch today and had some gorgeous cheese sandwiches and hand-dripped coffee from Monmouth Coffee Company.

The market is also a feast for the eyes. We especially loved the shortbread owls from The Cinnamon Tree Bakery and these simple wooden spoons from Monmouth Coffee. The market is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays and is just across Borough High Street from the London Bridge tube station.

Room

Last week, we made the thrilling discovery of Room, a brand new vintage store on Valencia Street, one of our favorite shopping streets in the San Francisco.

It is chock full of fabulous vintage furniture and ephemera, and we found ourselves jauntily humming a familiar Julie Andrews tune as we browsed through a brilliantly curated selection of our favorite things: old wooden rulers, vintage globes, and cozy arm chairs...

...lamps, cigar boxes, foo dogs and milk bottles...

...Matadors, school house tables, and Russian Dolls! We'll happily make "room" chez nous for any of these items (and, indeed, we did!).

Vintage Pipes

The Alameda Flea Market was back last weekend and we were so busy shopping for our new studio shop (photos to come!) that we forgot to take too many photos. One of our favorite finds this time around were all these fantastic vintage pipes - these along with some stick-on mustaches and vintage glasses would make such fun party favors!

Julia Rothman at Rare Device

We're excited - Julia Rothman is going to be in town next week for her show at Rare Device, 1845 Market Street! The opening party is on July 10, and the show runs through August 30. Hope to see you there!

p.s. Check out a preview of Julia's work for the show here.

Place Card Chopstick Holders

We created these simple chopstick holders, which double as place cards with calligraphy by Michele Papineau, for a Maui wedding designed by Lisa Feldman of Lisa Feldman Design. The tapered triangle shape allows the chopsticks to slide out of the holder, and tilts the guests' names up so that they can be easily read.

The holders were designed to fit Lisa's fresh, tropical persimmon and chartreuse color palette, which she carried throughout the wedding weekend events.

We also collaborated with Lisa to decorate these shantung silk favor boxes (from the Container Store), each of which contained a wind chime. More photos of this incredible wedding to come!

Photos courtesy of Lisa Feldman.

Calla Lily Wedding Invitations

We just created these calla lily wedding invitations and coordinating fan program, menu and place card, for Cosmopolitan Bride (UK), which debuts its new look this month. This invitation design features a loose, pen-and-ink and water color style of illustration that we've been developing. These photos show mock-ups that we'll soon be letterpress printing, making them even more gorgeous!

Osborne & Little Clarendon Wallpaper

We just love this new wallpaper from Osborne & Little. Wallpaper is a constant source of inspiration for our design projects, and is also a great material for DIY crafting - from place mats to napkin rings to wedding favors. This pattern features flocked 18th century cameos. Love it!

Pakhuis Oost Coathanger Squirrels

We love shopping at San Francisco-based Rose and Radish. We recently noticed these colorful squirrel-shaped coat hangers from Dutch home & gift studio Pakhuis Oost on their website. So delightful!

Exotic Moroccan Style

We've been obsessed with Moroccan style lately - we just love rich color palettes and geometric patterns of the textiles, tilework and architecture. We recently designed a custom wedding invitation inspired by Morroccan textiles and the color palette of Petra, coordinating with the colorful Moroccan Save the Dates we posted about a while back. As a Moroccan destination wedding or honeymoon, we vote for Riad El Fenn, Amanjena, or Kasbah Tamadot, Sir Richard Branson's retreat in the foothills of the Atlas mountains.

Shown above: Custom wedding invitations by Hello!Lucky (courtesy of Sara Remington), images from Riad El Fenn, Marakesh, Morocco.

National Stationery Show - Yes!

At the Stationery Show, we're always blown away by the talent and originality of a few designers - their work is museum-worthy, in our opinion! Jean of EIEIO is one of those people, and was debuting a fabulous new collection of gift boxes (available mid-August) and beautifully packaged patterned cards.

In the same booth were the equally ingenious pop-up place mats of Lian Ang of Publique Living and hip stencils by Ed Roth of Stencil One.

Stacy Pancake of Pancake & Franks' minimalist designs always inspire us - they're fresh, witty and eco-friendly. She had over 40 new designs at the show - each one was brilliant!

We always have fun catching up with Minhee Park at Paper + Cup - her "Les Animals" collection of colorful cards and journals are still some of our all-time favorites!

National Stationery Show - Yay!

Some of the designers at the show just have a fabulous spirit: what they create is stunning, and also so much fun! One of our faves is Two Trick Pony. Laurie and Carrie's designs are witty, colorful, and eco-fabulous - all their cards are silk-screened by hand on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper.

Erica, the effervescent creator of Delphine Press, was showing her lovely collection of witty yet sophisticated cards and ephemera. We especially love her Squirrel and Rockhopper designs!

We always enjoy entering the bizarre and wonderful universe created by Carrie and Hal of Redcap Cards. Carrie's Edward Gorey-esque illustrations and characters are funny, twisted, witty, and completely off-the-wall!

National Stationery Show - Yum!

Well, better late than never! Herewith, in bite-size chunks, is our coverage of the National Stationery Show.

One of our favorite booths was Hannah's of Pie Bird Press. Her approach to creating her gorgeous 3- and 4-color letterpress cards is refreshingly unique - each design starts as a linoleum block print, which she translates into letterpress. Hannah demonstrates a DIY version of her technique in our forthcoming book, Handmade Hellos. Her images of chocolates, beets, cherries, popsicles and bundt cakes are so yummy we want to eat them up!

Speaking of yummy, who could resist Motormouth Press's candy shop booth? We sure couldn't. We especially loved the ice cream sandwiches. Mmmm!

King Kong "Suede"

We're still catching our breath from a fabulous week away at the National Stationery Show, so our blog has been neglected - mea culpa! We'll be posting some of our highlights soon, but in the meantime check out Grace's wonderful four-part coverage on Design*Sponge.

And in the meantime, a tidbit of creative inspiration/comic relief from talented French graphic designer Chloe Fleury, who recently sent us a lovely note - on her blog, we discovered this brilliant short film, an homage to King Kong, for which she recently won 1st prize in a competition judged by Be Kind, Rewind director Michel Gondry. Click here to see it on YouTube. We love using wit/humor into our own design work, so to us, this is just genius!

Moroccan Save the Dates

Today we continue this week's Save the Date theme in conjunction with our promotion on Style Me Pretty! We created this intricate save the date card for a multi-cultural couple who are getting married in Lausanne, Switzerland. The pattern blends Moroccan tile work and Mexican textile patterns to reflect the couple's travels.

Photograph courtesy of Sara Remington.

Julia Rothman for Hello!Lucky Gift Wrap

Thanks to Julia for sending in this fab photo of the giftwrap she designed for us! Admittedly, we're biased, but we love it! Sigh! The wrap is available here (2 19"x 27" sheets for $5.75, or 8 assorted sheets for $19.95) along with letterpress printed cards. Enjoy!

Ellie Curtis

We discovered the work of London-based illustrator Ellie Curtis on etsy and couldn't resist her fabulously eccentric screen-printed pillows, shown above in their new home. Sadly, she's out of stock for the time being (she's busy "across the pond" on an artist's residency), but check out her blog for new work and updates

Confetti Cakes

We adore the work of Elisa Strauss over at Confetti Cakes! Her whimsical, lucious floral cakes are being featured in the current issue of InStyle Weddings and were featured on Bride's 50 most beautiful wedding cakes earlier this year. These cakes make us want to design wedding invitations and stationery just to coordinate! Congratulations, Elisa!

Top two photos courtesy of Monica Buck/InStyle Weddings.