The Lab Event - A Success!

We had a blast at The Lab Event last weekend and wanted to share a few pics of the jaw dropping vignettes that filled the barrel room at Cline Cellars.   Guests were able to stroll through these themed areas gathering ideas, inspiration and even some sweet treats like monogrammed cookies and (I-can't-believe-these-are-vegan) cupcakes!

One of our vignettes had a "Toasted Marshmallow" theme with warm brown tones, gold accents and plenty of rustic wood and twig textures.  The menus had a burlap-inspired pattern framing text and a floral sprig and was letterpressed on a recycled cotton card stock.  We're so happy with the way everything turned out, we plan to offer the entire suite on our website soon.  Stay tuned!

How cool is that chandelier?  Its made from branches, Christmas lights and a few Ikea light fixtures... someone please DIY and let us know how it turns out!

Jen Musty from Batter Bakery blew us away with all her delectable desserts like Meyer Lemon shortbread cookies and Key Lime tarts.

The lovely ladies from The Collection Event Studio, styled a fantastic booth full of vintage flair and wedding inspiration galore!

The best part of the project was meeting so many amazing and talented vendors that we can't wait to work with again!

New Wedding Designs Available Now!

Extra! Extra!  New wedding invitations hot off the press!  Whether your tastes gravitate towards romantic florals or preppy patterns, there's truly something for everyone in our new wedding suites.  A bunch of designs are still in the works (one just might be video game inspired!), but here's a sneak peak at a few inspiring invitations and sweet save the dates available online now!  Enjoy!

Midsummer Invitation and Save the Date

Fig Invitation and Save the Date

Lisa and Rory, Behind the Scenes!

Now that you've all seen the stunning photos of Lisa and Rory's wedding, we wanted to show you some exclusive behind-the-scenes images of our team putting it all together!

Above is the original proof that we created for Lisa and Rory's reception invitation. The two-sided letterpress invitations were printed on duplex paper (220lb) and hole-drilled for the balloon and ribbon attachments. Because Lisa and Rory already had such brilliant ideas, working with them was a cinch!

Their day-of materials were just as fun to assemble as their wedding invitations. The paddle program fans were die cut on our antique Heidelberg press, then attached one-by-one with wooden handles.

The pub sign table numbers and cheese markers were each cut out by hand, given tremendous care and patience! The tiny cheese markers looked dashing atop their cheese wheel cake. We see a new trend approaching!

Perhaps the most intricate and delicate piece we've created is the tiny silhouette "cake" topper, also cut out of paper by hand. And yes, it fit on a toothpick! It's the little details like this that make us love working on custom weddings.

More Designs are Coming Soon!

Hooray! The new website is live and we've gotten some amazing feedback so far! Although the site is shiny and new, there are still a few kinks we have to sort out. It's taken a lot of work and many hands to make the website what it is now, but we assure you, there is more to come!

Many of our designs are still being configured - mainly the Skyline series that we all love so much.

If you've fallen in love with a design that you don't currently see on our site, don't fret! You can give us a call or email info@hellolucky.com and we will be happy to help you order your cards. We appreciate your patience!

Our New Website is Coming!

The big BIG news is out! We have been hard at work for months preparing for our new-and-improved website and blog. Unfortunately, we had to put our current site on hold in order to get all of the bits and pieces sorted out, but be assured, it will be grand! There are so many exciting new designs, customization tools, and even a few giveaways for the upcoming holiday season. Stay tuned because our new site is going live on Friday, October 28th and we can't wait for you to see!

We are still available to answer any questions during this time, so feel free to call us at 415-355-0008 or email info@hellolucky.com.

See you soon!

Featured: Visit Hawaii on Hapa Hale!

Ahh, to be soaking in the sweet Hawaiian sun! We wouldn't mind sipping mai tai's, or tasting crunchy macadamia nuts, surfing in warm water or hiking ancient volcanoes. But, that giant blue ocean has come between us, and we must find other ways to treasure all the glory that Hawaii has to offer. One of those ways is to visit our Visit Hawaii invitation suite. Recently Hapa|Hele, a blog devoted to island life, featured our tropical invitation, and left us dreaming about all things aloha.

Things we love about Hapa|Hele? Island hopping. From these Na Pali coast prints (above) to the Big Island's magical getaways, we're gushing with island envy!

Chicago Skyline is here!

Drum roll please......Introducing, the newest member of the Skyline collection, Chicago! We know all you mid-westerners have been waiting patiently for the Chicago Skyline invitation suite to arrive, and the time has finally come! The invitation, reply card, and details card have carefully selected images of Chicago's finest monuments, buildings, and railways. We are so proud to welcome the windy city to the H!L family!

We're still working on getting the invitation up on our site, so if you're interested in Chicago Skyline just give us a call and we'll tell you how to order!

Real Wedding: Ingrid and Howard

The setting of a wedding can really enhance the mood of a celebration, especially when it takes place somewhere as breathtaking as the San Ysidro Ranch in Montecito! Ingrid and Howard's summery and stylish wedding just screams happiness - how could anyone feel otherwise when you're hanging out in a field of lavender and loveliness?!

The couple chose our Woodland Damask letterpress invitation - doesn't it fit nicely with the bridal party?

Love the collection of vintage stamps and the stunning calligraphy by Michele Papineau.

Check out more photos of Ingrid and Howard's wedding (along with an adorable video!) at Style Me Pretty!

All photos by Jose Villa

Hello!Lucky Photoshoot

We have a bunch of sparkling new designs that we're getting ready to launch and we couldn't be more excited.  It's still top secret but we can tell you that everyone has been working like busy little bees around here.  Designers are designing, printers are printing, and the number crunches are... we'll we're not actually sure but it looks really hard!  Best of all the super cute and talented photographer Edyta Szyszlo is in the studio working her magic and taking gorgeous photos of our products.

We were so lucky to have a bright and sunny day here in San Francisco (no fog!) and our photo shoot glowed with natural light.

Our craft stash was the perfect place to find all kinds of goodies to use as props - buttons and bows, candies and clothespins!  We love to collect and hate to throw away so our storage room is filled to the brim with creative notions and vintage ephemera.

Lively backdrops make old favorites like Heirloom Harvest pop, while artful accessories give new designs like Midsummer (coming soon!) an appropriate introduction.

Weddings aren't the only life events we celebrate around here - a new baby deserves a shout from the rooftops... or at the very least an adorable circus animal announcement!  Our Big News Elephant gets the job done in style.

We love, love, love Edyta and her super creative assistant and welcome them back anytime!  Hello!Lucky staff glamor shots anyone?

Studio Snapshot: New Visit Series Letterpress Invitations!

We've always loved our Visit Series created with Lab Partners so we just about fainted when we saw these babies on press today.  Watch out LA - we've got stunning 3-color letterpress Visit Los Angeles save the dates and wedding invites ready to make an impression (pun very much intended)!

This shot gets up close and personal showing an inked plate moments before it presses into the paper.

Two colors printed, and one more to go!

Each new color requires that the machine be cleaned, re-inked and fitted with a new plate.  Here invites-in-progress wait patiently to be pressed into wedding perfection.

Can you guess which designs these will turn out to be?  Okay we'll spill, its Visit Texas and Visit Chicago!

Adding the second color to Visit Chicago brings out details in the train and fountain.

We can't wait to see what new details will come out when the third color is added!

A Craft Podcast Studio Visit, Revisited

We'd almost forgotten this one! Waaaay back in 2008, when we'd first moved into our current studios in SOMA, we did a little interview for Craft Video Podcast. There's some great stuff toward the middle/end where James shows how the polymer plates work in the Heidelberg presses while printing some wedding invitations. Then Eunice shows some of her inspiration and drawings for a couple of the fab letterpress greeting cards we've featured on Lucky Fridays! So stay tuned, or skip ahead to those parts if you're short on time.

The video is great for its completely ad-lib, unrehearsed, unplugged honesty. :D Hopefully we won't embarrass Shauna or Eunice too much.

Design Notebook: Katie's Big Day

We're SO excited to share this sneak peak of a custom design we recently created for the lovely Katie and Gary.  The concept was based on one of Katie's favorite childhood books, Katy And The Big Snow by Virginia Lee Burton.  We just went nuts over the super detailed illustrations and knew her invite had to be something special!

Eunice hand-drew the illustrations and scanned them in to Illustrator where she created vector artwork and "mapped out" the details of the wedding suite (pun intended - hint, hint!)

Each ink color requires a separate plate and press run and Katie was able to meet with the printers and check in as the job progressed.

As each new color is added, the illustrations start to take shape with more detail and depth.

Katie and Gary met while on vacation in San Francisco and traveled to so many exotic locales that they knew they wanted a map to be central to their wedding invitation.  With so many adorable icons and illustrations is hard to choose a favorite but we have a feeling Katie's a bit partial to the Disney World flamingo - Gary proposed in the park!

And voila!  The finished invitation suite - a tri-fold map invitation and rsvp set alongside its literary inspiration!

Congrats and best of luck Katie & Gary!

Invitation evolution & inspiration

Many of our designs start as custom commissions created in collaboration with our clients  -- and take on a new life from there!  Our Big Day invitation is a great example -- originally created for bride Jean Weisman, a writer who wrote the invitation copy, the design was featured in Martha Stewart Weddings along with the rest of Jean & Devin's gorgeous wedding (planned by AE Planning & Design). We made a version that could be ordered on our website...

...and adapted a DIY version for our new book, Handmade Weddings...

A bride in Brooklyn loved the design but wanted us to replace the Golden Gate with the Brooklyn Bridge, and put her own unique spin on the text...

... and we created an invitation in a similar style for Bear Flag Farm...

Here's a save the date variation with photos and cute flags!

Today we spotted this design on Brooklyn Bride and this design by Kenzie Kate -- more designs inspired by Big Day?

Regardless, this is a shout-out to all of our awesome, creative clients, who give us the opportunity to create new designs every day!

Photo credit (top): Sabine Scherer

Real Wedding: Chelsea & Scott

We had the great pleasure of creating the stationery for Chelsea & Scott's gorgeous wedding held at Black Swan Lake...to be married under a weeping willow on the banks of a lake...just dreamy!

The invitation suite...

Every detail was so elegant and thoughtful - love the way these escort cards came together...

Such a sweet couple - how cute was their Flowery Fields photo save the date?

These beautiful photos were taken by Lisa Lefkowitz. More photos and details to be found on her site as well as on Snippet & Ink...

Real Wedding: Lee & Sean

We were so thrilled to be a part of the wedding of Lee & Sean - check out their gorgeous wedding that took place at Barn Diva in Healdsburg (love Barn Diva!)...

We designed her wedding invitations and day of stationery - the wedding invitations were especially cool as our design was laser engraved onto wood veneer by Oslo Press.  It really added to the modern organic feel of the invitation...

We made these paddle fans too! Cute, right?  Love the yay flags!  Genius idea...

A few more lovely details...

More photos and details to be found at Bride's Cafe

Fab photos by Sylvie Gil Photography.

Pillows in love

Looking for a sweet wedding, anniversary or holiday gift? These king and queen pillowcases are lovely.

This customizable pillow goes perfectly with our Home Sweet Home wedding suite!

Via AT.

Real wedding: Erin and Jeremy

We are thrilled to report that the wedding of Eunice's best friend, Erin and her new hubby, Jeremy, is featured on Style Me Pretty today!

It was a truly fabulous and fun affair, designed by Alison Events, with lots of ingenious details, including a vintage card catalog that acted as the seating guide. Each guest's card was cross-referenced with other guests according to interests, life history, etc....

...and possibly the most amazing and hilarious first dance -  done to Hey Soul Sister by Train and including the Beyoncé's signature move from All the Single Ladies (need we say more?)...

...a photo booth by Magnolia Photo Booth - always a huge hit at any party...

We collaborated with Erin and Jeremy to come up with a charming array of stationery inspired by vintage ephemera and McSweeny's. The invitation was supposed to look like a page torn from a book...

The replies were Mad Libs fashioned to look like an old school Western Union telegram...

And the programs, designed to look like a vintage book...

This was one of our favorite projects so far this year!  We really loved their creativity and sense of fun.

All photos by Adi Nevo. Check out more details here.

A purple-themed picnic

Check out this picnic-themed inspiration shoot featured on the Southern Weddings blog! We created all the paper products to go with the floral theme.

See all the photos here.

Photos by Larissa Cleveland.

Sarah & Matt on Style Me Pretty

One of our favorite wedding blogs, Style Me Pretty, recently featured Sarah and Matt's 2007 wedding showcasing their vintage style and love of tall ships. We designed and letterpress printed their invites (above) and the couple embellished them using wax paper, baker's twine and a wax seal.

See the entire gallery here. All photos by Julie Mikos.

Giveaway at Oh, So Beautiful Paper!

Check out our super sweet giveaway over at Oh, So Beautiful Paper! We're offering one lucky OSBP reader the chance to win 100 one-color letterpress invitations or save the dates from our wedding collection! Just leave a comment here for a chance to win - good luck!