Eunice and I were jonesing for the Alameda Flea Market last weekend, but, sadly, it got rained out so we headed over to Ohmega Salvage in Berkeley to get our fix of vintage home decor. Eunice found some lovely pendant lamps for her apartment, and I found a fabulous 4 ft by 6 ft vintage mirror. We love all of the light fixtures, tiles, and hardware at Ohmega. This is what Restoration Hardware was meant to be!
Eunice's Apartment - Work in Progress
As Hello!Lucky's Creative Director, Eunice sets the tone for our pretty, witty, vintage-inspired aesthetic. She describes her San Francisco apartment, which she shares with boyfriend Daniel James, as having the aesthetic of a "eccentric, well-traveled great-aunt." It has a cozy, arty, bohemian feel with well-worn books, musical instruments, vibrant colors, and artifacts from their travels. Many of the pieces come from flea market excursions, and the color palette is inspired by a handmade quilt sewn by Daniel's mother Hope, an interior designer who lives in London.
Eunice is in the process of decorating the place, and painting some stunning murals on the walls. Watch this space to see how it progresses!
Featured Retailer: Henri Bendel
We absolutely adore the classic and uber-stylish Henri Bendel in New York City, so were thrilled when they decided to stock our stylish letterpress greeting cards in their new Stationery Shop, including our adorable Valentine Monkey and new Jungle Love. See you in New York, and happy shopping!
PS. The same cards available at Bendel's were just featured in Design*Sponge's Valentine's Card round-up alongside lots of other wonderful designers' work. Thanks, Grace!
Maison D'Etre
Back when Hello!Lucky used to be in Berkeley (and even before that, when we were based in Eunice's Oakland garage), we used to love visiting Maison D'Etre, the delightful home goods boutique on College Avenue in Rockridge. Today, we still make a point to visit whenever we're in the East Bay -- the shop always has a refreshingly eclectic assortment of both new and vintage home decor and gifts, like this whimsical Birdhouse mobile by LA-based Ige Design. We absolutely love Maison D'Etre!
Bittersweet Chocolate Cafe
With locations in San Francisco and Rockridge, Bittersweet Chocolate Cafe is a not-to-be-missed destination for Bay Area chocolate lovers. Their hot chocolate is to-die-for, and we just love browsing all the fabulously-designed packaging of the gourmet chocolate bars they carry. Definitely worth a visit, particularly if your honey has a sweet tooth on Valentine's Day!
Valentine's Day Cards
Valentine's Day is one of our favorite holidays, in part because is it's the perfect time to shamelessly showcase our quirky humor! We are most inspired by vintage valentines, with their pun-tastic punchlines - check out our latest styles here. Also shown above are some of our favorite designs, such as Lionheart, from over the years.
We also love seeing what our fellow designers have come up for this fantastic occasion. Behold, two of our favorite recent finds: Love Bunny note cards by Etsy seller Ashleybug, and witty letterpress cards by Viola at Chewing the Cud. Happy Valentine's!
Photos of Hello!Lucky letterpress greeting cards courtesy of Sara Remington.
Ann Wood Handmade
We've adored Ann Wood's handcrafted birds ever since we first stumbled on them in Kim Johnson's lovely boutique, Johnson, in the Lower East Side. Each one has its own unique personality, outfit, and name. (We bought a tweedy creation for our grandmother, an ornithologist whose last name is also, coincidentally, Wood).
Ann now has an adorable little online shop, in addition to her fabulous blog, where you can keep tabs on all her creative projects. Brides and grooms, Ann also makes delightful little caketoppers to order!
DeAnna Gibbons Millinery
We can't say enough about San Francisco milliner - her stylish, whimsical, hand-crafted hats for men and women are museum-worthy pieces that inspire make us to put on party dresses and paint the town red!
We visited DeAnna in her studio this week to pick up the fabulous red feathered and netted custom hat shown above. The hat is so ridiculously fabulous that we squealed with delight again (and again!) as DeAnna showed us all the different ways to wear it. DeAnna regularly creates custom hats for fashion designer Erin Mahoney, and was also in the midst of gorgeous polka dotted numbers for Barney's.
Idea for brides: Have DeAnna create a custom hat for your reception dress, or a netted number for a Jackie-O-style get-away outfit!
Letter from London: Bermondsey & Borough High Street
The neighborhood encompassing Bermondsey Street and Borough High Street is the home of Hello!Lucky's London studio, located at the historic Leathermarket building. Just steps away from our studio, we absolutely adore the Garrison Pub for its gorgeous, vintage style and its incredible gastro-pub-style food. Also on Bermondsey Street: the headquarters and London retail outlet of Terra Plana, a wonderful design studio that creates stylish, environmentally sustainable shoes and boots created from recycled materials. And of course there is the Fashion & Textile Museum, currently exhibiting Peacocks & Pinstripes: A Snapshot of Masculine Style. We also adore Holly & Lil, the couture dog accessory designer that also happens to stock Hello!Lucky's letterpress printed greeting cards. And finally, there is the historic Borough Market, home of the juiciest organic produce and gourmet fare in London.
Real Wedding: Sabrina & Julian
As the co-founder of a company that is involved in the wedding invitation business, people often ask me what my own wedding was like. They're always surprised to learn that I eloped; what's more, I didn't even send out wedding invitations!
I share this potentially incriminating piece of information, as well as the visual evidence (no pictures of gorgeous letterpress wedding invitations!) because it underscores a fundamental belief I hold about weddings: at its core, a wedding is a deeply personal experience, and there is no right way to celebrate it.
Weddings present an inherent tension for the bride and groom, who are faced with the daunting task of deciding how to orchestrate the affair. On the one hand, they are an incredibly intimate, deeply personal exchange of vows (elope!). On the other, they are a celebration of the joining of families, friends and community (fabulous party!). Everyone has to find their own place on the spectrum; I've personally begun to believe that the English may have it all figured out (as usual!) with their tradition of a small, intimate ceremony followed by a larger reception (with fabulous hats!). That said, the most important thing is to do what is right for you.
Julian and I tied the knot at the lovely Ventana Inn & Spa in Big Sur, a magical spot on the California coast that had also been the site of the first weekend trip we ever took together. Because he from England and I grew up all over the world, our friends and family are far-flung and organizing a traditional wedding felt logistically daunting. So, we settled for a small ceremony with just our immediate family and a few close friends, including photographer Belynda Webb. In lieu of a traditional wedding gown, I wore a Marc Jacobs cocktail dress and a short netted veil. We stayed at the romantic Post Ranch Inn and the entire family made a weekend of it, taking in the serenity of the Big Sur coast. The experience was truly magical.
Whether big or small, simple or decadent, the experience is what it's all about!
Photographs courtesy of Belynda Webb.
Real Wedding: Shauna and Jeff
We were honestly blown away by wedding of Shauna and Jeff's wedding at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin last August. (Shauna is a designer at Hello!Lucky and was kind enough to invite us!). What inspired us most were all of the thoughtful, lovely, personal details -- it made for an incredibly fun, happy, and beautiful celebration.
Shauna wore a beautiful beaded cocktail dress which her grandmother had worn her own 1953 wedding. Jeff walked down the aisle to Johnny Cash's Walk the Line (possibly the most romantic song ever!), and guests received lovely (and much-needed!) vintage handkerchiefs to dry their eyes. Post-ceremony, we all indulged in "Hitched Hooch," a delicious, peachy cocktail that Jeff concocted to pay homage to his Texas roots (coasters with a cowboy boot stitch motif spelled out the recipe!).
The reception dinner was held in a rustic, cozy dining hall with an open kitchen which allowed us to see the chefs at work. The exquisite food and wine were all local and organic (Shauna and Jeff are both devoted foodies, and Jeff is a wine buyer at Andronico's Market). The centerpieces and flowers were designed by Mary Lois Hare (at Loop Flowers) and included local, seasonal flowers of yellows, creams, browns and oranges displayed in blue glass mason jars collected from the local flea market.
Shauna designed her own gorgeous, vintage-fabric-inspired wedding invitations, save the dates, and day-of stationery, which were (of course!) letterpress printed by Hello!Lucky. (Her invitation and related stationery are available for purchase here.). Shauna's photographer was the talented Marla Aufmuth
It was a truly special and unforgettable day. Congratulations, Shauna and Jeff!
Julia Rothman for Hello!Lucky Letterpress Cards
We've been watching Julia Rothman's work for some time now and were thrilled to finally meet her last year at the National Stationery Show. We love the hip, urban quality to her illustrations and the slightly naive linework - it all comes together in illustrations that are slightly retro and totally inspiring.
So, we were thrilled when Julia agreed to lend her illustrations to our new, exclusive line of letterpress greeting cards. We commissioned the illustrations shown above and then collaborated with Julia on the graphic design. We letterpress printed the cards on 30% post-consumer waster recycled paper in our San Francisco studio (the photographs don't due justice to the fine, indented lines created by the printing process!). One of our favorites has got to be the Silverware thank you card - perfect for dinner parties. Coming soon: matching gift wrap!
The cards were just featured on Design*Sponge (thanks, Grace!), which has also featured Julia's fantastic work for Urban Outfitters and Freddy & Ma, among others. See more of Julia's wonderful illustration work here.
Today's Top Stationery Artists
We were thrilled when fellow stationery artist Tori Higa invited us to contribute to her new book, Today's Top Stationery Artists (Schiffer Publishing, January 2008). The book is packed with photographs of work by some of today's leading artists in independent publishers, including some of our favorite designers: Pancake & Franks and Egg Press. The book is available here.
Functional Art: Letterpress Stationery
Why do we love letterpress stationery so? Obviously, we’re a little biased – but it didn’t start out that way.
We first fell in love with letterpress as an artistic medium – it creates gorgeously tactile prints and beautiful, saturated colors. We also loved the authentic, vintage quality of it – it used to be the primary commercial printing technique back when commercial printing was still a small-scale craft and involved hand-setting individual letters of type, backwards. It reminded us of days gone by, an of the old nature books we used rummage through our grandmother’s attic. Today, it’s still a highly respected artistic medium, with studios like Arion Press in San Francisco producing sought-after limited-edition letterpress-printed books that are created in collaboration with fine artists from around the world.
Eunice and I love functional art, so the next step in our love affair was to figure out how to make the medium accessible. Greeting cards and custom stationery immediately came to mind as personal, creative, accessible, and affordable formats that many people could enjoy and share. Wedding invitations, in particular, mark an incredibly meaningful event and the first step in creating a new life, home, and family – if fine art is to have a place anywhere in people’s lives, it should be on such an occasion.
So, we started doodling and printing on a hand-cranked Vandercook printing press in Eunice’s garage, and the rest is history! Today, we continue to remain focused on letterpress as a fine art – our printers have advanced degrees in fine art, and have apprenticed with master printers for years. Our goal is to create beautiful products that have an heirloom-quality and that make art and craft a central part of our everyday lives.
Photographs courtesy of Sara Remington.
Letter from London: King's Road
Despite becoming more dominated by chain stores recently, we still love visiting King's Road in Chelsea to check out some of our favorite shops in London. This week, the post-Christmas sales were on, making the treasure hunt even more fun (especially from those of us who are earning in the North American peso!).
Couverture, which is soon making the move to Notting Hill, always has wonderful home decor and a great children's section. We loved this tea cozy as well as their vintage-inspired patterned ottomans. They also carry these fabulous wool lemon pillows by the Jonathan Adler.
We love pouring through the wallpaper pattern books at Osborne & Little -- they always strike the perfect balance between vintage elegance and contemporary style. We covet every single pattern in their Vintage collection!
Cath Kidston is always good for some sweet, kistchy pieces. We love her textiles, in particular these cheery oven gloves and mits. Her books are a great resource for those looking for ideas for using vintage fabrics for creative DIY projects.
A newcomer we noticed on the block is lovely brasserie Napket. The restaurant's design combines warm lighting, natural wood, and vintage pieces like this witty fork chandelier. Offering "snob food" (with tongue firmly in cheek!) the ambiance is hip and earthy - reminded us of Craft, one of our favorite places to dine in NYC.
And then, of course, there is Designers Guild, which always offers a feast of fabulous design. We especially love their children's section.
Top Drawer Spring
Of all the trade shows we do throughout the year, London's Top Drawer is one of our favorites. There is so much fabulous, fresh design happening in the UK and Europe and this January's exhibition, which wrapped today, was another case in point.
This year, we were debuting our brand new line of letterpress greeting cards and gift wrap featuring illustrations by the amazing Julia Rothman, along with our own vintage-inspired designs. As always, our cards were well-received by our loyal fan-base of UK retailers, among them Magma Books, Castor & Pollux, Live Like This, and Liberty. Between visits, we managed to catch up with a few favorite designers, who never cease to inspire:
Petra Boase exhibited a range of fabulous new mugs featuring her colorful cut-paper and collage-inspired images. Petra is practically a household name in the UK (her cards can be found at Designer's Guild and many independent boutiques) and we hear that her cards are now available in the U.S. at Papyrus and Paper Source stores. It's about time! Petra also has a wonderful range of children's wear, tea towels, framed prints, and even lamp shades, all available at her adorable online shop.
We caught up with Fiona at Wu & Wu - since she started exhibiting at Top Drawer, we've been in awe of her note-perfect Chinese kitsch designs for everything from mugs and totes to wallets and this genius shoe-shine kit. We finally made the connection that she is the illustrator and designer behind the brilliant packaging for Blue Q's Miso Pretty line of cosmetics, which we've coveted for ages! It all makes sense now. Buy their fabulous products here.
We also discovered the wonderful French illustrator Miriam Derville, whose studio, Mimi'lou, produces amazing wall decals for children's rooms (we want to use them to decorate, period!). Check them out here.
And, of course, there was the always-inspiring Marimekko, debuting their Spring 2008 collection. We especially love these trees by Kristina Isola and these gorgeous pods by Erja Hirvi.
Letter from London: Pimlico Road Design District
We love looking at interior design for inspiration for our stationery and London's recently-rejuvenated Pimlico Road Design District is one of our favorite resources for a vintage-inspired aesthetic, particularly 18th and 19th century English and French. Nestled just a few blocks away from Sloane Square, Pimlico houses some of London's most lovely antique furniture and interiors firms featuring classic, vintage design.
Westenholz Antiques specializes in gorgeous 18th and 19th century British furniture - we love the ornate details and lines on this opaline glass and gilt metal lamp base.
Renowned interior designer Jane Churchill has a quintessentially English classic-meets-modern aesthetic. We love the beach theme currently featured in her store window.
The wonderful Appley Hoare Antiques transports us instantly to the Paris flea markets (Les Puces) at Clingnancourt - we love the piles of yellowed, old French paperback books and ultra-worn 18th century sofas and armoires. For more inspiration, this aesthetic is perfectly captured in The New Eighteenth-Century Style: Rediscovering a French Decor (Harry N. Abrams, 2006), available here.
Other favorites on the square: Marston and Langinger, the renowned designer of English glass observatories, and Daylesford Organic, a lovely country-inspired bakery and deli that offers fresh organic eats.
Above: Opaline lamp bases and skull in the window of Westonholz Antiques; chaise at Westonholz Antiques; sea-themed window at Jane Churchill Interiors; French paperback books at Appley Hoare Antiques; French florist jugs at Appley Hoare Antiques; French writing desk at Appley Hoare Antiques; French moulds at Appley Hoare Antiques; Vintage French price tags at Appley Hoare Antiques.
The Letterpress Connoisseur: How to Spot Fine Quality Letterpress Printing
You’ve set the date, picked a venue, and read every back issue of Martha Stewart Weddings. Now, you’re thinking about taking the plunge for letterpress printed wedding invitations. You’ve shopped around and know that letterpress wedding invitations can be more expensive that other types of invitations. What you may not know is that the product you get can vary wildly in quality.
These days, with so many designers and hobbyists diving into letterpress printing, it can be easy to overlook the fact that letterpress printing is a craft (some go so far as to call it an art form) that takes years to truly perfect. The difference in experience between an amateur- and a professionally-printed product is not unlike the difference between wriggling into that itchy sweater than your best friend knitted for you (too-small arm holes and all!), and slipping into a beautifully constructed couture garment. Since a letterpress wedding invitation sets the tone for your entire wedding day, it should be of the best quality.
Here are some tips for spotting fine-quality letterpress printing:
- Detailed impression that gently depresses into the paper. One of the lovely things about letterpress is the tactile impression the plate leaves after it has been pressed into the paper. However, it is possible to go overboard. Less experienced printers often press the plate so hard against the paper that the type or design punches through the back side, making your invitation feel more like a ticket than a piece of fine stationery (and making the inside of a folded card, such as a thank you note, difficult to write on). The hallmark of fine letterpress printing is that the plate “kisses” the paper, leaving the back of the card smooth yet achieving enough indentation to achieve depth and detail in the design.
- Thick, soft paper. To truly showcase its tactile quality, letterpress wedding invitations should use soft, 100% cotton archival printmaking papers. These papers are thick, soft (almost cashmere-like), and absorbent, so are thus best able to receive the ink and impression of the letterpress plate. Commercial papers tend to be harder and less absorbent so result in a less deliciously exquisite result.
- Even ink coverage. One of the trickiest aspects of letterpress printing is to get just enough ink on each area of the design. When the design includes a large solid area as well as an area of fine type, (as in our L’Oiseau invitation above), the large area requires more ink and the fine type less ink. A skilled printer will make numerous detailed adjustments to achieve perfect coverage in all areas. Squishy and/or uneven ink coverage are hallmarks of a novice printer.
- Perfect registration. Since each ink color is printed in a separate press run, each colored area of the design is printed separately, too. After the first layer is printed, the plate for the second later must be mounted and adjusted so the second part of the design fits perfectly with the first. This can be especially difficult when the design has details that require tight registration, for example small pink polka dots against a brown background.
Designing for Letterpress. Like printing, designing for letterpress is an art as well, requiring the ability to work within a constrained color palette (since each ink color is applied separately, letterpress printing typically involves one or two ink colors) and intimate knowledge of the printing process and the printer’s capabilities. The more skilled the printer, the more flexibility the designer has to experiment creatively.
The best design for letterpress capitalizes on the vintage nature of the printing process, capturing an authentic, vintage feel that is updated for modern style, whether it be Art Nouveau, Pop Modern, or Chinoiserie. Letterpress printing has been around since the 1400s, so there’s a wealth of stylistic history to draw on. The best designers have a broad stylistic vocabulary and thus can customize your invitations to suit your style or theme.
Real Wedding: Matt & Sarah Adler
We first met Sarah and Matt at a wedding show at San Francisco’s Fort Mason. We were immediately taken by their adorable vintage-inspired style. Sarah has demure, impeccable taste and could be a 40s-era movie queen, and Matt is always dapper and the consummate gentleman.
To our great delight, they invited us to collaborate with them on their wedding invitations. Their inspiration was tall ships and nautical imagery. They had already designed an icon for themselves, a heart and anchor. We poured over pages upon pages of nautical diagrams and images of tall ships, and created a design that combined a tall ship, lighthouse, message in a bottle, and, of course, hearts and anchors. We letterpress printed the wedding invitations, reply cards, and map. The wedding invitation suite was wrapped in a glassine, tied with baker’s twine and sealed with a wax seal bearing Sarah and Matt’s icon. Since Sarah and Matt are very crafty (Sarah subsequently contributed a DIY card-making project to our forthcoming book, Handmade Hellos), they did the assembly at home.
The wedding reception was held at the Lodge at The Regency Center, where a Maxfield Parrish-inspired theatrical backdrop set the scene. Escort cards for the guests were fashioned after the "message in a bottle" idea with each bottle containing a personal note from the bride and groom - most of the miniature apothecary-style bottles were found at antique fairs, flea markets, and on ebay. Photographer Julie Mikos took the gorgeous photos of the ceremony and Melissa of A Simple Ceremony did the exquisite floral arrangements. The stunning black and white cake was created by Carolyn Wong.
Congratulations, Sarah and Matt! We are so happy for you! Photographs courtesy of Julie Mikos and Sara Remington.
Sara Remington Photography
We mentioned that Bay Area-based photographer Sara Remington did a lot of the fabulous wedding invitation photography on our new website. The moment we saw her stunning saturated colors, and simple, evocative compositions, we were hooked. Sara is an award-winning food photographer and winner of the prestigious Photo District News' '30 Emerging Photographers to Watch in 2006'.
There’s also good news for brides-to-be: Sara is an incredible wedding photographer, represented through the equally fabulous Anna Kuperberg (Note: this is a gorgeous website, but turn the volume on your computer down if you don't want to set off a spontaneous salsa party in your office/cubicle/immediate environment!). Sara shared the fabulous rickshaw photo above with us from a wedding she recently shot in Beijing, China, and we love her wonderful still life photos, too, of course!
She has an incredible eye for detail, is super-reliable and efficient, and puts everyone at ease!