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!

The Confectionery

The Confectionery is a charming, well-edited vintage candy shop located in Seattle's University Village. We just love their custom party favor service - just give them a call or drop by, and their friendly, creative staff will help you pick out tasty, stylish treats for your bridal shower, party, or wedding reception!

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!

Lucky Breaks!

Attention shoppers! Check out the current issue of Lucky. magazine to receive 25% off Hello!Lucky's letterpress greeting cards, wedding invitations, and personalized stationery. Shop greeting cards online here, including all our newest designs. To order wedding invitations, browse here and call us at 415-355-0008 (US) or 07771 931101 (UK) to place an order or speak to a stationery expert.

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.

Featured Retailer: O'Suzannah

Congrats to Charlottesville, Virginia retailer O'Suzannah on the launch of their new blog! Their lovely little shop, located at 102 2nd Street NW, carries a fabulous selection of "all things good," including adorable plush toys from Bla Bla Kids and this genius squirrel fabric box from Modern Twist. And, of course, they carry our lovely letterpress greeting cards, too!

Save the date: June 17, 2008

We're very pleased to be living in San Francisco these days. Not only does the recent California Supreme Court ruling allow same-sex marriages (which begins on June 17), but The California Field Poll shows that the majority of voters support it (52%) - so a ballot measure to revoke the ruling, slated for November, is unlikely to pass.

Over the years, we've created wedding and commitment ceremony invitations for many same-sex couples, and these experiences have been among our most rewarding. In these weddings, the exchange of vows is much more than the usual (though still remarkable) declaration of the couple's lifelong commitment; in many cases, it is the first formal, public recognition of the couple by friends, family, and society at large -- a "coming out" celebration, if you will! -- as well as the affirmation of a basic civil and human right (marriage, and love, respectively).

So thanks, Gavin, Arnold, the Supreme Court, and fellow Californians! We look forward to celebrating with you on June 17!

P.S. Our London office is happy for us, but non-plussed. Civil partnerships have been legal there since 2005 and were supported by many Conservatives as a matter of individual civil liberties! Shown above: one of our civil partnership invitation designs.

Photo courtesy of Sara Remington.

Shauna's Vintage Wedding Dress

Many thanks to Kathryn at Snippet & Ink for posting these beautiful pictures of Hello!Lucky designer Shauna Leytus in her gorgeous vintage wedding dress (along with all kinds of other fabulous wedding details) for her Real Wedding Saturday this weekend! Shauna's dress is the one her grandmother originally wore in 1953. She looked stunning!

Photos courtesy of Marla Aufmuth.

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!

Hello!Lucky at the National Stationery Show

Thank you to everyone who stopped by to say hello at the National Stationery Show last week! Our muppet-green booth consisted of sewn fabric panels and handmade fabric birds and oilcloth clouds -- all created in the spirit of our forthcoming craft book, Handmade Hellos, coming this Fall from Chronicle Books.

We also debuted a bunch of new card designs - some our faves are shown above. Perhaps our most favorite is the "Stinky Skunk" apologies card, which depicts delicate hand-rendered plumes of odor billowing from Mr. Skunk's demure tail (the pose and the predilection for creating smells are both inspired by Eunice's dog, Simon!).

It was painfully early to be thinking about Christmas, but yet there we were, displaying our full line of Holiday 2008 cards and wrap! Ho ho ho! We especially love these two, created for us by the wonderful duo of Sarah and Ryan at Lab Partners. The lovely and talented Julia Rothman also held court in our booth where she was greeting by legions of adoring fans! (ha ha!) The Silverware thank you notes from her card & wrap collection are currently being sold in Anthropologie stores nationwide.

All the of our newest designs are available for purchase here.

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!

Handmade Hellos Meet 'n' Greet Giveaway

We're thrilled to be participating in the National Stationery Show again this coming week, May 18 - 21. At the show, we'll be sponsoring a fabulous promotion of our new book Handmade Hellos, along with Chronicle Books and several of the lovely contributors, including Binth, Cielo Blu, Egg Press, Pancake & Franks, Paper + Cup, Pie Bird Press, Two Trick Pony, and You Send Me - click here for a full list.

The Meet 'n' Greet Giveaway gives retailers the opportunity to win over $1000 in cards and two copies of the book! Real all about it right here. Hope to see you there!

Personalized Stationery Contest Winner!

It's time to announce the winner of our personalized stationery giveaway: the winner was selected using a random number generator, and she is (envelope, please): Jacqueline Lew! Congratulations, Jacqueline!

Jacqueline, please select from any of the designs in our personalized stationery collection - and we'll have your lovely stationery letterpress printed to your specifications.

Thanks to everyone for participating - and stay tuned for more opportunities to win fabulous stationery, coming soon!

Photos courtesy of Sara Remington.

Personalized Stationery Giveaway!

Our new letterpress personalized stationery collection just launched! The designs ranges from elegant to whimsical - click here to see them all. To celebrate, we're giving away 50 free personalized cards with plain envelopes - just e-mail us at info@hellolucky.com if you'd like to be included in the random drawing. The winner will be announced on Monday, May 12! Good luck!

Photo courtesy of Sara Remington.

New personalized stationery collection

Our ears are burning! We just learned that our new personalized stationery collection, which makes its debut this week, already has some celebrity fans: Eva Longoria and Molly Sims! Molly loves the Chrysanthemum design, while Eva's a fan of a design that was inspired by her sophisticated style - we even named it Eva! Shucks, gals, we are so flattered!

Maker Faire & Cardmaking Workshops

We're super excited to be participating in the Maker Faire this weekend (May 3 & 4) at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. We'll be showing & selling a lot of our latest card designs (sneak peak coming soon!) and doing DIY cardmaking workshops featuring projects from our forthcoming book, Handmade Hellos (Chronicle Books, 2008). A highlight will be a guest workshop with contributor and cartoonist/crafter Francois Vigneault (Sunday, 11 - 12). Visit us in the Craft Corral to see a full weekend workshop schedule. Hope to see all you Bay Area folks there!