Featuring EIEIO and Giveaway!

Today we're delighted to feature the adorable Jean Orlebeke of eieio papers! We love Jean's designs because she has a totally unique style, and her collection stands out with it's embellished and geometric flare. Not only did eieio come up with these awesome designs for our holiday collection this year, but she also designed a few of our most popular wedding invitations! Check out her shop of prints here and scroll down for a holiday giveaway!

What inspired your design for the holiday collection?

To get in the holiday mood I put the sound track for Charlie Brown's Christmas on and chose a few eieio 'classic' wraps to translate into cards. Usually I try to design wraps that are more embellished or festive than the rest of the eieio designs. I typically don't use classic holiday color palettes, as my customers are small shops, and want the wrap to work in January as well. Instead I add a metallic ink, a gloss varnish or draw a motif that is ornate. I had so much fun re-coloring some of my favorite designs into classic holiday colors.

What are you currently working on?

My work is around 70% branding and identity. Right now I am working on two new identity projects: a perfume label and a film festival. I'm also working on some textile designs and the interface for an educational Earth Sciences product.

What influences your style the most?

Modern sculpture, natural forms, fiber art.

What's your favorite holiday tradition?

My family's Christmas Eve casual dinner. My mother always made a big buffet, which included everyone's favorites. We would make up our plates (several times) and eat sitting around the fireplace. Before we went to bed we had a funny ritual that my dad would tape each year: each of us would enter the room doing silly improv dances and make a grandiose presentation of hanging our stockings up on the fireplace. My mom's was always the most dramatic performance. She would hang up a thigh-hi stocking -- which in our family was a punchline that never got old.

Best holiday memory?

I always wanted a cat when I was growing up and on one Christmas Eve (I was 13), as I walked through the kitchen I saw a tiny gray paw reaching out from under the basement door. My parents were planning to give her to me on Christmas morning, but there was no way that little kitty was going to spend the night in the cold basement alone!

To enter to win a 2 boxes of Hello!Lucky letterpress holiday cards, leave a comment below telling us your favorite foods to eat during the holidays. We will choose a winner on Monday November 14th at 12:00pm. Good luck!

**A winner has been chosen! Thanks for participating!**

Silk Tree Branch Mobiles by Moon-Lily Silk

Some of us have been traveling here at Hello!Lucky and we're a little confused about what season it is! We thought these delicate silk tree mobiles by Moon-Lily Silk were a refreshing way to look back while marching ever onward toward spring...was it?

Brought to mind our Autumn Leaves design.

And these brought to mind EIEIO's Lunaria design.  Lovely, modern and nature-inspired.

And of course, Cherry Blossom.

Such lovely decorations for seasonally inspired weddings!

And, they might look equally beautiful in a nursery, no? (A child's nursery, that is, not an arboreal one where they might get a little lost.)

Thanks so much, Jan, for sharing!

National Stationery Show: Our friends & neighbors

At this years National Stationery Show, we were honored and excited to participate in a booth community with three of our favorite designers - Egg Press, Hammerpress and EIEIO. Besides the camaraderie, treats and gossip, their work was incredibly inspiring! We especially loved the bus thank you card (above), gift wrap and calender (below) from Egg Press.

Fellow letterpress printers Hammerpress had some fantastic new journals, calenders and cards:

EIEIO had some great new wrapping paper, but unfortunately, we don't have any photos! Check it out here.

National Stationery Show

As always, there was a lot to take in at the National Stationery Show! It was hard to pry ourselves away from our booth, but we did manage to nip out to see what's new with some of our favorite designers. One of our favorite new products is this genius LCD card by Yellow Owl Workshop.

Also love this lucky horseshoe calendar from Hammerpress.

New gift wrap from EIEIO.

New cards featuring stitched scrap materials from Pikku.

Pretty fabric-covered magnets and tacks from Girl of All Work (these would be great for hanging wedding seating cards!)

Simple, elegantly packaged boxes of quotes from Spilt Milk and Cookies -- a great favor idea for showers. The lovely owners happen to be the parents of Jon Retsky, co-founder of the Bay Area's leading special events lighting design firm, Got Light?, and a friend of H!L (small world!).

Fantastic graphic cards from Fugu Fugu Press.

Prints of the designs from Binth's amazing Joker playing card series, along with stunning new card designs.

One of our favorite new cards, by H!L designer Shauna Leytus - dancing dreidels! Yea!

Another great show, and always inspiring!

New Joel Dewberry & EIEIO designs!

After months of anticipation, the new Joel Dewberry and EIEIO designs are available for purchase on our website! The Sparrows wedding invitation design, above, based on Joel's Aviary collection is one of our favorites.

Joel's gorgeous fabrics can be found in all kinds of applications like this gorgeous tote bag from Ivan & Mary that we spotted on Style Me Pretty last fall. You can also buy his fabric by the yard here that you can use for crafting projects (think bridesmaid purses, fabric-covered  headbands, welcome bags, and table runners!).

 Shangri-la (show above) is another favorite.

EIEIO's  modern designs are sleek and refreshing. Meadow (shown above) is so perfect for an outdoor wedding, we can barely stand it! The subtle lines look gorgeous letterpress printed.

We're also loving Poppy Stripe in this red, gravel and pool colorway, inspired by many of EIEIO's beautiful paper designs (especially Flower Pop). Again, EIEIO's papers are perfect for crafting accessories -  napkin rings, wrapping favors, envelope liners, you name it!

All of the designs are available either letterpress or digitally printed; coordinating items such as menus, place cards, directions cards, programs, and thank you notes are available for order via phone/e-mail (contact us for more details). All colors can be customized, too!

Sneak peak: New designs by EIEIO

We have long been huge fans of Jean Orlebeke over at EIEIO - she's created an amazing range of modern gift wrap designs, which are sold at high-end boutiques (think MoMA design store). She's hands-down one of the most talented designers we know, so we were thrilled when she agreed to collaborate with us on an exclusive collection of wedding invitation designs! Here's a sneak peak...

We're so excited to be working with Jean! This designs will be available in both letterpress and digital formats on our website in the next 2 weeks. Check back for more info, and call us to order in the meantime!

Photos by Sara Remington.

2009 Preview Party!

We recently held our 2009 Stationery Preview party and are thrilled to report that it was a huge success!  We collaborated with some of the most amazing wedding vendors in the Bay Area to transform our working letterpress studio into a beautiful event space complete with red carpet!  Above, the fab Morgan Doan, event planner extraordinaire and mastermind behind this event, and Sabrina chatting by the welcome table.  Our sponsor booklet featured our new Sparrow design by Joel Dewberry.

Guests arriving...it was a fantastic crowd - some of the best and brightest in weddings...

The studio on its way to being transformed. Got Light? did an amazing job with the lighting and draping - we were truly blown away by the difference a little "pipe and drape" made.  The back-lit bar was provided by Blueprint Studio Collection and Wildflower Linens provided the lovely table clothes. DJ John Jow turned the place into a mini-nightclub with his expert music mixing.

Jane Hammond Events provided the seriously delicious hors d'oeuvres, including bite-sized crab cakes, empinadas, and mushroom tartlets and the most amazing brownies of all time.  Andronico's Market provided the excellent wine (selected by the talented Jeffrey Porter).

We made these little buffet signs - the holder was just a standard restaurant sign holder that we spray-painted a matte pink and the orchid pattern on the sign is from one of our new collaborations with Joel Dewberry.

One of the things we were celebrating was the launch of our latest invitation collections including a collaborations with EIEIO, Joel Dewberry, Julia Rothman, and the always amazing Lab Partners.  They did a destination series featuring New York, San Francisco, Hawaii and London (London and New York pictured above).  We've already gotten such and incredible response, we're already thinking about adding some new destinations to the line!

Sharla Flock designed the gorgeous floral arrangments - we love her subtle use of color and texture.

She used pieces from our large collection of flea market found vases and bowls to create an eclectic look.

One of our talented printers, James, did demonstrations of the letterpress printing technique.

We were also celebrating the launch of our new website which we are SO excited about.  The dapper Mr. Daniel James of Three Rings and brilliant event planner, Lisa Feldman, check out the new look.

We had a whole selection of our work on display - this was a variation on our popular Cherry Blossom design - including fan programs, and round menus designed to fit into the dinner plates.  We were also introducing our new digital printing option - an excellent (and fast!) alternative to letterpress (or a budget-friendly way to augment beautiful letterpress invitations).

Gorgeous photography by Allure West.

Thank you so much to all our incredible partners in this event and to everyone who came out for the party!

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!