Grey Moggie Press

Summer Wedding #2

A friend from school is getting married in Chicago later this year. She's having lots of fun planning most parts of the wedding, but she was having trouble when she had to make decisions about her invitations. A mutual friend told her I might be able to help, and she gave me the opportunity to put together a wedding paper suite for her.

I was beyond thrilled just to have box upon box of Arturo delivered to my door for this project. Add to that the joy of spending a day in the studio printing these lovelies and it might make up for the fact that I can't get back to the studio until August because of the bar exam study schedule.

The bride wanted something clean and simple and the wedding colors are burgundy and cream. After I got a feel for what she was after, I designed and letterpress printed invitations, RSVP cards, reception cards, and printed some envelopes. I have to thank Mr. Moggie who helped me to tie ribbons around the invitations.

A Memphis Wedding

Front of the case. (C) 2009 Stu Griffith

Clients of mine are having a Memphis wedding in September. A friend of the family created a Memphis-themed mix CD for the occasion and offered to make a copy for all of the wedding invitees. The groom, a graphic designer, whipped up a design for a few faces of a ready-to-print chipboard CD case, and they asked me to letterpress print them. 

Inside with invitation details. (C) 2009 Stu Griffith.

Every step of this project had an unexpected twist. The design was saved as grayscale and the people at Owosso had trouble making the printing plates (LOVE the people at Owosso, by the way). And the CD cases were backordered at Stumptown (LOVE the people at Stumptown, too). I used a beautiful silver ink from NA Graphics (you guessed, LOVE them, too), but it was much more difficult to work with than the basic blue, black, and red I'd used in the past. 

The playlist (back outside cover). (C) 2009 Stu Griffith

I was encouraged along the way by the talented Moira, who told me that these challenging projects will make one a better printer. I thought it was a wonderful attitude with which to approach the remainder of this unwieldy project, and I'm so glad I took her advice and stuck with it. At the studio last week, I ran into issue after issue with the press. But I found a solution to overcome each obstacle. When I left the studio that day with exactly the right number of printed CD cases and a whole mess of errors, I had one of those moments when I felt like an artist - or at least a skilled craftswoman. It was beautiful. So thanks to Dorris and Stu for being great clients and giving me the opportunity to jump into this challenge! All the best for a beautiful wedding and long happy life together. 

My new loves

...small type and handmade papers.
 
These are the beauties I felt so strongly about during Friday's letterpress session. I think it was my favorite letterpress project so far. I used a 12-point marjery type from the Pyramid Atlantic collection. It was stowed away in a smaller case of type I hadn't yet explored, despite the fact that I literally touch the case each time I use the Chandler & Price press in the studio.

The paper I used was part of the stash I got when I visited New York this summer and spent a day wandering through paper stores and bakeries with some lovely girlfriends. The paper is soft, thick, and a beautiful shade somewhere between blue and gray. It picked up the pressed ink beautifully. I asked a paper artist at Pyramid if she could tell what the paper was made of, since I'd love to find more of it. It's definitely cotton and she thought there was some abaca in it as well.
 
I mixed up some blue ink with a little dollop of black ink to make a dark gray. The similarity in color of the paper and the ink really helped give the finished product an organic feel.
 
I was only able to get 27 4-bar cards from the sheets of paper I had picked up in New York. Strangely, I needed to make exactly 27 invitations. I got some cream colored Lokta at Paper Source, however, and made a few extra. The Lokta also worked splendidly for this project, though it is much more delicate than the cotton paper.
 
I cannot wait to have another reason to use high quality handmade paper, and set lots and lots of type!

Baby Shower Invitations

A friend of mine is expecting in September and she is hosting a little baby party later this summer to celebrate the baby's upcoming arrival. she and her husband want to be surprised by the sex of the baby when he or she is born. when she asked me to work on invites for the event, I thought some sweet yellow and green would be perfect.

I letterpressed "it's a baby CELEBRATE" in green along the top of some yellow flat cards. It was the first time I used a platen press, which is the kind of press I'd have for a home studio. It was a lot of fun, and I felt like I was really part of the printing process because it was the force of my own arm impressing the letters on the paper.

Then I added the invitation details to these fun sage round labels from paper source, and filled in the empty space with some baby themed stamps.

Grey Moggie Updates

My logo is now stamp-able thanks to the lovely people at Impress!

I'm making progress on those shower invitations!

And I've got a new (personal) project in the works. Check out Paper Adventure 08.  I'm a few weeks behind, but I plan to catch up quickly and I'll share the results here. For the covers, I'm going to use the cardboard from the box in which our most recent Callyx & Carolla bouqet arrived.

We get flowers from C & C on the first day of every other month - a thoughtful and beautiful wedding gift from friends of ours. I fear that this bouquet might mark the end of our year of flowers, but we just signed up for a CSA share that includes flowers so the floral happiness will continue!

(so many exclamation points!!!)

No, this is not an ad for 27 dresses

Obviously, since there are only 15 dresses in this post! It's just a preview of a shower invitation I'm working on for a dear friend.

Baby Shower Invitations

I co-hosted a baby shower for some friends of ours in the fall. My co-hosting duties included whipping up some shrimp salad sandwiches, organizing a few shower games, blowing up lots of balloons, and, of course, creating the invites. I used a light blue postcard as background (our friends were expectng a son) and rubber-stamped "baby" at the top and "RSVP" on the bottom, both in light blue after printing the rest of the text on soft white A2 sized paper. I stamped some baby bottles and rattles onto light green paper, cut them out, ran them through the sticker-maker and affixed them to the bottom of the invites.  Hubby got to make the cake. Invites and cake pictured below:

Wedding Brunch Invitations

My mom and dad hosted a brunch at their home the day after the wedding. Here are the simple invites I made for the event.

Rehearsal Dinner Invitation: Lakeside Lobster Bake

My first time using the Xyron sticker maker! I found a neat lobster graphic online, printed it onto red cardstock many, many times and made lobster stickers to accentuate these lakeside lobster bake invitations.

And here are some photos from the event:

 

More wedding stuff: Invititations

Here are the invites sent out for our wedding. I used a green backing with black text on white paper. I wrapped a strip of pink vellum and a pink ribbon around the outside of each. Under the ribbon, I used a green dot sticker to hold the vellum together and hand write each guest's name. Thank goodness I had bridesmaids with nimble fingers to help me tie all those knots!