Wedding invitations. The Making of.

Wedding invitations. The Making of.

Tim and Courtney Wedding EnsambleTim and Courney InvitationsI had the pleasure of designing wedding invitations for Tim and Courtney (my brother-in-law and future sister-in-law) and Anna and Jeffery (my sister-in-law and future brother-in-law). Congrats to both couples!

For Tim and Courtney’s invites, I dug deep to find my fine-art side — a side that has not seen much light since the college days. I had such a blast with this process I thought I would share it with you.

Since it will be an outdoor wedding, I wanted to give the invitations a really natural feel. Paper played a big part. It was printed on 80 lb. cover, Birch, one of Neenah Papers’s environmental series (100 percent recycled, giving it natural texture and imperfections; I love paper). I also used a vellum overlay to give elegance and a contrast to the rugged recycled paper. The wedding flower is a yellow gerbera daisy that I wanted to incorporate somehow. To achieve the desired effect, simply using offset or digital printing for the gerbera daisy would not work. I wanted a texture to the ink and natural imperfections in the print. To do this, I used a process called relief printing or block printing. I had a print shop print up the ensemble using a spot blue to match the bridemaids’ dresses with a blank area for the block print.

I love the printing process and had a great time designing and printing the invitations. It is a simple process but extremely time-intensive for larger runs. This ensemble required over 400 hand-printed gerbera daises (2 cards for 200 invitations).

Check out the video below to see the process. Click here if the video does not work in your browser. AND Stay tuned for the making of Anna and Jeffery’s invitations.

Inking up Lino BlockJames going crazyInvitations Drying

1Comment
  • Patrick
    Posted at 13:22h, 12 March Reply

    James – you’re the man! nice work bud.

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