Finally had a chance to make some traction on a part we'd been meaning to offer for some time. We are now making reproduction chases for the C&P Pilot letterpress. These old presses still see a lot of action and are EXTREMELY popular. Since the chases have become rarer than hens teeth, we decided it was time to start production. Our hopes are that these chases will help printers expand their capabilities as well as their, speed up production, and allow an affordable option to book art centers to host larger and more comprehensive classes. No time like the present to breath a little life into letterpress printing! Click HERE to order.
Everyone is out and about enjoying a perfect weekend here in Minnesota. Motorcycles, fishing, BBQ, camping, sunglasses - you name it! Meanwhile, I decided to go hard back at the shop and crank out a completely new website. So anyway - if you don't know it - this site is 1 day old today so hooray!!!
Now I'm going to go enjoy the rest of my weekend. Hope to hear from you soon!
December is a busy time of year for letterpress wedding announcements and love is in the air! These custom designed save the dates came in from a designer in Alabama. Blind impression and charcoal grey ink on Crane Lettra single ply. Finished size is A7 (5"x7"). Contact us today with your wedding invitation needs. We'd be happy to supply you with a quote!
affordable letterpress save the dates
Time to order your Save the Dates?
Tis the season to get those Save the Date orders going! The holidays are a great time to see friends and family so why not make the most of it by having your save the date announcements in hand! We're offering quick turnaround production on letterpress save the dates and foil stamping as well. We have a selection of designs to choose from or you can submit your own artwork. Don't have artwork but want something unique, our in-house design service is here to help with your custom design needs!
A letterpress wedding invitation has to have
the Wedding Invitation Essentials.
This custom wedding invitation was designed and printed a few months back and we think it has just the right blend of sugar and spice. We packed classic typography and a bold sense of style with feature and form. The real secret is in the personal flavors we added which came from really getting to know with the bride to be. The brides excitement was obvious and she was an absolute doll. We wanted to give this invitation the same sense of vibrance. We take a lot of pride in matching a couple to their invitation design and this one was no exception. Gold foil and slate grey ink on 2-ply. Oh - and who doesn't enjoy a little fun with an ampersand. Contact us for your custom quote today!
Custom Flora Wedding Invitation - designed in-studio.
This piece was all about being creative with the visual but more importantly, we combined some unusual finishes to push the boundaries. The digital printing was finished on BLACK paper. Yes, we printed full CMYK on black stock. How? - That'll just be our little secret. We then incorporated with fast and free foil script to add some life and energy. Lastly, we duplexed the stock to add that weight that everyone wants in a custom wedding invitations. This invitation design includes a matching rsvp, info card, and gold letterpress coasters as well as custom die cut address labels and a medallion circle cut tag with twine band. We'll post a few more pics to show the entire suite. Thanks for visiting our letterpress blog. You can contact us for your custom quote here.
Time for that Autumn Sweater!
Come September it's common to find invitations featuring warm reds and browns but sometimes it's more fun to push further into the concept. Seasonal invitation designs can be approached in so many more ways! Autumn Sweater- (Seasonal Wedding Invitation Design) - is very subtle but we snuck a few season-appropriate ideas into the final concept.
We often print others design work but every now and then we're given the opportunity to really let our design skills shine. This custom designed invitation was a labor of love and we had the pleasure of adding a few fancy print features to the concept as well. We included a touch of foil along with both letterpress printing and a blind impression. The pattern in the back is similar to a knit sweater texture which naturally lent itself to the diamond-shaped center area. Once we had these elements flowing it was just a matter of selecting the right fonts! The gold foil was an elegant exchange for the usual brown colors and the silver ink spoke more directly to our cozy Minnesota trees blowing in the fall breeze. The wedding was last week and it sounds like everyone was pretty pleased (as were we).
Check out more of our designs here!
The weather is finally starting to turn for the better here and we have so much on the horizon! We've been hard at work this winter creating some really amazing work for brides and businesses alike! We're very excited to announce a few new designs and we're also going though the site and cleaning house! Here's a sneak peek at a couple things we've had come through recently.
What a success! If you're not familiar with the Big Fake Wedding, definitely check them out! We recently took part in their Minneapolis event at Le Meridien Chambers Hotel by producing a custom invitation suite geared to fit their wedding theme. Our design aesthetic was "Folk-Floral-Fabulous!" We created a custom gold foil and digital print along with a matching rsvp, envelopes with printed labels, coasters and novelty tags. The different finish techniques we used included duplexing invitations and rsvps, foil stamped invites, foil stamped rsvps, die cutting labels, letterpress coasters, and some fun twine binding to finish it all off.
We attended the completely SOLD OUT faux wedding, met with guests, had dinner, partied and danced the night away alongside out other participating vendors and guests. We'll definitely be doing this again!
For a letterpress printer, there's nothing more fun than seeing a Heidelberg in the papers! So Letterpress printing and the Star Tribune?! ... well... sorta! We were visited last week by a writer and photographer from the Star Tribune. They we're researching for an article that came out last Sunday. The article was in celebration of the 1st anniversary of the light rail titled "University Avenue, Hopes are High!" The article mentioned our little shop and talked some about what the light rail has meant for us. If you haven't seen the article or are just curious about the new beginnings here on University Ave, we welcome you to visit the Star Tribune and read the article for yourself! Many thanks to the Tribune and all the supporters and small biz owners here on the Ave! - also - my friends tell me this pic makes me look old. .. boo.
Wedding Invitations in HD!
Working on a really great video collaboration. Showing folks around the shop and diving into the ins and out of letterpress wedding invitations. We'll detail some of the custom design as well as the production elements that go into creating your unique wedding invitations. Invitation paper, invitation envelopes, inks, foils, you name it! We can't wait to share the final piece with all of you! - DJL
Trends will come and go but classic black on white will never get old. Never underestimate just how important your wedding invitations can be. They are the first glimpse your guests will get of what is to come and they truly set the tone. With this Benson + Robbins invitation suite, the couple simply commented, "we want a design we're going to love in 50 years time." We went typographic with the layout and ultimately I think these letterpress wedding invitations really nailed it. Grateful to work with Julie and George and we wish them the best on their wedding day!
Dig on these absolutely beautiful gold foil business cards. They're trimmed at a stylish 2.5" square dimension and printed double sided on our single-ply house stock. We just finished these super cute cards for Nicola Harger. She's a photographer based in the North Loop area and her work is absolutely stunning. Check out her site and maybe if you get a chance to meet her, you'll walk away with one of these beauties?!?!
Business cards, wedding invitations and so much more! Contact Dick & Jane Letterpress for all your Hot Foil and Letterpress needs!
We ran these last July but today I was going through some of our archive books and found a couple left over prints. These we're absolutely one of our favorites from 2014. The interest in foil was just starting to pick up and lucky for us, Catherine and Ken we're amazing to work with. We started by looking at some examples but after talking some more about other possibilities, Catherine gave pretty free rein to "do what we do." The final result couldn't have been more stunning. Gold foil and cool grey letterpress filigree invitation. We knocked these out on the 220 Lettra and finished everything off with a gold painted edge.
Many thanks to Catherine for giving us the opportunity to really knock one out of the park.
The BIG announcement we've been waiting to finally share! We're moving to a brand new storefront studio location. We're still in the same building but we're no longer occupying the interior unit. We've expanded to the street front and the new studio is being built out as I type! So many new things are happening. New floors, doors and lighting; we're adding some fun furniture and some really killer decor sourced from some of our favorite local vintage and modern furniture companies. It looks like we're even buying some new equipment to increase productivity!
Real talk: For a long time we've quietly cranked out some really amazing work for clients across the globe. Well now it's time to share what we do and how we do it with everyone right here in our home town! We're really excited to show you just what we're up to so definitely stay tuned!
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If you'd like to schedule a consultation hosted in our new space or even just come see what we do please contact us either by phone or email.
2496 University Avenue Saint Paul, Minnesota 55114 P.651-756-8990 | E.info@dickandjaneletterpress.com
We LOVE printing business cards! Nothing more fun than running up some fun, funky little designs and getting to work with great clients in the process. Brewery business cards have been really big this past month thanks to the Portland based Craft Brewers Conference which went down a couple weeks back. Here are a couple of the cards we ran along with a few others from recent past.
If you're a business or individual looking for letterpress business cards, look no further. Dick & Jane Letterpress offers every possible finish you can imagine and we think our prices are pretty darn good too!
We get a lot of opportunities to work with a lot of different business and this job is not exception. Unmapped Brewery ordered up these cards last week and we couldn't be happier with the final product! We ran a duplexed French kraft stock with 465 and black. The cards we're final trimmed and hopefully JD will drop off a couple brews when he stops by to pick up!
We recently worked with Jessica Wonders (Jessica Wonders Events) on a style shoot and it turned out absolutely stunning! Even more exciting, the whole thing has been featured on the Wedding Lovely blog! You can check out all the details including the cute, tiny menus we came up with and hopefully the post and pictures will bring a little inspiration to your plans! Many thanks to Jessica for organizing the whole thing and to Wedding Lovely for sharing everyones hard work!
We labored over what colors to run with on this for a while. Our palletes we're originally in the soft blues and sea foams combined with a deep blacks.After taking more time to look at the brides venues and inspiration we suddenly shifter gears in favor of the warmer tones. We ended with this super clean juxtaposition of a blush dry brush technique applied over a silver ink. The envelopes were also matched using a blush tone paper but for the liners, we went with a higher contrast steel grey. It was truly a labor of love. We couldn't be happier with the results!
Over a hundred years ago on Melcher street in Boston (also known as printers row), the pressmen would set type by hand and crank away all day. The work was tedious and tiresome. After a job was done, they'd walk out to the alley and pick a kid to come in and sort all the type back into it's appropriate drawer for the lesser half of a nickel. To my knowledge, this is where the term, "printers devil" was born.
Here I am today packing to visit kids at a local preschool for a hand-on workshop. I love watching the kids eyes light up as they print they're very first card. It's a far cry from todays iPad and iKea lifestyle but in most ways, I think that is exactly what makes these workshops so great. If you'd like to schedule an on location print demo for your school or event. Give us a ring. If we can fit it in, we would surely love the opportunity!
Whatcha got there?
1. tiny sigwalt press
2. denim apron
3. half can of Vanson Black
4. a pair of ruber gloves
5. roll of paper towels
6. ink knife
7. small box of pre-cut biz card stock
8. tiny bottle of press wash (properly labeled with skull and crossbones)