Monthly Archives: May 2010

letters through time

So, I am going to go out on a limb and admit that I love girly romantic movies. I will also admit that I was excited to see “Letters to Juliet” this weekend with a couple of 10 year old girls. Let’s call it “research”, right?

I have to say that the movie was very predictable, even for my young friends, and more than anything I enjoyed the main prop, the letter to Juliet, that was aged and weathered as it had been trapped in a brick wall for 50 years, as the story goes.

I instantly remembered this envelope that a friend of mine sent to me recently. He reused an envelope that had been addressed to his mother by erasing the pencil and removing the stamp. The envelope is lined, thankfully, since the liner is the only thing holding it together, yellow and vibrant as ever.

The best part about this old re-used envelope is the texture. It’s ragged and almost soft yet crispy. It reminds me of cockle onion skin (my very very favorite of the old school writing papers).

Needless to say, when I got this envelope in the mail, it was obvious to me that THIS is the best form of recycling. No chemical processing, no electricity used to re-make this envelope.

Makes me think that I should start using pencil for my correspondence…. so in the future, someone can do the same thing with my envelopes….

Tiny Pines + Hipstamatic = The new old fashioned

Whenever I hang out with Gia Canali, I get bitten by the photography bug. She was showing me her iphone photos using the Hipstamatic App, and I took a notion to download that myself. I was hoping that all I needed was a program to make my photos look like hers…

Well, turns out that taking good iphone photos not as easy as just paying $1.99. BUT I was able to start learning how to use my new took as I stitched this weekend.

These photos are of an invitation I am working on right now. My client wanted to have a similar look to this invitation which i designed almost 6 years ago. (I used a black and white “film” to convey the idea that this is the OLD invitation, just so you know )

This new bride is getting married near a pine forest and really loved having that visual element stitched on.

For her, we brightened up the paper a little bit, freshened up the typeface with an added script element, printed letterpress on handmade cotton paper with a slight shimmer – using a cool grey ink color and stitched in a subtle green since her wedding isn’t in the fall… (though you can’t actually tell from my old fashioned photo…… hmmm….)

Every invitation was stitched with the sewing machine but guided by my hand which definitely requires complete concentration, and lots

of tunes in the background.

Since I am quite fond of pines so the hours of stitching breezed by as I concentrated on each one and their limbs.

Obviously, some are taller than other, wider than others, etc. but together they make an elegant stitched tiny pine forest.