in the studio

Hello Monday, I am not quite sure if I am ready to see you yet.

It feels like the weekend never quite arrived as we were kept most busy foot treadling away in the letterpress studio. Naturally Miss Ruby offered her assistance in the form of supervision and quality control, however her motivation only does last so long before she pulls out her bored face and begs for a walk to the beach.

Cheeky things these four legged children.

love :: BHLDN

I am a little late with our Friday love today. However have you heard about BHLDN? I do think it is a bit of a weird name (although apparently means "to keep" in dutch), however it is Anthropologies new wedding line, and oh my, if you haven't yet seen it make sure you do so here.

The thing that I love so much, that although I am a married woman already, there is an amazing collection of outfits, shoes and hair pieces, which I think would make amazing outfits as a wedding guest! Can someone invite me to their wedding please????

Have a great weekend sweet peas.

xox

p.s BHLDN only ships to the USA and Canada, however you can check out mail forwarding companies such as this one - which could make these beauties yours too.

kate & joel :: wedding stationery

Last April we showed you super sweet save the date cards for Kate & Joel. This has been a much loved design with alot of our clients saying that this is one of their favourite designs when viewing our portfolio! It was a very simple and clean, yet beautifully impressed design.

When it came time to design the rest of Kate & Joels wedding stationery their brief was for something a little more decorative, but still to flow with the clean simplicity of their save the date card. We produced quite a few different options from them to choose from, and their favourite was our design above!

It is a very textural invitation featuring a blind impressed full bleed (runs to the edge of page) background pattern. This gorgeous illustration was the coupled with classic and elegant, and a tiny tad traditional typography. Such a beautiful combination!! This card not only looked amazing, but all the valleys of the letterpress impression felt incredible.

We completed the set with an invitation, accommodation and map card, reply card, gift card and envelopes to suit the lot with a pinstripe lining continued over from their save the date.

Kate has some gorgeous ideas for their ceremony (I do hope they will share photos with us!!) with an amazing sweets table planned. The Love is Sweet tags will be used for guests to fill their favour boxes with all their favourite sweets - yum!! We also made some special extra tags which will be used to jazz up the sweets table (although I am sure it will be jazzy already!)

It was a real joy to work with Kate and Joel, they are a gorgeous couple and as they are based all the way over in Perth we have never actually got to meet, but already feel like old friends.

We wish them a wonderful wedding day in two weekends time!!

seeing grey

Today we are playing in the beautiful grey section of the Pantone book. Its a bit dark and moody outside, its blowing a gale and we are recovering from loosing our power in the big Brisbane storm last night. Somehow grey ink today seems perfectly appropriate.

a visit

How as your weekeend my friends? My highlight was a visit from my most favourite little lady and her beautiful mum. We took a few impromptu photos (I think she loves black and white as much as we do!!), had a lovely lunch and had a gorgeous time. Like her mum, little Violet is super delightful and is just plain adorable.

Other then our baby cuddles, we also had a few client meetings and escaped the heat indoors for most of the weekend. Little Ruby got to make some new friends, as well as a little evening walk to the beach once the day had cooled off.

We've got a busy week planned in the studio - so must dash, but hope that your weekend was lovely as well!!

xox

love :: goldenink collaborative

Here on the Bespoke Blog - we are happy to announce a new Friday post category - Love. Each week we will feature designers who inspire us, products which we simple just adore, and generally things which we just plain love (and we love alot, so this category should keep us quite busy!!).

To start us off this week we are super excited to introduce you to Golden Ink Collaborative. From last Summers Finders Keepers market in Sydney you might remember we had beautiful next door neighbors Abby and Kate who together combined make Goldenink. We featured them in our Finders Keepers wrap up post here. We bought one of the vessels (and had to restrain ourselves from buying so many more) and have loved it every single day since.

Well this week these clever ladies have launched their online store. Run, jump, go, I promise you, it is well and truly worth the effort!!

sally-anne & chistopher :: wedding stationery

Today we have a little eye candy for you from a suite of letterpress wedding stationery fresh off the press this week. A beautifully simple and classic design in ivory and black ink on ivory cotton stock. Such a beautiful impression from the vintage illustration that we used. This design not only look lovely, but was amazing to feel with all the valleys and peaks of the letterpress impression. Just gorgeous!

Oh and before I forget - today we are doing a little happy dance - this is our 500th blog post!! It looks like we might be baking cupcakes to celebrate again today :)

xox

oh frankie

You can find a full page interview with me and my world of letterpress in the latest issue #40 of Frankie Magazine out today. Featured with ten other inspiring creative talents, it is such a gorgeous honour. In fact, it makes me want to whip out my apron and bake the prettiest cupcakes to celebrate.

Want some?

xox

bespoke bakers twine - back in stock!

Just a very quick post to let you know that our bespoke bakers twine is now back in stock. Yesterday we had a big box arrive so we are so excited to have so much twine prettying up the studio again!

Due to many requests we also have black twine to add to our collection of Raspberry, Lemon, Mandarin, Turquoise, Chocolate and Pink. Each roll is 220 meters and are $18 each. Get them while they last in our online store here.

what do you think?

So we have been busy little bees here in the studio working on making our blog look all shiny and new. We have still go some work to do, but whilst we finish off the new site we would love to get your feedback - to help us grow, improve and make this wee little blog a sweet enjoyable place.

So my friends, what do you like/dislike, what more/less off, changes, ideas, criticisms, suggestions? Throw it all on the table, we would love to hear from you. Whether your a frequent commenter, an occasional reader or a daily lurker, we would really love to get your feedback!

xox

hello weekend

Hello weekend, its certainly is so lovely to see you again.

I think we might spend our days with a little bit of printing, a little bit of baking and a little bit of entertaining. I do suppose we best find some time to get back in the garden and tend to our new garden beds and hopefully squeeze in a little time to do some more work on my very humble attempts at oil painting.

I do hope you and your weekend are also simply lovely!

xox

fiona & troy :: wedding stationery

Late last year we had the pleasure of printing a pretty unique set of wedding stationery for Fiona & Troy. We had been in discussion with Fiona for some time about printing her wedding stationery for her and as she is a graphic designer she was super excited to design something truly unique for us to print for her.

For their Save the Dates Fiona had sent out handkerchiefs to their guests (representing the idea of romance back in old war times, when lovers, girlfriends and or wives would give their handkerchiefs to their men as a symbol of the love they shared). From this idea, she was then spurred onto thinking of old postcards, and after a call to her Nana she was super pleased to discover that her Nana had kept her old telegrams from which Fiona could base her design upon, and so a seed was born!

Fiona then personalised the traditional Australian telegram design with a silhouette of two children kissing to represent Fiona & Troys childhood romance which blossomed when they were just little things at the tender age of 14.

The complete stationery range was printed on ivory cotton stocks and included 2 colour invitations, reply cards, maps, hotel accommodation cards, gift suggestion cards and day after event cards. All these were packaged up inside of red and blue striped airmail envelopes with old world map linings.

Just gorgeous!! It was a pleasure to work with Fiona & Troy - we wish them an amazing wedding day and cannot wait to see photos of what other unique ideas they have planned!!

a green weekend

How was your weekend my friends? Mine was particularly hot, sweaty and very very dirty!! Why oh why we always seem to choose the hottest part of summer to tackle the garden I do not know. We ripped out the "ugly" side of the garden full of random things, lots of branches of timber and all sorts of plants whose names I do not know, yet have had no problem with running riot across my garden.

We ripped and pulled and dug and dug and dug. The lovely pile above is the small remnants in what didn't make it in the trip to the tip. If only I had captured it in its full glory.

We then arose super early on Sunday morning to head out to the markets. The super early bit was to escape the heat, but unfortunately it was still pretty damn hot and sticky anyway (mental note, next garden, tackle it in winter). The markets were an interesting place. Full of oh so cheap plants, but I think the people watching really tops the cake. It certainly did make for a very interesting Sunday morning. So a few hours later with an overflowing trailer and the station wagon packed to the max the markets had been worthwhile once again.

So the garden is now half done, its looking much better, but I am guessing next weekend I will be just as hot and dirty all over again!

friday already?

How has your week been sweet blog friends? I personally don't know where this week has gone. It has been super busy, we have been booking in lots of new clients, organising our half of tonne of paper (we need so so so much more storage) and we have been back in the print studio loving Herbie and Charlie again after our few weeks of separation. They have received lots of oil, a big clean, a bit of a hug and they are now back up and happily printing away again.

Throughout this week we have also been watching the news of the devastation from cyclone Yasi. Once upon a time we actually lived in Far North Queensland, it seems like a lifetime ago know, but all those places effected we lived, we worked, we visited and we enjoyed. FNQ we hold you dearly in our hearts.

And amongst all the craziness of the week we also had cause for celebration - Miss Ruby Tuesdays 5th birthday. Happy birthday you little princess.

See you again next week sweet friends.
xox

samantha & benjamin :: save the date

Before we headed off on our mammoth January road trip one of our last jobs to do for 2010 was these gorgeous save the date cards for Samantha & Benjamin. Designed by the super talented Melissa at Bullet Creative we loved the hand script combined with passionfruit flower/vine theme for this design.

I do think that it was quite appropriate that when we printed these our passionfruit vines (which cover the entire wall outside our studio windows) were producing passionfruits at an astronomical speed. This meant that ink mixing was something a little bit special being able to walk outside the studio and compare to our passionfruit flowers in real life!!!

This stationery suite included a save the date card, information card contained inside printed and lined envelopes all printed on our 100% cotton ivory stock. Just delightful don't you think?

bellingen vintage farmhouse

On our way back from the farm to Brisbane we stopped a few nights mid way in Bellingen. Having never been to this little part of the country before we were most excited to stop and explore. We booked 3 nights at Bellingen's Vintage farmhouse and we had a most grand arrival - the chickens jumped in the car and the previously mentioned Reggie & Lizzie who bleated our arrival into oblivion!

The minute we walked through the door it felt like stepping into a little piece of vintage heaven. White walls, soaring ceilings, a tonne of natural light mixed with just the perfect mix of vintageness - I was at home.

I must admit for those three days we didn't do much, without any internet or phone access (bliss really) - we read a few books, Ruby entertained us by trying her very hardest to befriend the sheep, we admired all the natural forests and perfect swimming holes and pretty much just put our feet up and relaxed. It was a beautiful way to end our country road trip.

To find out more about the farmhouse visit here.