My Bilingual (English & Chinese) Letterpress Wedding Invitations

I have sudden urges to clean the house like a mad woman since becoming pregnant. Similarly, I have a desire to clean up my hard drive and reorganize. This made me realize that I need to play a little catch up with some older projects. This one in particular was my baby for a half a year from Fall '13 to Spring '14.

Dec 20, 2013 at The Arm in Brooklyn

From ordering paper and supplies, to the layout, to manual letterpress cranking and assembly...I dedicated 100% of myself. In pleasing my parents, I had to create both an English and Chinese edition--thank you to Jennifer Cheng for assisting me with your Chinese language skills. Also, thanks to Colleen Deng, I was able to ask for her help in filling in the rest of the blanks--reviewing the proofs, ordering plates/paper, and going through the whole letterpress experience for the first time. She took me to her favorite letterpress studio in Brooklyn and we along with a few friends pumped them out together over the course of a few hours. I'm so pleased with the final product and wish the pictures did it justice.

I would also like to thank my husband, Dmitriy, for allowing me to go crazy on this one! :D

Peace and happiness,

Blue Letterpress Butterflies Birthday Card

March is a busy birthday month for my family as both my brother and I's birthdays are coming up! I hope this year is better than the last (totally not complaining about last year either)! How does time pass by so quickly?!?

I'm working on simple things at the moment. I can't tell you why I'm in a slumber, but that's the status of my craft life right now. :T Slowly, but surely I will get there. :)

These butterflies were stamped in various mixtures of blues, purples, and off-white ink, then wet embossed with a pearlescent gloss. Sentiment was letterpressed. It's simple, but elegant. The mesh ribbon is actually a bit shimmery too, but it's hard to capture such details on camera.









Daylight savings this weekend--enjoy it... -1 hour!

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Letterpress Happy Birthday Quilled Hearts Card

2nd week in Sept. and we're celebrating Peace, Love, & Happiness at Tuesday Alchemy. Want to know why? Have you ever heard of International Peace Day which is on Sept. 21st? Today is also the anniversary of 9/11 and so it's important to keep peace and love not too far from our minds. I live in NYC and was in high school at the time. Due to the massive panic we were sent home, but phones weren't working and no mass transportation was running. My bus ride was on average 40 minutes one way, so having to walk home was not on the top of my list of things I want to do when everything was crazy. It was already raining ash and pieces of debris, so air quality was terrible. The next day the city was closed down, so we got to stay home from school. It was scary walking down the streets for a very long time after that day. We had to be evacuated in school a few times after it as well while the SWAT team came in due to a few bomb scares. In my high school? Really? I do understand the precaution of better to be safe than sorry though, but that's an example of the high tension environment we experienced daily. I felt especially bad for those of my friends who covered their heads due to their religion (we're very diverse here) because they were continuously harassed on the streets and in school due to ignorance. Some either took off their hijab or persisted but had a miserable day to day life. Here's to hoping for a world without violence and peace, so people don't have to go through such ordeals in a civilized society. 

Sassy Studio Designs and LEJ Designs will be this week's sponsors are Tuesday Alchemy. Swing by and show us some L-O-V-E!

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Quilled Candle Happy Birthday Letterpress Blue Card

Before I get to my card, I want to give a shout out to sweet, sweet Laine from Hugs4theHeart Designs! I was lucky enough to win a giveaway on her blog and I want to show you how generous of a prize giver she is:

Can you believe it?! I got 4 different sets of stamps, a sampler of ribbon, mixed beads, and a super vintage and gorgeous thank you tag! I will be putting them all to good use in the near future! I would highly recommend that you visit her to see her versatile crafting--by versatile I mean that she makes everything from cards to beautifully altered boxes and creating different wall art. Who knows, you may get your next spark of creativity from her! Thank you, Laine, and you ROCK! :)))))

Here is my card--I bought the Lifestyles Letterpress Starter Kit a while back to use with my Cuttlebug. It took some adjusting, but came out pretty good in the end. It's hard to see the depth of the debossing in pictures, sorry!

It's a blue candle for a guy--4 rolled coils with glittered centers. Heavyweight card stock (140 lbs) sits on top of blue card stock (80 lbs). You really do need the super heavy and thick card stock when working with letterpress. 

This was given to one of my housemates to give to his dad's birthday, so it was typed in Chinese and printed out--says, Wishing you a happy birthday, daddy! You read it from right to left, top to bottom.

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