This year, my mother asked for personal stationery for Christmas. I figured, why order it when I could make it and get it printed myself? People who know me well know how this ended - with me not having a Christmas present for my mother... Horrible, I know. But I just recently found out that my friend Jean does letterpress out of her home, so today I had the pleasure of visiting her studio and "designing" my mom's stationery!
SO MUCH FUN! I had a blast looking at all the typefaces and little decorative elements, and Jean was so sweet to indulge all my questions and poking around. I'd never seen hand letterpress done before and it was such a treat to see the entire process in action. Almost all of the type and blocks she has are antiques, many hand carved.
We picked out a few options and then Jean did a sample of each so I could decide what mom would like best. Her hands are a blur in this image because she was able to put all these teeny tiny pieces together faster than you would think possible.
Here are a couple things we tried that we ended up not going with. I have samples of the final designs, but because my mother reads the blog from time to time so I'm going to wait to post them until I have given her the final product so I don't ruin the surprise! Thank you so much, Jean! And if you are in the Minneapolis area and are in need of custom hand letterpressed stationery, invitations or announcements, just let me know and I'll get you in touch with Jean - she does fantastic work.
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