A design + analog printing studio in Los Angeles

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design + letterpress printing in Los Angeles, California

Posts tagged watercolor
Satsuki Shibuya's business cards

We've slowed down on business cards in the studio lately, but recently we helped create some unique business cards that we can't help but share. Aiming for business cards that felt like an extension of herself, watercolor artist Satsuki Shibuya came to the studio looking for a solution to combine her artisty in her business cards.

We first thought of maybe painting on each card but that's too painstakingly time consuming. We also wanted to be mindful of the function of the card being careful to not obstruct contact information. The solution was to letterpress print her contact info and have the backside with her watercolor. A blind deboss of her name was the perfect mark with her watercolor.

We came up with the solution of creating large sheets of her watercolor and then cutting it down for letterpress printing. 

A large sheet of her watercolor before cutting

A large sheet of her watercolor before cutting

cut to smaller sheets

cut to smaller sheets

We mounted sheets of the watercolor painted sheets with GMUND's cotton stock in 111# and blind debossed on the watercolor side and letterpressed in black ink her information. The best part was yet to come. As we trimmed the card, each card created a special vignette of her watercolor. No two cards are completely alike and each one, in the end, was hand painted by Satsuki. These are worth framing!! 

2014 in watercolor

To kick off the new year, I was so happy to be commissioned to create these calendars. Taskforce, one of favorite cleints to work with, let me let my hair down with this piece. At first, they approached me for a unique gift for about 10 people and then it ended up as 100 custom designed, all letterpress printed and watercolored calendar.

On this special project, we added a wash of neon watercolor over the blind debossed 2014 and even pulled off a gradient pattern. For the letterpress nerds, I had to make crazy layers of packing to pull it off.  I had a trash can full of paper by the time I got it right.

To package it all up, I pressed a custom address area on the front of a kraft mailer and pressed a few notecards for a personal note.

Success and quite the unique gift for the new year.

Cheers!
 

robin & johanna's wedding suite

Robin and Johanna let me run with it. Basically, they trusted me to create their wedding invitations.

Some background- my husband has been long time friends with Robin, and since we've been together, I've had the pleasure of knowing them before the process of creating wedding invitations. We knew them before they were even engaged!

With a ring on her finger now, Johanna asked me if I could help with her invitations. She had a few things on the prerequisites- colorful and bright with watercolors, not formal and one more thing- could you incorporate spam musubis? 
**Record scratch**  
Come again? A wedding invitation with Spam Musubi, the Hawaiian snack food with meat from a can
Yep.

Luckily, Richard and I had planned a trip to Hawaii to do some real R&D. We were on a mission to taste the hype around these musubis. You see, this couple are foodies. Whenever they like something, you know it's going to be good and they go beyond the restaurant and even learn how make it at home. They're those folks. 

Maybe it was the vacation effect, the beach only feet away, and the shining sun but man, those musubis from Iyasume were amazing! I was sold. We ate them almost everyday after that.

We came back inspired. We knew the magic of the spam musubi and knew the exact vibe they wanted for their invitation. Since this snack is so simple, we wanted to make a recipe as a bonus keepsake.

We played with watercolors on the side too. The Lettra paper holds up pretty well. Doesn't buckle too much but it really absorbs fast. We thought it would be cute too to keep the food illustrations for the RSVP card. A California roll seemed appropriate for their California reception party.

Only Robin and Johanna would have a one of a kind, colorful wedding invitation with spam musubis. I'm so pleased they're happy with how these turned out!


Everything was created by Presshaus LA with lots of love
- design
- print
- watercolor
- illustrations
- calligraphy

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