Hellobee

When I saw the gorgeous invitations Julie of Duet Letterpress created for her daughter Emily’s first birthday, I asked her to share them with Hellobee. You may remember that she also designed my Hellobee business cards!

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I’m so excited to share with you the invitations we designed, letterpress printed + mailed out for our daughter’s first birthday party! After a bit of brainstorming, my husband Kacey and I decided to make Em’s party a celebration of her firsts. The first time she giggled. Her first word. The first time she sat up. First time she crawled. Her first food. First steps.

I wanted her invitation to be interesting, plus a little keepsake for each recipient. So, I designed multiple parts. The largest card is a certificate. The smaller pink card is her party invitation. We included a picture of the birthday girl, put it inside a glassine envelope and bound all the parts together with pretty metallic + cotton twine.

Below is a closeup of the certificate. This was a three color print job. A dark pink, a light pink and gold for the text. It was stamped, well letterpress printed really, with “First Year Certified.” Lots of her milestones and the dates for each were listed.

I turned Em’s first foot + hand prints into graphics so that we could letterpress print them in a pale pink ink on each card. Fun fact? They are printed in the actual size of her first foot + hand prints.

Each envelope was adorned with pretty pink and cream vintage stamps + an envelope wrap. Since we only needed to print a small number of invitations, we letterpress printed each envelope wrap with our return address plus the address of the recipient.

A closeup of the parts all grouped together inside the envelope.

I love how her invitations turned out. They’re exactly as I pictured them in my head. And, I love the idea of the certificate so much that I’m going to be designing + letterpress printing similar first year certificates to sell in our little shop soon!