A new year, a new project!

Hello all!

I’ve got a super exciting new project coming soon! Several months ago I started working on a line of wedding invitation templates and they’re just about ready to launch on my etsy.

I love letterpress printing, foil embossing, die cuts and fancy folding probably more than than next guy, but not everyone can afford to do that. And certainly no one NEEDS to do that. In a country where the average wedding cost is $25,000, we need some options that are elegant, beautifully designed, and completely affordable.

My goal is to provide a low cost option that is beautifully designed and really easy to customize to any wedding. They are all grayscale designs - which adapt to just about any color palette, and make the printing costs essentially nothing. I’ve worked hard to make the text and graphics integrated and strong enough to stand on their own without any fussing, but color and texture can be added with paper, lace, ribbons, bows or any number of things this wonderfully DIY crazy world can come up with!

Over the last couple of years, I have had the privilege of designing wedding invitations for some family and friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. I totally fell in love with the process and the product. Basically, I love making pretty things, and what could be a better excuse to make pretty things than a wedding?

Being able to hold an actual crafted object or printed piece of paper is a wonderful feeling of accomplishment - you worked hard, and look! here’s a finished thing to prove it.  Wedding invitations have that feeling for me. They are small projects, but they result in a perfect stack of beautiful printed cards that actually mean a lot to someone. They announce a new beginning in the lives of two people and mark a celebration to be shared with family and friends. I think there is something wonderful and lasting about that!

So here are a few of my designs with some of my crafting ideas - look for them soon on my about to be updated etsy store!   emruth.com

all the best in this exciting new year!

e

Laszlo

Exciting news from the studio (also known as my apartment) - I gained a new helper!

Meet Laszlo, a tiny ball of fur and crazy. This is kind of big deal, I may have been known to be a bit of a cat disliker in my past.

And he is never far away when I have work to do. I've got some super exciting new projects coming soon, and Laszlo is doing an excellent job of quality control. So be excited!

Lurking.

Being quality control apparently gets pretty boring. 

If you don't think cats belong on every blog, take that up with MelissaPeterson. Just look at that face! He's a keeper.

A Texas Wedding

It's time to get documenting that pile of wedding invites growing on my desk. The first one: Thomas and Katie's lovely rustic texas wedding on a budget. Simple, elegant typography and a few hand drawn details printed on Paper Source's chartreuse paper with paper bag envelopes. The RSVP was a website printed on the back. Total printing and trimming costs for 100 invites? $11. win!

I had a lot of fun with these, and I love that printing in gray scale makes printing costs so much cheaper. I strongly believe that you can have a beautiful, personal and well designed wedding for a lot less then average $25,000 that americans spend on weddings. It's a crazy industry, and I love that the DIY etsy crowd is helping make it affordable, way prettier, more personal, and helping independent crafters. seriously, what could be better!

ampersand and corner details drawn with my wacom tablet.

Steelcase Foundation 2011 Annual Report

Steelcase Foundation 2011 Annual Report: 
Sherrie Wilson, writer. Emily Van Hoff, cut paper art. Rachel Hyde, concept, art direction and design.


I am so excited to be able to share this finished project with all of you!  It was a 2 week whirlwind of x-actos, paper, and not sleeping that culminated in a day long amtrak trip to Michigan for a photo shoot.  It was exhausting, incredibly exciting, and exactly what I want to be doing with my life!

My cousin Rachel from Hyde Creative recently asked me to make some art for the Steelcase Foundation's annual report. The Steelcase Foundation has funded many community enriching organizations over it's 60 years, and this anniversary report looks at a handful of the recipients to see the unique ways they have each served their respective communities.


Here is the concept we came up with:

Each story starts with a single sheet of paper to represent the funding from Steelcase. A series of highly structured cuts and folds reveals an intricate design through shape and shadow to show the ways each organization has taken the funding and used it to make an impact on their communities.  The entire sheet of paper remains intact, leaving no waste just as every bit of the funding is used to it's fullest extent. Although the art is mostly abstract, I worked hard to make sure there was a connection to each story. For example, Nonprofit Central provided free office space and technology to NPOs in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, physically bringing them together and allowing for collaboration and partnerships betweens these nonprofits. That idea of many people coming together for a common goal of rebuilding the city is evident in the art I created for that project, while maintaining an elegance that doesn't hit you over the head with obviousness.

Nonprofit Central

But lets back up a little bit, I didn't get to that piece overnight... it took more like 3 nights!

Here is a sample of my initial 'sketches' that I sent to Rachel so she and the writer could have a better idea of what exactly I was thinking about. To give you an idea of timing, Rachel sent me the general theme on a monday night, we talked about a concept on tuesday morning, and I got these photos to her by 2:00 that afternoon! Not bad, not bad.

For each page, I drew a quarter inch grid on the reverse side and sketched in the design before cutting and scoring the folds. The design changes so much from the sketch phase to the folded phase, so each project required a lot of experimentation and starting over. I still have a giant pile of rejects that I can't bring myself throw out quite yet.

Our deadlines were super fast, we had just 2 weeks.  Those of who know how I work know that the level of detail and perfection I require doesn't come so quickly, it's a good thing I work well under pressure!

working shot, it's on the back cover of the report!

The list:
1 cover page
1 intro page
5 organization story pages
1 11x17 photo page
11 words
1 bar graph

Boys and Girls Club

Gilda's Club

The finished intro spread

Story spread: Degage

world's cutest bar graph.

I absolutely loved working on this project! Thanks so much to Rachel for trusting my skillz, and I hope to be able to continue collaborating on projects like this with many more talented designers in the years to come!

You can see the full report here and here.

Lauren & Bruce: Wedding Invitations

Lauren and Bruce, dear friends from college who are living in chicago and responsible for maintaining my sanity, were married on October 21st in the beautiful and sunny Boston, MA. They were kind enough to ask me to design their invitations and programs, and I'm so happy I could be part of making their day perfectly Lauren & Bruce!  The ceremony took place in a quintessential new england chapel, and the reception was at a cozy country club with a fantastic vintage vibe.


They're just so freaking cute, it was impossible to pick one picture. So I picked 2. (props to aguyandagirlphotography.com)

Now for the invitations. Although I didn't screen print these ones, they were just about as time consuming. But 100% worth it! We matched the feel of their wedding with a little art nouveau, some vintage lace and a a gorgeous off white butcher paper from the French Paper Company.

RSVP card

reception/map card,  front and back

And the program:

I love that you can see the texture of the paper in this shot, it really was lovely!

Congrats Lauren and Bruce! You're pretty great.

Snowflake Book

[snowflake pattern pdf's available HERE]


We've hardly seen any snow yet this winter, and it's almost January! I think that's depressing. I mean, really, I can see a kid outside my window playing basketball in shorts and a t-shirt. That shouldn't be possible this time of year!

So here's my answer to that, lets fill this city with paper snowflakes! My snowflake pattern book is FINALLY printed, cover screen printed, assembled and for sale on my etsy. Not in time for christmas, but at least it's still winter.  I've been putting pages in order and stitching them together, and i'm excited about the growing stack of finished and lovely objects.

They took 3rd place in graphic design for my final year of Opus (Trinity's juried student show), and I know everyone loved them because they started disappearing from their pedestal. Come on, world, thats not what we do with art!  For those of you who restrained your selves, now is your chance.

Theres more info about it's origins on my website.

a few snowflakes in my merry christmas window!
(notice the lack of snow outdoors)

1000 paper cranes

(Aren't they cute?)

My wedding gift for Claire and Gary is finally done and delivered, and I thought I'd share. 

The japanese tradition says that folding 1000 paper cranes for a couple on their wedding day is wishing them 1000 years of happiness and prosperity.  My obsessive paper-folding tedium-loving self thought this sounded like a great plan, and a few months of continuous paper folding later, I achieved a very large pile of pretty white birds.

1000 paper cranes

I had them all folded in time for the wedding, but I was a little too last minute in figuring out how to display them, so that part didn't happen until later. It's a good thing I have a wonderful woodworking father who was more than happy to assist!

Museum glass, curved edges, tricky spacers, pretty wood.  It's the perfect addition! The inside dimension  is 10"x10"x1.5", and 1000 cranes fit inside. They're pretty tiny!

The cranes are now hanging in the VanBehm apartment, and I hope they serve as a daily physical reminder of all the prayers and well wishes offered on the part of their family and friends who have been (and will continue) supporting and cheering them on!  

Craft Time.

Hey friends! It's been a busy month, I've been freelancing at Abelson Taylor since Halloween. In case you were wondering, Halloween is a hilarious day to start working somewhere.  And I've making pretty things.

I've been needing a new wallet for about 2 years, but I'm too cheap and also too picky, so I finally decided to make one. I'm pretty happy with it. Vintage zippers, awesome fabric combinations, and all the right pockets.

I also crocheted the warmest scarf I've ever worn.  I used the afghan stitch, so it's literally a mini blanket that's appropriate for me to wear in public.  It may suffocate me, but at least it'll hold out the chicago winds!

I finished the scarf on the train ride home for Thanksgiving, so I tested it out at Saugatuck Dunes. It worked pretty perfectly.

also, my parents dog is awesome. not very good at posing for pictures though. 

and a few of the first snowflakes of the season!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Typeforce 2 Book

The Typeforce 2 book is here, and it's beautiful, thanks guys!


In February my folded paper alphabet was in the "showcase of emerging typographic all-stars" at Co-Prosperity Sphere, along with lots incredible work from some very talented type lovers.  And now it has been officially documented in this beautiful catalogue which was pre-released at the Unisource paper show last night.

Super fun!

Girl Party!

As many of you know, my sister got married yesterday.  I'm a little biased, but I'm pretty sure it was the most wonderful wedding I've ever seen!  It consumed pretty much all of my making time this summer, and it totally paid off. Everything was perfect.  I don't have have pictures yet (sorry!), but I'll get some soon.

In the meantime, here's some bachelorette party fun!  Much classier than Party City's options, in my opinion.


I made Claire a tulle veil and giant bachelorette button/pin/award, which she actually wore in public, along with the awesome sequin dress that I brought for her to wear. And the giant gold jewelry. The rest of us had matching (and much smaller) buttons.  All the pink and orange paper I used came from this awesome vintage wrapping paper.

Brownie recipe courtesy of Joy the Bakker

All us lovely ladies in Fells Point, Baltimore.

It was a fun night!

Claire's Shower

My sister is getting married in september, and we just threw her a bridal shower! ...perfect opportunity for some serious craft time.   I made just about all the decorations from some vintage wedding wrapping paper ordered from etsy.

invites and recipe cards

pinwheels, triangle vintage wrapping paper bunting, flowers and bright orange furniture.

"B" (for Behm) & heart cookies on our nana's vintage serving tray

 book page flowers, pinwheel and photos

name tags

claire's name tag