Lots of work!

Hi all!

My etsy store has been steadily growing over the last few months, and I've finally finished and posted all the matching thank you cards and programs/menus/table numbers/name cards for each of my wedding invitation designs! 11 complete sets of printable wedding paper paraphernalia are now yours for the browsing.

I'm excited to go back to the drawing board and start some new designs and maybe expand past weddings to other stationary. We'll see what the summer brings!

Check out emruth.com for the whole shebang, here are just a few of my favorites!

A&T full set here

D&M full set here

M&A full set here

S&W full set here

I&L full set here

E&L full set here

R&C full set here

O&L full set here

L&R full set here

New Invite: Flourishes

The latest invite at emruth.com!

The I&L invite takes its inspiration from a book of borders, frames and decorative motifs from 1862. I love taking elements from designs of hundreds of years ago and updating them to a more clean and modern look. The perfection and delicacy of design from the 19th century is amazing (see the last photo) - especially when you think about the technology that was available to those designers. So gorgeous! 

For the photoshoot, I added a paper band of wedding wrapping paper from the 1950's, a lovely piece of lace, and 'pool' blue paper from Paper Source. The envelope is Paper Source's 'cement' and the invite is printed on French Paper's Construction Grout Gray.

www.etsy.com/listing/121000972

One of the reference pages.

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

A Garden Wedding

Jon and Christine's wedding took place at the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago's semi secret botanical paradise. They were a really fun couple to work with, we had a lot of back forth with great suggestions from both sides. We collaborated on something that neither one of us would have come up with on our own, and ended up with beautiful invitations that everyone is super happy with!

Invite detail - hand drawn type

Invite

RSVP (super pretty Luxe Cream paper from PaperSource)

Lovely!
Expect to see these flowers again. And the vines - in a different project.

A Farm Wedding

This was for a wedding at farm that housed (among other things) a kookaburra and a bobcat. They got a little shout out on the rsvp, because who else gets to claim that? I was super excited when the bride and groom asked me to design these, they were very open to ideas and we have similar styles so I got to go a little crazy and design a wedding invitation suite entirely with hand drawn custom type. LOVE.

How awesome are those vintage stamps??
 I can't take credit for that one, but i have the guy's name if you're interested!

Cannot get over this lovely combination of color and texture!

calendar card/rsvp info

invitation

dessert rsvp

type detail

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.