Stationery bundle giveaway

I did mention on twitter a couple of weeks ago that I'd had a bit of a sort out of my paper drawers and discovered a few bits and bobs that I'd like to give away to one of my blog readers. I occasionally try out different papers or experiment with different ink colours so have a few one (or two) offs. Still perfect, just not exactly the same as the items listed in my shops. In fact some of the items aren't listed at all, for example the ditsy flower thank you cards in mustard are a new design that I'll be adding to my wedding stationery collection very soon.

If you'd like to be in with a chance to receive this little bundle of goodies all you need to do is be a follower (new followers are more than welcome!) of my blog and leave a comment below just so I know you'd like to be entered. You've got until noon, Friday 9th March 2012 to enter and I will announce the winner on my blog in the afternoon on the 9th.

Here's a little run down of everything up for grabs:

2 x Poppy field birthday cards
2 x Butterfly birthday cards (1 brown, 1 blue)
1 x Pack of 4 stems notecards
1 x Pack of 2 ditsy flower thank you cards
1 x Pack of 4 mini spotty thank you cards
1 x Pack of 6 assorted gift tags (3 manilla, 3 white)

Good luck!

Colour inspiration {palette no. 15}

Real Weddings {Tara & Tim}

Burgundy butterflies printed onto ivory textured card stock.

Just my type {Cooper Black}

Image source

Not sure that many designers would come out of the closet and admit to being a fan of Cooper Black, and don't get me wrong it's not in my top ten favourite fonts and quite possibly not in my top 20 but anyway, I definitely have a soft spot for it. With its rounded serifs and its simple, curvy style, to me it looks like it was designed in the 60s, when in fact it was designed in the early 1920s by Oswald Bruce Cooper. The font was made popular by its appearance on the cover of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album in 1966 and then it was used everywhere! You only need to google 'cooper black' to see it was on album covers, shop facias, magazines (some particularly dodgy ones), newspaper headlines, posters etc. 

Image sources: Iceland van, Easy Jet Planes, Garfield book, The Black Keys Album, The Beach Boys Album, Doors Album

Cooper Black has quite a colourful history and a book has been published showing many of the ways it has been used by designers over the years. To find out even more about this font take a look at this short film.

Image source 

I've spotted Cooper Black put to good use a couple of times this week, firstly in the White Stuff Spring catalogue and on the packaging of Spicentice.

Image source

Both these examples prove that when used in the right way and coupled with the right fonts, this bold, dated and friendly font can be beautiful. And whats good enough for White Stuff and all that!

Real weddings {Huma & Richard}

I Love the colours Huma and Richard picked for their wedding stationery. Burnt orange for the wedding invitations teamed with raspberry pink for the Mehndi invites, both printed on Ivory textured card in my Sprig design.

Just my type {infographics}

This the first in a series of posts exploring my growing obsession with fonts and typography. Font selection and good typesetting is so important for invitations I design, and therefore I've become aware of it all around me from the fonts used on shop fronts to the typesetting in my children's story books. So in a quest to perfect my own typography skills I'm going to share any typographic inspiration and font discoveries here on my blog.

I've learnt so much already from these infographics that I've found via Pinterest (my other obsession!). Click on the link above each graphic for the image source.

Periodic table

Type guide

34 typographic sins

50 most popular typefaces in the world