Spring is in full swing and we’re celebrating by offering our best promotion ever!

For the first time, we are offering 30 free wedding invitation sets with every order of 100 or more!

Order 100 or more letterpress and/or foil stamped wedding elements
(save the dates, invitations, response cards, note cards, menus, etc.) and receive 30 free!

Offer valid through May 31, 2012

   Contact your local Dauphine Press retailer for promotion code and additional details.

We are constantly pulling inspiration from fashion and interior design magazines, blogs and the world around us and we love nothing more than to daydream about how to translate a specific style into a beautifully printed piece of stationery.

The subject of today’s post is a fresh and pretty ad for the Louis Vuitton Spring 2012 collection. This delicious image incorporates soft pastels and sweet details that inspired our designers to explore our design library and pull swatches and elements that would recreate this look in a sweet stationery wardrobe. They’re sharing their findings with you here. Enjoy!

Image Credits: Creative Art Director: Marc Jacobs / Photography: Steven Meisel

This quote from the company says it all: “The spirit of our Spring/Summer 2012 collection is reflected beautifully in this new ad campaign,” says Louis Vuitton Artistic Director Marc Jacobs. “All the tone and texture of the collection – the lightness, the prettiness, the broderie anglaise, the millefueille layers of organza – are recreated in these wonderful images by Steven Meisel. It is all very soft and very sweet, yet at the same time very bold and very graphic.”

Can’t get enough of the Louis Vuitton Spring 2012 collection? Check out a video about the collection and ad campaign and view the collection on the runway.

Have your own inspiration pulled but not sure how to make it come to life? Feel free to contact us or leave a comment below for designer input on how to best achieve your look! Looking for more inspiration from the Dauphine Press design team? Follow us on Pinterest to see what’s inspiring us.

See our previous “Get the Look” post here.

Not wanting a typical pink baby announcement (or nursery, or 1st Birthday party!), Kendra chose our buttercup ink along with a custom coral color (which is coming soon to our official color palette, called papaya) to transform the save the date in to a sweet baby announcement. Printed on our natural white letterpress stock and paired with a black and white photograph of Chelsea, this customization was complete!

Just over a  year ago my husband and I welcomed a little girl into this world and our family. Chelsea Grace is now a year old and we recently celebrated with a little lunch at home with family. Pulling the details together was tons of fun — especially with the help of the Dauphine Press design team.

First, I must explain that everything in Chelsea’s world that involves color has been all about one specific palette since before she was born. I was actually inspired by an early proof our our Marinwood trifold save the date. The final design is shown in our Custom Wedding Portfolio II album in our Sunshine and Charcoal letterpress inks, but one of the earlier versions was in a lighter, softer palette. I was about 7 months pregnant at the time and knew we were expecting a girl. I didn’t share this with anyone until after Chelsea was born, but I had my eyes on that version of Marinwood for the perfect baby announcement from the second I saw it.

That same inspiration found its way into her nursery as well. Falling in love with two double faced ribbon swatches here at the office in Bisque and French Vanilla and pairing that with a brighter buttercup yellow and deeper coral, the color palete of Chelsea’s first year was set in stone.

Of course we needed to finish out the year by also using that same color palette for her first birthday party.

My first attempt at a (rustic looking!) layer cake, surrounded by a few homemade organic cupcakes that I topped with flags leftover from the baby shower the girls at the office here threw me last year. Of course they were on board with the color palette from the start! The sugar cookies were made by Chelsea’s super creative Auntie (my sister).

Using fabric remnants from Chelsea’s nursery I created a flag bunting and the Dauphine Press design team created the greeting for me to finish it off.

A close-up of the bunting showing my favorite fabric and one of the letters using our Perla font and secured with a tiny clothes pin.

Just a few more details of Chelsea’s little outfit with a maize bow added, her perfectly precious shoes and a homemade party hat.

 Here’s that sweet dress (and our sweet girl) in action on her special day.

Thanks so much for letting me share. It’s such a wonderful gift to be surrounded by the beauty that is Dauphine Press every single day and I feel so lucky that it spills over in to the rest of my life. Or maybe it’s the otherway around, but either way, I feel especially lucky!

Next up, we will share with you Chelsea’s birth announcement and you can see how simple it was to turn one of our wedding designs into the perfect announcement with just a few customizations.

The change in the color palette to leaf and garden green immediately speaks to the couple’s Irish heritage, but the fine details are what make this save the date truly personal. The pattern on the first panel of this trifold save the date was updated with a Celtic knot in place of the olive green button detail in the original. Perfectly placed motifs like the shamrock on the first and second panels as well as the satin gold foil claddagh on the second panel and the row of Celtic knots on the last panel make this piece sweetly unique. Antoinette, Katy and Colin really took the ability to customize to the next level! Take a peek at the gorgeous results!

Aren’t their customizations just the perfect touch?! We’re working on their invitation suite right now too — it’s right in line with this classically beautiful and personal piece. We will be sure to share it with you once they’re printed and mailed!

Working with Enjoy Events Co. and Nicole Hill Gerulat again on this vignette resulted in another beautiful collection of photographs. Photographs that we loved so much we chose one of the shots for our ad in the Martha Stewart Weddings Spring issue for all to enjoy!

Together we went back to that “gold-edged china” inspiration and built a beautiful tablescape with Larkspur as the centerpiece. Enjoy Events Co. found each and every detail – from the collection of mismatched gold-edge and seafoam china to the gold rimmed seafoam stemware, gold silverware and coordinating florals. Those florals! Such a perfect touch! It’s a tiny detail, but we love the way the interworkings of the tiny pom mirrors the olive green button detail in the Larkspur pattern! Thanks Nicole for capturing that detail!

The same amazing team was behind the scenes for this vignette (see the other vignettes here).

 1. Nicole Gerulat Hill | 2. Mallory Ullmann | 3. Megan & Emily of Enjoy Events Co. | 4. Georgia Deaver  | 5. Amanda of One True Love Vintage | 6. Dauphine Press

As one of our most popular designs, Larkspur has seen many amazing customizations. For example, the ladies over at Always A Bridesmaid shared a few of the examples their clients have created recently. We also have another gorgeous version heading your way later this week — just in time for the St. Patrick’s Day holiday this weekend!

With this recent press we thought it was time to share with you the Sneak Peek into the process of creating this design. As described on our website, our designers combined a uniquely stylish monogram and a bold pattern in our delightfully fresh Broadmoor suite. The foil stamped pattern, chosen for its likeness to a Moroccan gate, lends an exotic and festive elegance. When paired with lighthearted typography and bright colors, this architecturally inspired suite exemplifies modern luxury.

From the start, Broadmoor was designed with foil in mind, but our talented design team has done it again and created a suite that would be amazing printed in foil and letterpress in just about any color pallette as well as all letterpress or all foil. Can you imagine!? The options are endless!

Inspiration Board Credits: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 / 12 / 13 

Click here to see the full Pinterest board!

Holidays and gift giving are tons of fun when you work with a creative group. This past Valentine’s Day was no exception and was full of charming designer details. Heather handmade valentine bags filled with sweet treats (and displaying one of our favorite puns - suite!) /1/ while Matt’s gift included a little card /2/ that celebrates the love between Mr. & Mrs. Eaves (two of our favorite fonts). Maybe it’s just February, but pink seems to be everywhere we look lately. This image of pink blossoms /3/ was taken in downtown Petaluma and Pinky’s Pizza /4/ is just down the street. How can you not have a little love for that vintage typography? 

Our press room in New York continued turning out amazing print work this week. We can’t get enough of this image showing the plate for a custom Carneros mixed with Cloverdale-inspired save the date being inked /5/. Isn’t the vibrant fuchsia color on the rollers /6/ to die for?!  Always delighted to see the art of letterpress in action, we also adore the side-by-side shots of our Bloom suite – on press and finished invitation ready to send to the couple! /7-8/

We are enjoying early spring weather here in Northern California. We hope that your weekend is sunny too – whether these images brighten your winter weather or if you too are enjoying early spring with us!

We are constantly pulling inspiration from fashion and interior design magazines, blogs and the world around us and we love nothing more than to daydream about how to translate a specific style into a beautifully printed piece of stationery.

We are currently swooning over this shoot from InStyle (March 2012) and love how Rose Byrne manages to look sultry and festive all at once. The soft yet playful colors and sparkling details would make a perfect wedding invitation! Click here for more from this gorgeous shoot.

Image Credits: InStyle Magazine, March 2012 / Photographed by Giampolo Sgura / Styled by Heathermary Jackson

Have your own inspiration pulled but not sure how to make it come to life? Feel free to contact us or leave a comment below for designer input on how to best achieve your look! Looking for more inspiration from the Dauphine Press design team? Follow us on Pinterest to see what’s inspiring us.

Located in the posh Ginza neighborhood of Tokyo, Ito-Ya is an amazing nine-floor stationery mecca. We are very proud to be one of the few custom letterpress wedding lines they carry!

Here are a few photos Katrina captured during her visit:

Clockwise from top: /1/ View from outside, their signature giant paperclip  /2/ The Matsuya Ginza mall  /3/ View of the bustling first floor (it was this packed everywhere!) /4/ The nine floors! /5/ View of the neighborhood from the first floor /6/ Ito-ya carries our cards through Madison Park Greetings!

Most of the orders we work on together include art provided by Ito-Ya of the invitation wording, which our team pairs with elements from our Design Library. The result is always gorgeously striking and we love seeing our designs along with the intricate Japanese scripts on the letterpress printed cards.

There are so many more photos to share than we have room for in this post, but we thought we would send you off with a few of Katrina’s favorites from her travels about the city.

Sensō-ji -  an ancient Buddhist temple located in Asakusa, Taitō, Tokyo.

Design inspiration: Beautiful engraving on the Japanese Yen

Walking through Asakusa 

Mural  in Ueno

Walking through Ueno district, the smaller neighborhood she stayed in. She loved the laid back and peaceful attitude of this place and can’t wait to go back to visit.

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On that note, we hope your weekend is filled with fun travels and lots of inspiration!