Thank you cards

So last year I made all those mini Smock Alley models, well they were actually wedding invitations. The couple, Eddie and Leisha, came to me with a fantastically open brief and from that they ended up with wedding invitations/christmas decorations for their December wedding - they got married in Smock Alley. (you can check out that blog post again here http://papermakin.blogspot.ie/2012/10/mini-smock-alleys.html)

In the new year Eddie and Leisha got back in touch with me, this time with the mission of creating Thank You cards for the wedding. The first time around one of my ideas had been to to a tri-fold card featuring them and their dog. The mini models seemed much more special for the actual invites, but the thank yous seemed like a great time to work out the tri-fold.

In the card you can see the two of them cycling (on their much-loved bikes) trailing their Thank You message with them.

This was a great chance to push the technique used in the Santa's Visit and Woodlands cards another step further. Because this was a limited run I was able to put a lot more fine detail into the card - like the frame of the bikes. Normally I have to bulk things up just to make sure we don't have too much waste and too much finishing to do on big production runs.

These kind of personalised jobs are so rewarding to do, and having clients come to you and trust you to make something so important is always a real honour.

Cloud Picker business cards

There is a brand-new coffee roastery in Dublin - Cloud Picker Coffee are up and running in the Docklands. To mark their launch they wanted some special business cards - as I've said before, laser-cut cards don't come cheap but they do give impact. When a new company wants to make a mark, a memorable card can go down very well.

For these cards the Cloud Picker team chose engraved greyboard. Laser-engraved greyboard always look fab, you have this intersection of a utilitarian and oft-overlooked paper product with cutting edge lasering creating an unexpectedly luxe product.

This project was also a great example of using the laser to facilitate the design process. Frank was able to work through a few different style options and get real, physical samples made for very little effort before committing to the final design.

If you want to find out more about Cloud Picker you can find them on twitter @CloudPickerCoff and taste the coffee in the Science Gallery Café.

Paper art retail props

First things first, my apologies for the long wait for a new post around here. The first few month of 2013 have been going really well for us here in Snow HQ, which is brilliant, but leave little time for the fun things that make it into blog posts.

This little project has been really fun. I wanted to make some retail props for the letter rack and pencil pot from The Woodlands range. I could have just used real envelopes and pencils, but where's the creativity in that?

First I worked on a few paper pencils. These are made up of a piece of 4mm ply in the shape of the pencil and then thin strips of paper hand-glued to the ply in various colours. I'm pretty happy with how they worked out. I just used some scrap paper from around the studio, I think more could be done creating the illustion of 3D object with better tonal choices. Next time I get an afternoon to myself I hope to experiment a bit more with this technique.

The envelopes are very simple pieces of .6mm brown card with branded snail-mail stamps. A very quick piece but hopefully effective. They are also quite sturdy which will really give them an edge over real envelopes when used as retail props.

These pieces are going straight to the Design Corner shop in Dun Laoghaire this afternoon. The Woodlands range has made its debut in the shop and the response has been really great.

To see the full woodlands range you can check them out on our online store here (scroll to the end of the page)

http://www.snoweventdesign.com/store

To find out more about the Design Corner in Dun Laoghaire you can check out their Facebook page here

https://www.facebook.com/thedesigncorner