Canberra Handmade Market

While the blog has been extremely quiet lately, the Poppy studio has been buzzing. We're busy printing a few weddings, as well as our entire new greeting card range (OMG!) for the Canberra Handmade Market on March 28. Now, we don't normally get into the markets scene, but I've been to the last couple of Handmades now and absolutely loved what I saw. I just can't help but get Poppy involved. Plus, it gives me an excellent excuse to print some gorgeous new cards.

Normally we print just a couple of A4 sheets worth of plates at a time, but we've got a small mountain of 28 to do so far this month! And more coming! So while it's quite here for a couple more weeks, hang tight, there will be a lot to showcase very soon. Here's a sneak peek of just one of the designs.

poppy Collection feature: Field of Flowers

This sweet little design has been one of our most popular over the past year. Perfectly suited to a garden wedding, the colour can be matched to your wedding colour scheme.

If a one colour design isn't for you, Field of Flowers can easily become a two colour design. For example, this is Ruby and Silver:

Poppy Collection feature: Pinstripe

This design is actually inspired by Adrian's business shirts. I love pinstripes - they have a real class about them, be it on a shirt, wallpaper, website background or printed materials. I don't know what it is that does it!

As this design is a little more formal, it works best in darker colours and as a one colour design. Which makes Pinstripe one of the most affordable designs in the Poppy Collection.

Poppy Collection feature: Lovebirds

Because letterpress printing is so tactile, wedding invitations don't need to be complex. With this in mind, we created the Lovebirds design. Sweet and simple, it lets the printing do all the talking.

Isn't it beautiful how birds pair off?

Poppy Collection feature: Leaf Drops

Leaves always make a beautiful image. And they're perfect if you have a colour theme, but are unsure about using a specific pattern or graphic in your stationery.

The inspiration for this stationery suite came from all the gorgeous filigree jewellery that I've seen in stores recently. The design works well in a lot of colour combinations, making it quite versatile. Personally, it's one of my favourites. Visit our website to see the full suite.

Poppy Collection feature: Autumn Leaves

I'm a big plant lover, so a lot of our designs use branches, leaves, flowers and nature. This design is no exception. These leaves actually come from a tree in another of our designs, but I loved them so much I had to create a design just for them. Originally designed for an Autumn wedding, the colours can be modified to suit any season.

Steel, silver and royal blue for a winter wedding:

Or watermelon, sunset and apple for a summer wedding, which is my personal favourite:

2009 Christmas Card

I forgot to show you all our 2009 family Christmas Card. I must have been far too busy sending them all out. I'm sure this year I'll be far more organised and send them out at the start of December!

Poppy Collection feature: Maidenhair

I have a maiden hair fern that sits next to my bathroom sink, so I look at it while brushing my teeth and getting ready for the day (which, with a baby, can be mid-afternoon some days). I've always loved maiden hair ferns, but I have a real black thumb when it comes to plants, so I've also killed a few in my time as well. In November last year I decided it was time to use the fern in a new design. Mainly because I figured I'd unwillingly kill the plant soon so I should make the most of it.

So I took some photos and got to work.

Then created the illustration.


The final design is actually one of my very favourites. It's feminine without being too frilly, and would be perfect for a mild spring or summer wedding. These ferns look so fresh, and I think that lends well to the design.

I'm not sure why, but the fern has taken off. It's now far too big to sit next to my bathroom sink, and I actually have to move it if I want to wash my hands. I think it just likes being the centre of attention.

Claire & Adam

Last year we worked with Claire and Adam on their engagement invitations. Today we finished printing their one-colour wedding invitations, accommodation cards and rsvp slips which we recently designed.

The calligraphy was done here at Poppy. Not something we normally do, but these guys are good friends of ours :)

And we're live!

Our brand new website is finally online. There's still a lot more work to do on it though, but once it's all up and running, it will have a few swanky new features.

The most exciting of these will be an instant quote feature. This will allow visitors to the site to have a look through our designs and services, decide what they'd like, and find the pricing for it immediately. However, it's the most code-heavy part of the site, so Adrian's going to be working his magic with it over the next couple of weeks, so you'll have to stay tuned for it's arrival.

Last night we uploaded the first 4 of 36 new designs as part of our new Poppy Collection. Until now, we have only offered custom design and printing, but have had many many requests for a template collection to choose from. The Poppy Collection is ideal for couples who:

- would rather not spend time working with a designer to develop a custom design

- would like to receive their final product sooner, and

- are working to a tighter budget, but would still love to have the luxury of letterpress.

So you will be able to choose your design, choose the items you require, choose colours to match your wedding, so that we can contact you to get started straight away. It couldn't be easier!

Every day or two we will be uploading a new design to the Poppy Collection. We'll be featuring each design on the blog, so you'll be able to hear all about them right here.

We also have sections on the website for custom design - which we'll still be offering as before - and information on how to supply your own design for printing. These will hopefully be live by the end of the weekend.

Also yet to come are a stack of photos. They'll be online in the next few days too.

Phew! Busy busy!

So even though there are still a lot more goodies to pop up on the site, we'd love to get your feedback on how it looks so far. And let us know if you think the text is too small. I, for one, like it, but we've had a bit of a debate here and I think I'm losing ;)

Emerging tomorrow

The pressure's really on now to have the website ready to go live tomorrow. It may be at 11.59pm tomorrow, but it will be tomorrow! I must say that I'm stupidly excited to have a new site. We've really needed it for quite some time now, and it's far more dynamic than the last one. You'll probably all look at it and ask, "What was all the fuss about?" :)

One thing that I'm looking forward to is updating it daily for the first few weeks. You'll see what I mean tomorrow...

Sprouting...

tease, tease

Isn't it always the way? You plan and plan, only to realise that your little dream of a new website is, in reality, a huge undertaking that requires far more time than you originally anticipated.

But fear not my friends, the new website is coming. In 3 days to be precise. So while Adrian and I are being busy little bees, here's a little teaser.

Countdown: One week to go!

Greetings from rainy Brisbane! We're up here for holidays for a week, but of course, we've brought work with us (can't help ourselves). Still busily working on the new website (squee! So excited!), and new designs. Just down to the fiddly end of things now really. We're hoping to have everything working on the website by the end of the week, but there may be a couple of little things that need tweaking, as with any new thing.

Until then, have a fantastic New Year and I'll see you in 2010 for the relaunch of Poppy Letterpress!

Christmas Cards

Today in the studio we're printing the family Christmas cards. Just a cute, simple design to send to all our family and friends. Maybe next year we'll run a set of cards to sell, but for this year, it's a family affair.

These are the plates for the first colour.

Baby Dolton

I've just had the absolute pleasure of working with Victoria and James to design and print a set of baby announcement cards and note cards for their second baby. Until now, I wasn't really considering printing announcement cards for our own little arrival (due in 10 weeks), but now I'm convinced I will.

This design incorporates the Palm Cockatoo illustration I produced a couple of weeks ago, scaled right down. I was excited to see it prints beautifully at this size. I'll definitely be illustrating a lot more for our work in the future.

These cards were designed to match the first set of cards that Victoria and James had printed in the US by Sesame Letterpress for the arrival of their first baby. Make sure you check out Sesame Letterpress's beautiful work on their website.

We love illustrations!

Here at Poppy we think that there's nothing more special than having your stationery custom designed and printed just for your big event. Well, perhaps the only thing that could top that is to have a custom illustration as part of your design.

I've been illustrating and painting my entire life, and I'm just so happy now to have a job that lets me do it every day! And I've been watching Eessu's talent for art develop for the past 14 or so years (her drawing skills are far better than mine!), and you can bet that I'll be encouraging her to use these skills at Poppy Letterpress.



We've been working on designs for some baby announcement cards for an expectant couple, and have had the pleasure of developing a couple of illustrations for them to consider using on the cards. We started with a galah, but he didn't quite fit right, so we then spent some time on a Palm Cockatoo. I just love him, he looks so cheeky.

The original illustration is quite large and detailed and too good to just use only once, so we've decided to produce a short edition of prints. I'll be framing the first one off the press to put in our new baby's room. More details to come.

Lara & Adrian

Click on images to enlarge and see in better resolution

This is a print proof of Lara's rsvp card. I've made it a bit of a policy now to send proofs so clients know exactly what to expect. It can be a lot of extra time and hassle for me, but worth it in the end.

I'm thoroughly enjoying this wedding set. The pattern I took from the moorish screens in the restaurant where Lara and Adrian will be having their reception. I'd just love to see the guests arrive and make the connection on the night.

I have quite a few items to print for this set, so stay tuned, as I'll be working on them in the next few days.

Talia & Grant

Click on images to enlarge and see in better resolution

We actually printed this set a couple of weeks ago but it's taken me a while to get the camera out. This design was supplied by the client, and it was great to work with. Clean lines, crisp black ink, and the press was doing a great job of behaving itself for once.

Talia's set also included rsvp envelopes with return address printed.