Birth Announcement: Tess Augusta

I told myself I would do Tess' announcement immediately after her birth, but once again, I was busy doing other things. Seems we usually get them out about three months later. I guess Scarlett's was a bit quicker than that since hers went out with our Christmas card, but not by much. Anyway, I lean towards the formal and traditional when it comes to big life events such as a marriage or a birth so I like formal announcements. Ideally mailed in their own envelopes. But this year I am sending out this announcement with our Christmas card (again). the timing is just too close to not save a stamp and envelope (a tree or two?) and some time! It's not without a little bit of misgiving.

I love the announcement. I have a real thing for letterpress that began when I took a BookArts course in college and was lucky enough to use movable type and presses to make my own books. I'm hoping I get to do that again sometime. Audrey's and Scarlett's announcements were letterpress too and with any luck I'll use it again for their wedding invitations, but probably not so much in between as it's a bit of a splurge.

I love the fonts used on this, especially the script with all the ligatures for her name. And I love the illustration of fruits and flowers. I wanted something that felt like the warm abundance of August...  And I also LOVE the ink color (PMS 1788U). I think it is just perfect! I wanted something pink-orange-red, a good coral, on an off-white paper. Just keeping with the color palette used on her blanket and sweater and such.

We decided to pair this with one of the photos we took of Tess on her blessing day. It looks appropriately old fashioned to me and I think the creamy whites and peachy skin tones work well with the announcement colors.

I used A Printable Press (which has a pretty cool business model) to do the design work and Mercurio Brothers Printing for the printing, and despite the virtual (email/PDF/etc.) nature of the whole process for something so tactile,  it went really well (please ignore my intentional smudging in the photo)! And I'm going to mail them out in time for Christmas after all. Just barely.