I’m so excited to finally share with you the invitations we designed, letterpress printed + mailed out for our daughter’s first birthday party! After a bit of brainstorming, Kacey and I decided to make Em’s party a celebration of her firsts. The first time she giggled. Her first word. The first time she sat up. First time she crawled. Her first food. First steps.
I wanted her invitation to be interesting plus a little keepsake for each recipient. So, I designed multiple parts. The largest card is a certificate. The smaller pink card is her party invitation. We included a picture of the birthday girl, put it inside a glassine envelope and bound all the parts together with pretty metallic + cotton twine.
Below is a closeup of the certificate. This was a three color print job. A dark pink, a light pink and gold for the text. It was stamped, well letterpress printed really, with “First Year Certified.” Lots of her milestones and the dates for each were listed.
I turned Em’s first foot + hand prints into graphics so that we could letterpress print them in a pale pink ink on each card. Fun fact? They are printed in the actual size of her first foot + hand prints.
Each envelope was adorned with pretty pink and cream vintage stamps + an envelope wrap. Since we only needed to print a small number of invitations, we letterpress printed each envelope wrap with our return address plus the address of the recipient.
A closeup of the parts all grouped together inside the envelope.
I love how her invitations turned out. They’re exactly as I pictured them in my head. And, I love the idea of the certificate so much that I’m going to be designing + letterpress printing similar first year certificates to sell in our little shop soon!
Wow – they’re gorgeous! I love the little certificate – too cute!
Absolutely stunning!
these invitations are absolutely lovely
These are the cutest thing ever!! I absolutely love them!
as I said before, these are breathtaking! What a treasure to have for sweet Emily!
As i’ve said before (twitter) I love these. they are amazing and such a great keepsake for Emily. I think they will be a hit in your shop!
These are absolutely adorable.
What a great job you did!
These are AMAZING!!! Great job!
I just wanted to let you know that I love your blog and your work. It’s really elegant and beautiful and I enjoy coming here just to look at it and swoon. My son will be 1 at the end of this month and your invite is great inspiration. Thanks for sharing!
[...] concept and the wrap label on these adorable first birthday invitations from Duet Letterpress sold me, but I also love the way the entire suite is wrapped together by [...]
[...] We celebrated Em’s first birthday a few weeks ago. As you may remember, we created a theme of “a celebration of firsts” and crafted these invitations + first year certificates. [...]
Absolutely love this and what a wonderful keepsake for everyone!
Most fine,well done,beautiful,thing I’ve ever seen. Bless our baby…
This is amazing… please do make the certificate available in your shop. I’d buy it in a shot!
I looked in your etsy shop and didn’t see the invites. I would LOVE these!
Hello + thanks for your comment! Unfortunately, since these invites were custom designed, we do not offer them in our shop. However, in the near future, we hope to offer similar fill-in-the-blank style “year of firsts” certificates in our etsy shop!
do you think you would be able to do a custom set if I was able to provide the hand/foot prints in a digital form? I don’t need them until mid April, I’m just so in love with these
[...] loved the invitations we designed + printed for our little Em and wanted something similar in the style of his party. His [...]
[...] more production details, please visit Duet Letterpress. [...]
Amazing! What a lovely little bouquet of memories. Well done!
[...] one of our most requested items is available in our little shop! Similar to the certificates we created for our daughter’s first birthday, these fill-in-the-blank First Year Certificates [...]
[...] lots of thought, we decided to throw Em a pixie party! Like her first two birthday invites, I wanted to include a picture of the birthday girl and a little something fun [...]
[...] this pretty pink first birthday package by duet letterpress includes a certificate of firsts, first giggle, first word, first food, [...]
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