Earlier this summer we were thrilled and excited to hear from American calligrapher Sarah Hanna – she was coming to Ireland and wanted to meet us! We had worked with Sarah on some of our couture invitations and so were thrilled to finally get to meet in person. We decided to take a break from the studio and hook up at the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin.

It was fantastic to chat with Sarah and talk calligraphy and invitation design over yummy food! It was also a great excuse for us to do the Guinness Storehouse tour…

..and try our first pints of Guinness believe it or not, although Sarah and her boyfriend Adam were admittedly much better at finishing theirs!

So now we can’t wait to visit Sarah in Florida.. hint, hint, and see the sites there!!!!!

Take a sneak peek at some of Sarah Hanna‘s amazing work below.. beautiful

So we finally made it over to our friends in Smock in New York over the summer and had a great time – the perfect mix of business and pleasure!!! Boy, was it hot over there… a change to the summer we’ve been having in Ireland, however it did rain for 5 minutes – just as we had decided to pan out in Central Park! We started our visit by doing some site seeing in good old NYC before heading upstate!!! We went on a boat trip around the city, visited the Statue of Liberty and paid a trip to Broadway!! We may have popped into one or two shops as well…

New York Boat Trip, Central Park, Broadway

Next, we took a bus to Syracuse, upstate New York, – the home of the amazing crew at Smock!!! We went for lunch at an amazing biker bar with Nathan and Tiffany, where we had a gorgeous New York sized sized lunch and then the fun part… meeting all the letterpress printers and crew.

Oh how we loved the rows and rows of boxes – so pretty and colourful…

The art of letterpress printing

We then had a tour of the place and had our own letterpress printing demonstration with the friendly printers. We fell in love with the gorgeous antique printing machines and the care and attention that goes into every invitation suite they print. There are rows and rows of beautiful presses each manned by a separate printer. See them printing some coasters for us below…

Ailbhe had a hard time choosing her favourite ink colour…

Rows and rows of ink colours...

After a busy time in Syracuse there was no option but to hit the town and load up on some food and wine! And then to polish it all off we hit the beach at Long Island to rest ourselves before the journey home

Long Island

Here at Pretty as a Picture we are very excited about our new studio!!! After endless trips to IKEA and backbreaking work laying our floor (ok, so maybe we didn’t quite do this ourselves… thanks boys!!!) we are proud to announce that the Pretty as a Picture Studio is now open!!!!

We offer free consultations, so if you would like to see our beautiful letterpress invitations in the flesh or have a chat with our illustrators about your custom artwork feel free to contact us to make an appointment.