Cosmetic Cupcake

If you follow me on Twitter then you'll have seen my twitpics last week of my ABSOLUTELY beautiful/stunning/adorable business cards created by the awesome team at The Distillery. I was as excited as a kid on Christmas Eve when I went to pick up my cards!! I'm sure you'll understand why after I show you pics ;)


I had been toying with the idea of getting blog business cards made up for a long time and the upcoming Australian Beauty Bloggers Weekend 2011 (ABBW aka the most hotly anticipated weekend packed with beauty EVER!) finally got me into action. I wanted something different for my cards and D sent me links to cards done using letterpress printing. WELL! After seeing pictures of cards made this way I feel in love and set about sourcing myself a place to custom design my cards. I got quotes from a couple of places online - some didn't reply while some were far too expensive at a crazy starting price of $1000 and I didn't really want to go with Etsy. I decided to go with the Aussie team at the The Distillery.


The Distillery are based in North Sydney and are a small team that design and produce letterpress printed products. They specialise in custom design letterpress wedding invitations, business cards and also provide commercial letterpress products to industries around the country. The Distillery are passionate about design and letterpress and it definitely showed in my experience with them. Their products are simply stunning.

Stationary letterpress printed on display at the studio

Right from the start I was super impressed with the team at The Distillery. My emails were answered promptly, the team are very friendly and extremely helpful - things that are super important to me. Designer Christine helped me throughout the whole process and she was just fantastic!! She is so lovely and was so patient when I bombarded her with a million and one silly questions!

I decided to go ahead with The Distillery after checking out their prices. For letterpress printing, the prices are obviously higher than your average stationary because you pay for the craftsmanship, design and attention to detail. There's no question that you pay for quality and in my opinion worth every single penny! Prices for business cards start at $1.60 for a small order of 150 cards to 35cents for larger orders. There are three types of luxury paper stocks to choose from and I decided to go with off-white coaster board for 500 cards using 2 colours (brown and pink obviously as those are my blog "colours"!!).

A business card designed by The Distillery
I utilised their design services for an extra fee and I let Christine know exactly what sort of design I wanted for my card; the details and provided her with a high-res image of my logo. D absolutely insisted I include a QR code which luckily could be accommodated! I also requested rounded corners for another additional fee. I took advantage of their "2-up" offer which means you can get 2 designs printed for the price of 1! Woot! Christine came up with some designs for me and I did not need many changes, just a tweak here and there before I was utterly happy with my intended card. I double and triple checked that my design was what I wanted and that it was spelled correctly and then paid a 50% deposit which was the go ahead to start printing my card!!!

A card designed by The Distillery
So, what IS letterpress? From Wikipedia, letterpress printing is "relief printing of text and image using a press with a "type-high bed" printing press and movable type, in which a reversed, raised surface is inked and then pressed into a sheet of paper to obtain a positive right-reading image." Letterpress is described by The Distillery as a labour of love - it requires tender loving care! Each piece of letterpress stationary is handfed into the press, they create their own printing plates and the ink colours must be carefully mixed and then set manually.

Below are the polymer plates of my digital design created by Christine - I required two plates as I used two colours.


I believe there are three different types of letterpress printing and at The Distillery they use platen letterpress printing. The machine is called the Heidelberg "Windmill".


Unfortunately the machine wasn't setup to print on the day I visited so I couldn't see it in all it's inky glory doh!

Adam with the Heidelberg "Windmill" platen press
My cards took about 10 working days to print and I opted to pick them up from the studio directly to not only save on postage but also to see the studio ;) My cards were wrapped carefully in brown paper and tied up with string ready for me to cart home!


500 beautiful Cosmetic Cupcake business cards all in neat boxes!!!!!




I am head over heels in ♥ with my cards - they are absolutely "me" and reflect my blog so unbelievably well. They are unique and OMG have I told you how much I love them??! I could not be happier with my business cards and also my experience with the team. I am like a proud parent when I give my card out haha! If you're pondering whether or not to get business cards - in particular girls attending ABBW - I highly recommend checking out letterpress business cards from The Distillery.


Besides raving about my beautiful cards today, I have a special offer for you ladies!! The Distillery team have very generously offered an exclusive 10% discount for Cosmetic Cupcake readers for having business cards made with them for the month of September!! How awesome is that! Just let them know that you're a Cosmetic Cupcake reader and that Michelle sent you ;)

A MASSIVE thank you to the team at The Distillery for my beautiful cards and for having me at the studio. You can find them at Studio 1, 247 Pacific Hwy, North Sydney NSW 2060, alternatively you can phone them on 02 8021 1286. You can check out their site here for more details.

What do you think? Thanks for looking! =)

Disclosure:
I have no affilation with The Distillery nor was I compensated to write about my experience. When I come across a service/product I genuinely love I am most definitely going to share with you all! I received the same 10% discount on my cards as is offered to my readers.