One of my best wedding finds throughout the entire process was Stephanie to do the calligraphy for…read moreour invitations, the place cards and a few other fun decor items. In a sea of craziness, Stephanie was the sweet, kind calm calligrapher who gave me exactly what we wanted with her modern and contemporary style. I truly lucked out with this Yelp find. She was amazing. But that wasn't all. She went above and beyond. A couple weeks before our wedding, we lost one of our labradors suddenly. Obviously our labs were important to us and Stephanie knew that since we had about 200 black and chocolate colored mini lab place cards that would be set up with a dog house and other related items. Each of our labs was also going to get their own card and be positioned near the dog house just for fun. Well, Stephanie took it upon herself to create lil gold wings for the lab we lost and did the same for another lab we lost earlier. Both were set up on a mini rainbow bridge. Fab calligraphy aside...she won me over with this act of kindness. xo

Stephanie was incredible for so many reasons! First, she was able to match our invitation fonts…read morePERFECTLY! Second, she was quick, reliable and amazingly priced! We gave her 55 invites to do, which included not only the inner and outer envelopes, but personalized invites for each guests name. She did it all within 48 hours. We had so many comments from our guests about her calligraphy and how that touch was elegant and beautiful! Also, we had a big snafu with our vendor for the first set of invites. The vendor spelled a simple word wrong that none of caught until after Stephanie had completed the invitations. Well, not only did Stephanie not charge me for the horrific mistake on our vendors end, but when our vendor fixed the mistake, Stephanie got them back to us within 48 hours again! Because of her promptness we were able to send out invitations on time! The best part about Stephanie was how she sweet, understanding, and flexible she was! When we picked up our invitations she had a hand written thank you card and some amazing homemade bread. It was such a delightful surprise! She is incredible and I greatly encourage anyone who needs any calligrapher done to go to her! I only wish I had more things to get personalized with calligraphy! I cannot recommend her enough. She was truly amazing!

Christy is absolutely incredible! She gold-foiled initials onto wallets for my groomsmen and the…read morework turned out perfect. Exactly what I was looking for! She delivered under a very tight deadline and even went out of her way to meet me to make things easier. On top of her amazing craftsmanship, she could not be sweeter! Truly one of the nicest people I've ever met. I can't recommend her highly enough!

I was referred to Christy by my Wedding Planner: Urban Allure Events. In short - SHE IS AMAZING!…read moreHer final product, pricing and customer service are all WONDERFUL! Christy provided a seating chart mirror for us, as well as a "Hello Gorgeous" mirror for selfies. She answered questions via email quickly. Everything at our event was on time and high quality. We were thrilled! Hire her now with confidence and move to the next item on your wedding planning list. Wishing you much success and love in your happily ever after!

Stacey is a magical paper fairy. Stationery and paper goods feel like an easy thing to overlook…read morewhen wedding planning, but you have no idea what Stacey can do. Steracle's services from Save the Date envelopes to our wedding invitation to all the day-of goods made a tremendous impact on our wedding, and we had numerous guests praising the attention to detail throughout our events. A large credit for that goes to Steracle. First off, we were trying to use Minted for our Save the Dates, and when they messed up all of our envelope addressing, Steracle was able to quickly turn around custom envelopes. That remained a constant theme throughout. The team was extremely responsive, turning around many many revisions very quickly as we proofread every single comma. Second was our wedding invites. We had this crazy idea to try and create a book for the invite, similar to special editions of famous books that evoked memories of fairy tales. It was just a vague concept, but Stacey and team took that idea and ran with it, creating the invitation of a lifetime. We actually cried when we saw it, and it will be forever placed on our bookshelves as a memento. Numerous guests sent personalized praise for these invites. A quote from one of them: "This is so refreshing in the days of e-invitations. Very very beautiful and elegant design. What a GORGEOUS wedding invitation!!!!!! The invitation reminds me a lot of the fairy tales I used to read growing up. The invitation brought back the romance of weddings. Nowadays people try to save time and (especially) money by sending e-invitations and those make me sad because there is something special about receiving an actual invitation. And this one blows all invitations out of the water. It sets the stage for a royal wedding." Needless to say, the bar had been raised for the rest of the paper goods, and somehow Stacey and Steracle met them. We had four separate events, and the team crafted unique feels for each event. They took certain themes and motifs and blended them across all events while maintaining the unique identity of each of them. Stacey kept coming up with brilliant ideas that made every element feel personalized, creative, and completely unique. Our wedding menu somehow had a 3D butterfly effect, and she took our love of fantasy books and created a completely custom fantasy-inspired map for the food stations at our reception. There were so many other brilliant design choices that we can go on and on about the quality and craft that Steracle illustrated. We want to keep all of these items as mementos, and we are probably going to be using our bar menus in our home going forward. It might be easy to overlook stationery as a crucial part of wedding planning, but trust us, if you go with Steracle, you will see the impact it can have and how it can elevate your entire wedding. Plus, you'll get to work with Stacey, and that's reason enough.

We loved working with a local stationer for all of our wedding paper goods. From start to…read morefinish--Stacey, Ruby, and Dvorah helped make the design process easy and created an invitation suite we were really happy with! Our day-of paper goods were also perfect - everything had a cohesive feel to it. Everything felt bespoke with the use of their original artwork and custom monogram of our initials! Already looking for another reason to work with them!

The Flying Dolphin Studio and John- Michael were amazing. I was able to learn new techniques in…read morecalligraphy while enjoying the ambiance. The hospitality once there is also top notch. I would definitely recommend this class and location to my friends.

Initially, I was a little apprehensive to approach the studio as it seemed to be in an apartment…read morecomplex on the third floor. But John-Michael warmly welcomed all ~12 students with hot tea and coffee, quickly making my apprehensions go away. We were provided a pen and folder with information and practice sheets on the Chancery Style of writing we would learn. John-Michael was an excellent teacher who studied Calligraphy for years. He helped us understand that we should think of the Chancery Typeface in shapes, rather than single strokes (like normal hand writing). He was open to questions and showed students step-by-step how to make each letter and number. At the conclusion, we were given practice sheets to strengthen our newly found skill. I would absolutely recommend the introductory course to anyone who is seriously interested in studying Calligraphy and to those who want to enjoy a new experience! I personally had taught myself various hand-lettering scripts, so I appreciated the more formal training.

We ordered our wedding invitations from Werner printing and they turned out fantastic!…read more Early on, I knew that I wanted to design my own wedding invitations, so I researched a number of local printing companies to discuss options and techniques. I was really intrigued with gold foiling, but most companies were charging a ton for this method of printing. We met with Bob Werner and not only was he willing to work with us on the price, he also offered suggestions and provided guidance on how we could achieve the best looking product. Werner printed our invitations in a timely manner and the execution of the gold foil printing was flawless. Even the smallest details were done with the utmost precision. I will definitely be using this company for any future printing needs!

Loved working with Werner Printing. I recently used them to print party invitations that used two…read moredifferent printing processes. They were super helpful from beginning to end...and the final result is simply beautiful! Great quality. Bob and his team were super responsive, and I look forward to using them again.

If you are looking for a new custom sign, or stellar hand painted windows etc. look no further than…read morePrecision Sign Co. I am absolutely blown away by how amazing our sign looks both in daytime & at night. Ron was quick to respond, incredibly personable, knowledgeable and very generous with his time as well as the amount of work he put into making this so perfect for our store front. From the first drawing, through fabrication and eventually installation, the process was seamless, easy and flawlessly executed. He sincerely went above and beyond on this project and was such a pleasure to work with. I cannot express how much of a wonderful experience this has been and how happy we are with the work. Thank you Ron, for making our storefront look so beautiful and for helping me accomplish a life long dream, you are the absolute best!!!

We had a great experience working with Ron at Precision Signs. He cares deeply about his clients'…read morehappiness, and is absolutely precise when it comes to his own work and artistry. We would definitely use him again. 10/10

This place is absolutely awful. I tried to have programs printed by this place for my event,…read moredespite several polite attempts on my end to get some type of response, they dont respond. Specifically, three emails and a week straight of phone calls is left with no response. When I first got an estimate from this shop it seemed very reasonable. I then tried several times to get some type of response for a different quote for more prints. No response. When I finally get somebody on the phone to answer my questions, I get just frankly rude and disrespectful responses. I think they forgot who the customer was and who the merchant was. The new estimate was disproportionate and reflected clear money making schemes. Poor service, awful response times, and clear interest in ripping off customers.

Fiance and I travelled to Chicago to get our Indian fusion wedding kankotri (invitations) done at…read moreDevon Printing. I knew the exact design I wanted but needed help organizing size, shape and specifics of inserts. Safura was immensely helpful and called to inform us of progress each step of the way. Ordered at the end of July and had the invitations shipped directly to us in Atlanta, GA. A few things I would consider: 1. Get the envelopes a tad bigger, as ours had edges that were fraying after shipment due to our insert-packed invite 2. Allow for time between order and delivery, as the company did have holiday in between this time. For us, this was no problem as our wedding isn't until December of this year. 3. Show images if you want design to be unique and THEY WILL WORK HARD to make it happen. Mine turned out beautifully. Thankyou Safura and Devon Printing! -meera

I love small letterpresses. I love the creativity; the history; the art; the passion of those who…read moremake this their craft. Every once in a while I do a search online to see if there's one I should follow on Instagram, because I love buying cards, and I like to support small businesses, so that works out pretty well, right? I've searched for letterpresses in Chicago more than once. More than once in the last couple months, even, when I was trying to decide where I wanted to purchase my holiday cards. Somehow I've only come up with one or two, and Starshaped Press was not one of them--though I live less than half a mile from where it's located. I lucked out and found Starshaped two days before their annual open house. Perfect timing. The studio is in this really awesome Art Deco building that of course I've seen in the neighborhood but have never had reason to enter. We got there right at noon so we could beat the crowd, and Jen was a gracious host. She had samples of her work out, consisting of pieces decorating the studio as well as prints and cards for purchase. (I ended up spending... way too much money). She also had delicious cookies for us too! She was so open to any question we had, and showed us how the press worked. She had set up many examples of the letterpress dies set in various designs, and they are so incredibly intricate. There may be hundreds in a single print of all sizes. I loved seeing those set up with an example of the pressed item next to it. Starshaped Press also has a print club, which is a subscription service where you get printed goodies from the press on a monthly basis. There are a few different options so you can choose based upon your budget. I signed up for the print club and will get my first this month (January 2022), and can't wait! It was suggested that I might want to get my own holiday cards printed at a letterpress--perhaps Starshaped Letterpress--and I find that idea quite intriguing. Review 641 - January 23, 2022 22/2022

A bit of a belated post but still highly relevant. We came across Starshaped press during an art…read morewalk in Ravenswood. I did a secret project / present for my 1 year anniversary, "the paper anniversary " . I wanted to give a surprise Christmas present to my wife and had the idea for a concept. Reached out to Jen and she got back very quick, and we had a call to price out . I was able to give her a proof of concept to develop the unique paper print and she turned it into a forever treasure that is hung up in our home . A very cool unique thing but we gave our Chinese characters of our last names and she made it into a press and we got to keep it as a keepsake. Please consider her for projects like that but also cards and invitations . Wonderful experience