{ a gala. }

Gala. Ever since I was little I have loved the sound of that word.  It seems larger than life, starting great words like “galaxy” and exotic words like “galapagos”.  Look at the definition: Gala n.  A festive occasion, especially a lavish social event or entertainment. Sounds fabulous, right? Mostly, it makes me think of a sparkly dress-up party, and who doesn’t like one of those?!?  Oh yeah, nearly every guy on the planet.

Well, these invitations that we printed recently for our local community hospital, Enloe, are for a Gala that does promise to be incredible.  Our challenge was expressing that in a piece of paper – and I must say, it was a lot of fun rising to that challenge.

Would you like to take a peek?

The event is subtly themed around “A Night in Venice” (but not in an over-the-top, prom sort of manner).  In order to reflect that in the design, we used jewel tones (turquoise, lapiz lazuli, plum and soft gold) and a die-cut shape for the main invitation inspired by a Venetian window.  Then we added a few sumptuous swirls and bit of intricate repeating pattern, and voila!  Hopefully inspiring an exotic evening, a grand gala.

I should note here, that the scale of this project was big – I mean B-I-G.  Originally we had thought to run them on our Heidelberg, but we ended up hand-feeding them into our trusty old Chandler and Price.  2,000 invitations x 7 times through the press (there’s printing on the back too) = about 15,000 feeds into our machine, mostly done by the patient and forebearing Matt Tennis for this job (thanks, hon!). Whew!  We were happy when it was done, off and away!

But it really promises to be a fun event for Chico – and for a great cause, our community hospital.  If you’re in town, you should definitely try to go!