Jocelyn Curry

SOME years ago,
my husband and our daughter found some of the most beautiful American
crate labels I’ve ever seen in an antique store in Poulsbo, a small
town on the Olympic Peninsula. These richly colored, lively-patterned
ephemera have been stashed away in my envelope marked "Misc. Art
Prints." While coming up with ideas for wedding invitation graphics for
our son and his fiancee, I decided to play around with these labels.
Today I finished customizing a label as artwork for a thank you note
they’ll use for wedding gifts. Below you can see the original label,
two samples of the lettering I created to replace the original, and the
finished label.

Here is the original label with its curving lines of hand-lettered words. Because Eli and Amy (our son & his fiancee) live on their small farm, using these labels as the basis for some of their graphic design needs makes sense.

To the right and below are thumbnails of my inked lettering I scanned and colorized in PhotoShop before superimposing it onto the label. I first digitally erased OLNEY & FLOYD and GOLDEN WAX. This is done with the clone stamp tool.

To keep the new lettering authentic looking, I followed closely the chunky serifs and rustic, imperfect look of the original letters. I used my pen tablet to digitally color and shape the letters. The finished cards will be 3.75" x 5.5".