Gary's 60th Birthday

Gary's daughter, Cari was planning a 60th birthday luau for her dad because he loves to wear Aloha shirts, and I was thrilled to get to design these awesome invitations. Cari wanted a little bit of a Tommy Bahama vibe, but still relaxed. I love a good hibiscus pattern.

She mailed the invitation in #10 sized envelopes in a dark blue color and I created a wraparound address label to coordinate.

A welcome sign graced the front door of the party.

Folded tent cards labeled the food for the buffet.

And a couple of 5x7 signs labeled cupcake flavors and drink options for guests.

It looks like the party was a blast, happy birthday!!

Nikki & Damienn

Since my website was hacked a couple of years ago, I'm still getting some older projects added back to my blog. Nikki and Damienn's is one of them. They got married back in 2010, but their invitation still deserves a spot in the blog.

Nikki was such an awesome bride to work with. She was planning a black tie wedding for their families and we wanted the invitation to reflect that. I think we succeeded. 

Extra thanks to Nikki for being gracious enough to send me an invitation and program so I could photograph them for my website. 

She went with Perfetto pocketfolds from Cards and Pockets in a matte black and the printed items were printed on a metallic pearl card stock. 

There were just three inserts and love the pop of color that came from the metallic green rsvp envelope. The color is Fairway, also from Cards and Pockets.

We continued with a menu that was set at each place setting at the wedding reception.

For a wedding program, Nikki wanted to go with an elegant booklet that was bound with black satin ribbon. Kudos to the printing company she used for getting these black covers looking so good.

The back cover said thanks to the friends and family members who couldn't be there for the wedding. It's not easy to see, but I was stoked to see that the flourish that we used on their invitations printed beautifully in the background of the cover.

I love how all of these turned out and I hope Nikki and Damienn have enjoyed married life for the last seven-ish years. 

Liam's 3rd Birthday

My friend Liam is still a big fan of trucks. For his 2nd birthday we did garbage trucks, and for this 3rd birthday, it was ALL about construction. His mommy, Joanna opted to send an Evite rather than a printed invitation, but we still had some fun with printed items for his party.

First I made a welcome sign that Joanna had printed pretty big. 

Then I made a simple pennant banner that had upside down construction cones in between the words.

I created a bunch of different cupcake toppers too. Joanna always orders cupcakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes and they're SO tasty!

For favors Joanna filled plastic construction hats with goodies from Oriental Trading and they were finished with a coloring book that I created for the party. I love making these!!

To finish, I created this t-shirt graphic and Joanna had it printed onto a white and navy blue raglan tee like in this picture. Zazzle did a pretty poor job of printing it, so I don't have a photo of Liam wearing it. Which was disappointing since they've done pretty well in the past. Bummer!

Thank you so much for inviting us to your party Liam, we really had a great time! Happy birthday!

Notre Dame Irish Knight Band T-shirt

A few years ago, I created a t-shirt for the marching band from Notre Dame High School in Northridge, CA. A friend of mine, Linsdey and her husband, Chris both attended this high school and were still involved with their marching band. They were traveling to Dublin, Ireland for a school trip and wanted a t-shirt to commemorate. 

I researched different Irish and Celtic designs to come up with the finished product. I wasn't able to get one of the actual shirts to photograph, so I made this mockup.

I'm really happy with how it turned out, especially with the design going over the shoulder. 

I hope the trip was amazing! Thanks!

Emily's Birth Announcement

I had a blast creating the invitations and printed items for my dear friend Cari's baby shower. I also had the privilege of creating a Sip n See invitation for Cari and her husband too. Creating a birth announcement for Miss E after she was born was a real treat.

Having gorgeous newborn photos made it all that much more fun. Newborn photography by Infiniti Foto.

I loved filling in all of the stats and features for little Miss M.

For the back I created this photo collage, inspired by one I saw on Minted.com to showcase all of the great photos. I love how it turned out!!

Welcome to the world Emily!! 

Julianna's 1st Birthday

I had a blast creating this ballerina-themed birthday party for Julianna. I love the fonts, the colors, and the sparkly star pattern I created for the party. I'm seriously considering adding this one to my Etsy shop.

I created wraparound address labels to coordinate:

Julianna's mommy, JoAnna asked me to make a Birthday Wishes card for guests to fill out since she didn't have one at her baby shower. 

We created a faux chalkboard with all of Julianna's first year stats too. 

Lastly, I created a thank you card using a beautiful photo of Julianna. 

Beautiful birthday girl!

Jackie & Michael's Camping Baby Shower

My sister, Jackie is pregnant with her first baby I was thrilled to get to plan a baby shower for her along with our mom and our friend Joanna. Jackie and my brother-in-law, Michael wanted a coed baby shower and we took a little time brainstorming ideas for a theme. We decided on a camping theme, but there were a few stipulations. The lumberjack theme is popular right now, but none of us wanted to go that route. So no fake beards, no buffalo plaid, just simple camping with a few "tactical" elements thrown in for Michael. It was pretty hard to figure out, but we managed to sneak in a few.

For the invitation I reworked a birthday invitation I created last year (I'll get it up on the blog someday). 

The insert included where to find their registry and rsvp information.

Never fear, the email address and URL have been changed to protect privacy.

I had these printed at Office Depot and I mailed them in Clover envelopes from Paper Source. I actually had most of this stuff printed with Office Depot. It was really easy to upload the files to their website and pick them up from my local store within an hour. I was even able to specify that some be printed onto card stock and some not. It was really, really convenient! 

We started with a sign for the front door (this is the only item where I wasn't thrilled with the print quality):

For the shower itself, my sister was adamant that it be a brunch because she loves breakfast food. So we had donuts, bagels, fruit salad, and an egg/sausage/hashbrown/cheese concoction that our mom has been making for years that she calls "Mountain Woman Breakfast." I made food signs for all of these, including the mimosa bar. 

We also had a big basket full of "s'mores mix" which is a mixture of chocolate chips, mini marshmallows, and Golden Grahams cereal. I don't know why I forgot to take a photo of it!

For table decor, the city my parents live in cleared away some fallen trees and left the wood slices out, free firewood for residents. Score!! We already had a few old lanterns and then we found these little plastic canteens on Oriental Trading. I created a new sticker for them by printing onto full sheet sticker paper. Voile!!

For a favor, we packed up some fixins for s'mores for everyone to take home. I couldn't decide between the two favor tag designs, so I printed some of each. Cello bags and twine came from Amazon.

We also had a station for folks to build their own trail mix. We called it G.O.R.P. when I was a kid, which stands for "good ole raisins and peanuts." Metal buckets and scoops are from Amazon.

To add a "tactical" element to the party, we had the materials and instructions set up so guests could make their own paracord keychain. 

It was only $1.49 to get each page of instructions laminated at Office Depot. Well worth it!

I created some fun signs for a few spots throughout the party venue. This one is my favorite:

Notice the pregnant mama in a few of these?

Bathrooms too!

Wishes for Baby. I love making these for baby showers and first birthdays! I can only imagine that the parents love to read them a year, five years, or more down the road.

We played a rousing round of The Price is Right and guessed the pricing on a bunch of baby items. Considering how much of these things I've bought in recent years, I kind of hoped I'd do better on this!

I'm really proud of how this trio of onesies turned out. I had created three camping-themed designs and I wanted to screen print them onto a few onesies. I wanted navy blue, dark green, and charcoal gray and I wanted them to all be heathered in texture. Apparently that's really not easy to find and definitely not very affordable. Getting them screen printed with my custom design was going to cost between $20 and $27 each. It was simply more than I was willing to spend. One of these days I'll be able to buy a Silhouette Cameo and do it myself, but not today.

I already had these three onesies in plain white. Since I've been dabbling in fabric dyeing, I blended some colors together to get these three. The green and brown onesies were dyed solid and then I added the designs with fabric paint. The space onesie was done with a method called ice dyeing. I wrote up the details on how I did it here. 

We also had a fun obstacle course that involved walking through Legos, changing a diaper, and assembling a breast pump; all for time!

It turned out to be a really relaxed and fun baby shower and I hope my sister and brother-in-law had as much fun as I had. Love you guys!

Easton's 1st Birthday

For his first birthday, Easton's mommy, Kari wanted to do a fun monsters theme with lots of bright colors. I was able to use the same monsters I created for Nathan's 3rd birthday and have lots of fun with Easton's invitation:

A fun extra we created was these wishes cards for guests to fill out. We made some for Kari when we created everything for her baby shower when she was pregnant with her daughter. But we didn't get a chance to make another set when she was pregnant with Easton. His first birthday was as good a time as any!

We also created a simple pennant banner using the same fun monsters.

We also created a simple pennant banner for Easton's high chair, but the darn thing just wouldn't stick to the tray. So one little pennant was all we got. I LOVE his orange monster cake!!

Happiest of birthday Easton!!