Emily & Shane

Emily contacted me last summer about creating a wedding invitation for her December wedding. She and Shane are both avid cyclists and they fell in love with the invitations I created for Melissa & Patrick. So I was happy to create something that fit the colors and style for their wedding. 

Emily was gracious enough to send me one of their invitations. They went with a gatefolded invitation with just one RSVP card insert.

The sillhouettes of the bicycles and the tandem bicycle are all of Emily and Shane's actual bikes!

They had everything printed on a lovely linen card stock, it really added a classy texture.

Don't stress, I changed their address.

For the wedding itself, we also created some fun signs. These photos were taken by their awesome wedding photographer Ashley Russ. If you click on any of the photos below, you'll head over to her website. 

This sign is my favorite: "I've got a fever! And the only prescription is more BIKE bell!" I wonder how many guests got the fun SNL reference. Guests wrote their well wishes onto the wood boards displayed in the background. It will make for some really cool wall art for their home.

Rather than print out a hundred or so programs for guests, they printed one large program that sat in an entryway for guests to know the afternoon's schedule.

They had a local food truck that specializes in fancy grilled cheese providing dinner for the evening. Yum!

It looks like it was a really lovely wedding, congratulations Shane and Emily!!

Our Holiday Card - 2017

I look forward to creating our holiday card every year. I do a lot of design work for clients throughout the year, but I don't do much for my little family. We don't have elaborate birthday parties for our boys, so our annual holiday card is the one thing I get to work on that's entirely personal. 

A few years ago, a friend introduced me to a local photography company called FotoFly. They do unique Santa photos every year where one of the parents wears the Santa suit, hopefully ensuring that the kids are calm and happy for photos. The results produce some really beautiful and unique holiday photos. 

My boys and Santa have been the feature image on all of our holiday cards since the very first card I created in 2013. You can see other years here: 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Here is the card I created for 2017:

I used the fun knitted sweater texture that I created last year. My oldest requested a dark green background. And since our cards hardly ever include my husband and me, I added a little snippet at the bottom, "Bill & Alex send their love too."

I had my cards printed with OvernightPrints for the first time this year. I've always used VistaPrint, but this year, both companies' pricing was comparable and a close friend of mine raved about the quality of her business cards that were printed with OvernightPrints. So I gave them a go. They didn't charge me extra to print my cards two-sided, which I love, so above is what I put on the back. Plus, only $1 to add rounded corners. Score!

When I shared my photos on my Instagram account, I was notified shortly after Christmas that I won their Art & Design contest! Woot!

Part of my prize was being featured on their blog. Click on the image below to read the blog post:

Thank you so much OvernightPrints for not only beautifully printed holiday cards, but for the feature! Pretty sure you've created a very loyal customer. 

Our Las Vegas Vow Renewal

My husband and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last month, and to commemorate, we renewed our vows in front of a couple of friends and family members in Las Vegas. 

Back when we were planning our wedding in 2007, and kind of over the craziness, we joked about flying to Las Vegas and eloping. My husband confessed that he'd LOVE to have our ceremony officiated by none other than Elvis Presley. We agreed that day that we'd renew on our 10th anniversary with Elvis. And we did!

Even though we weren't planning anything extravagant, I still wanted to create an invitation for the occasion. 

I was going for fun, but not cheesy, and I wanted to slyly put Elvis in there somewhere. The skyline of Las Vegas and a bokeh background worked perfectly to convey the mood I wanted to.

I mailed these to friends and family in metallic red envelopes that I ordered from Cards and Pockets; the Jupiter color. They coordinated beautifully with the invitations. I printed names and addresses on each one with my laser printer. 

We renewed our vows at the Graceland Wedding Chapel, Elvis sang a few songs and performed the ceremony. It was cheesy and so much fun!!  So many thanks to everyone who has supported us over these last ten years.

Julianna's 2nd Birthday

For her second birthday, Julianna's mommy JoAnna wanted to do an ice cream party. So we had fun with some watercolor textures for her invitation and the other items she had printed for the party. I love how it all turned out!

We did favor tags:

And an ice cream sundae sign.

Lastly JoAnna had a big backdrop printed for the big day.

Happy happy birthday Julianna!!

Hanukkah Cootie Catcher

I have been thinking about more holiday-themed cootie catchers that I can create, and this year I added a Hanukkah one to my shop. I chatted with a couple of Jewish ladies in a group I'm in and they helped me choose the right cartoons and Hanukkah-related terms. That ways it's not glaringly obvious that this Gentile had no idea what she was doing when she made this. 

The file is set up to be printed on 8.5x11 paper and the downloadable file includes a page of folding instructions; in case it's been a while since you've folded one. You can purchase it from my Etsy shop. If you live somewhere where A4 paper is the norm, shoot me an email and I will happily send you the file at that size.

My 8yo just started teaching my 3yo how to work a cootie catcher, so he's still a little awkward on how to hold it. My favorite part was when my 8yo thought he had to show ME how a cootie catcher worked. 

Happy Hanukkah!!

What holidays should I do next?? 
Christmas DONE
Thanksgiving DONE
Halloween DONE
Independence Day??
Valentine's Day??