First Day of School Signs - 2018

I was thrilled to get to create a bunch of First Day of School signs for so many awesome kids this year. First Day of School signs are available in my Etsy shop in the summer months through the end of September. They also can be ordered by sending me an email if you’d prefer to not go through Etsy. I customize the text using your child’s information and their favorite colors. Then you print the sign yourself.

Here’s a sampling of this year’s kids with their signs:

Here are my two boys this year. I wonder how many years they’ll let me keep doing this??

There will be three different font styles to choose from when they are available. The backgrounds look like a faux chalkboard and they’re set to print on 8.5x11 paper. If you want it to look more like an actual chalkboard, you can trim off the white edge and/or print onto thicker card stock. Or your can back it with a piece of cardboard. The colors print most vibrant on glossy paper, but then you have a potential glare when taking a photo. It looks more like a real chalkboard when printed on matte paper. The choice is yours.

If you live in a country where A4 paper is the norm, just let me know and I can send it at that size.

Happy First Day!!

Emily & Shane's Honeymoon Suite

Emily and Shane got hitched last December with a fun, bicycle-themed wedding. You can see the invitations and signs from their wedding right here. 

Now that they're enjoying married life, they set off for a summer of adventures in their new camper. To put a custom twist on their camper, I designed a decal that used a similar bicycle as the one from their wedding invitations. They had two printed and put on their camper. I LOVE how it turned out! 

Congrats again Shane and Emily and I hope your summer adventure was fantastic!

Hike it Baby T-shirts

After my youngest son was born in 2014, I finally had the motivation to explore some of the fantastic hiking close to where I live outside of Salt Lake City. With my husband working and my oldest in school during the day, I didn’t want to hike by myself and many of the trails local to us get pretty crowded on weekends. My husband isn’t a huge fan of hiking either, but he comes sometimes when our oldest asks really nicely (or begs).

I also have a love for babywearing, so when I saw a post in my local babywearing Facebook group about an organized hike where babywearing was encouraged, I jumped on the chance to join and see what it was all about. And I discovered Hike It Baby.

June 2015, Albion Basin, Alta, UT. He was so little!!

Hike It Baby was created a couple of years ago by a mama named Shanti in Portland, OR who had the simple desire to get outside after having her son. She didn’t want to hike alone and wasn’t quite ready for jogging or long bike rides and she didn’t want to juggle finding a sitter so she could join a gym. She invited friends to hike with her and word began to spread. Now she inspires and encourages families to get outside and explore with their kids, all over the country.

Through social media, families can hike together, make new friends and encourage and support each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re an experienced hiker or a beginner, they all have your back and no hiker is left behind. Local chapters are led by volunteers and, best of all, hiking is usually free!

From my first Hike it Baby hike! Bells Canyon, UT.

About a year ago, Hike it Baby held a design contest for a new t-shirt design. I entered and won! My t-shirt was made and sold to Hike it Baby members. Even my dad bought one. This was the design:

Shortly after, Shanti contacted me about designing a couple more t-shirts for various fundraising campaigns. Here's what we made:

My oldest has the Earth Day shirt and he still proudly wears it.

Provo River Falls, Kamas, UT

Cut to now, I'm thrilled to work for Hike it Baby, providing as much as they need when it comes to graphics, whether it's a t-shirt, a sticker, social media graphics and more. These are some of the more recent t-shirts I've done for Hike it Baby:

This t-shirt with the moon and mountains was sold during the January 2018 Hike it Baby 30 challenge. There will be new t-shirts for the April, September, and November challenges this year too. 

Busy, Busy and a New Logo

I have a lot of projects to add to my blog, but for some reason, other stuff keeps bumping it out of the way. With my mother-in-law visiting this week and keeping my kids happy, my goal is to get a bunch of new posts scheduled. I'm putting that out into to universe, so hold me accountable!! 

I have been working on a new logo for myself. I have only had a couple of logos since I started this freelance gig, and it usually takes me a REALLY long time to come up with a logo that I love enough to actually put on my website. It's just one of those funny things; I can design a logo for someone else pretty quickly. But for myself, nope!

One thing that seems to remain consistent is my love for art history. The little ink drawing of Venus de Milo that I put on my invoices and some applications of my logo will stick with my website for a long time (unless I find something else that I love better). I created that little drawing back in 2004 as part of an assignment from an illustration class in college. I honestly don't remember what the assignment actually was, only that it was to be done in pen and ink. That previous summer my family and I had taken a trip to Europe where we explored parts of The Netherlands, Belgium, and France. So I created this composite to document us getting lost in Paris. We actually got lost in Brugge on that trip, but landmarks in Paris are more identifiable. 

There are a few drawings I made from sculptures I saw at the Louvre from that trip; these are two of them:

I love to create ink drawings and I really don't do them enough!

So that's why my Venus de Milo sketch hangs around my logo and branding, even when the font and colors change from time to time.  

Speaking of which, like my new logo?

Custom Mason Jar Labels

I love canning. My mom taught me how to make jam when I was a teenager and she learned how from her mom and her grandma. Growing up, we had a plum and an apricot tree in our backyard, so when June and July came around and the fruit was ripe, we'd hurry to pick the ripe fruit before it fell or the birds got to it. Then we'd spend an afternoon cleaning, pitting, crushing and stirring pots of molten sugar and fruit. The reward at the end of the day was the satisfying POP when the jars sealed and snacking on the leftovers. 

If you've never made jam before, it's fairly simple and lots of fancy tools aren't required. I didn't own a water bath canner until this year. I just processed jars in my big soup pot. I don't own a pressure canner either. I love this post and send it to anyone who's interesting in canning for the first time. It's a great place to get the basics. 

Half pint mason jars are my favorites to use, (both in standard and wide mouth, but in late summer, they sell out pretty quickly in my local stores, so I will order from Amazon, and save from having to drive from store to store hoping some are still in stock.

Every year my husband and I typically give whatever we canned as gifts to friends, coworkers and family, so the jars naturally NEED some sort of fun label. I created a couple of new ones this year and I added them to my Etsy shop for purchase.

Thanks to a local friend sharing the wealth of New Haven Peaches on her tree, I made a few batches of peach jam and peach vanilla butter. 

Then I created a few different versions of the label for whatever else someone may be canning. I have watercolor graphics of many, many different fruits and I'll adjust the background color to make sure there's a good contrast between it and the color of the fruit.

This next design I created was a blast to work on and definitely moves toward the non-traditional when it comes to canning labels.

So far I have created similar labels for strawberry and plum jams. I'll create a breakdancing fruit cartoon for whatever kind of jam you've made. 

This "That's My Jam" theme really only works with jam. Jellies, sauces, pickled items won't really work with this design. But I can always create something different with the same font and overall look, like I did for our "Twerkin' Vanilla Peach Buttah." If you'd like to do a custom label like this, just shoot me a message.

Lastly, this is the label design that I created last year. It's printing on what looks like faintly stripped kraft paper with a custom little fruit or vegetable cartoon.

These can be customized for pretty much anything that goes into jars. I can add a greeting to the bottom or not, totally up to you.

I can set these up to be printed on Avery labels, 22807 for standard sized jars or 22830 for wide mouth jars. If you'd prefer to not go with Avery labels, I can squeeze as many on a page as I can and you can print them onto full-sheet sticker paper and the use a circle punch. It's pretty easy.

Links for each label:
That's my Jam
Script & Watercolor
Kraft Paper Cartoons

As always, if you're interested in creating a custom label with fonts, color, verbiage, or anything that's different than these, don't hesitate to send me a message or email. Thanks!

*This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase an item through these links, I get a few cents and you're helping keep my website running. I appreciate it!