Random

Feeling kind of restless today....too many ideas and not enough focus to pick a direction and to get started on them. Small steps first...so I will update my neglected blog and post a few logos that I concepted a while back for another pastry chef. Don't know why it didn't quite pan out, I felt my ideas were strong and on target with what I distilled from the clients' needs and wishes. Guess it all came down to lack of response on their part. Job hunting is a lot like dating in my book.

You set up a date to meet a potential client...you hit it off. They introduce you to their other half...and you all click. There's an immediate feeling of ease and familiarity with each other as you talk about the project and start to brainstorm ideas together. Time slips away and the meeting goes long because everyone got lost in the witty banter. You leave feeling like you just met your creative soulmate. They share your vision, get your ideas and are excited to move to the next level. As you drive home you ask yourself "Are we going steady now?"

You dream about them all night. In the morning, you jump out of bed and are eager to work without the usual gallon of caffeine. Creative juices are flowing full force and identities o'plenty pour out from your brain to your Wacom tablet. One idea, two idea, three idea, four!! You're on fire and excited to share your work. "It's never been like THIS before!". You're confident they're going to love the ideas as much as you do as you hit the Send button. Then...you wait.

And you wait.
And wait...
A day goes by. Nothing. Huh? "They were SO responsive when we first talked. Maybe I sent it to the wrong address."
You double check, everything is correct.
Another day goes by...nothing.
You send a follow up email. Nothing.

One final and last ditch effort to connect on your part "Hey, it's been a while...just checking in to see if you got the logos. I was starting to worry that something is wrong with my email or the file was too big to get through." (You use error on your end to 'excuse' your barrage of messages.)

"Sorry Hon, just SUPER busy."
Hmmmmm....aren't we all super busy? Isn't this the technology age when it takes 2 seconds to respond to a text or email...and say 'Got it, thx we'll get back to you!'. Aren't you the same person who had a landline, iPhone, laptop AND iPad all fired up and responding to all calls/messages while we were meeting? Wait?! HON? You're calling me Hon? Oh. Wow...whoa...did I just get taken? I feel led on.

As in dating....you can only hear 'nothing' for so long before you move on. "Will they call me back?", "Do they like me & my work?", "Do I call/email AGAIN?" "What should I do?". You feel like the Carrie Bradshaw of freelance. Just tell me you're not interested, you found someone else, I'm not right designer for you, you're playing the field...whatever, I'm a seasoned professional—I can take it. Don't expect me to chase you forever though, three unreturned emails is my limit. A gal's gotta have her standards, lol.

Months go by and you never did hear back from them. You're cleaning out your drive and come across your files. You think back to this brief affair, admire the work you did and think (Cole Porter playing in the background of your mind) "It was just one of those things."

The BIG reveal!

A while back I posted a logo project that I was working on with my friend Christina. At the time, we were trying to develop an identity for her bakery start-up, Cheesecake. While she liked the original concepts a lot, she still didn't feel like anything about the brand name was "her". A little too cutesy, a little too specific...many of the things that we had originally discussed. After much contemplation, she decided to switch direction with the name and thoughts of what she wanted her business to be. Christina's new vision couldn't have been more perfect for her, personally and professionally, so with renewed excitement of knowing exactly what she was going for, I got to work.

I am extremely pleased to share her new name and identity. With that, I give you...

First off, I think her choice of name couldn't be more clever! Much like Christina's personality AND the amazingly clever creations she bakes up! It's playful and original, and speaks to the quality of her desserts....which are wicked good!

Originally, Christina was drawn to the dark purple and emerald green of one of her favorite plays, Wicked. While that color palette works great for that purpose, it really wasn't going to work in this instance, and after seeing a few other concepts of logos in that combo, she agreed. I chose a more updated and modern version of a similar color combo. It's bright and unexpected, which I think will make her stand out in a sea of the typical pastel frosting color palettes.

The oval card was Christina's idea...and at first I was a little unsure with that request, thinking it was going to be WAY out of her budget. Then something in my brain went "oval=halo!!!" Brilliant. Then there was no question about oval, it needed to be done at any cost. Fortunately, I found an online printer LeCards, out of L.A., who offered super reasonable prices! As an added bonus, we were able to do spot varnish. Giving a little 'shine' to the front of the card on the halo above the O, and the one that circles the card. On the flip side, we have a little bit of 'wicked', also with a hit of spot varnish on the tail that snakes itself her contact information. She used the same artwork from the card front to do oval labels for her cake boxes, and I created a banner for her to use on her table. She plans on setting up at comic book, monster, tattoo and other fun conventions along with her boyfriend who is often there to sell comics and collectibles.

So keep an eye out for Christina and her Wicked Good desserts next time you're out and about! She also does parties, weddings, showers...whatever you need.

You can email her at christina@wickedgooddesserts.com if you're in the Metro Detroit area and need some deliciousness! Tell her I sent ya!

YUM!

This might be my first post that doesn't involve a die cutter or a printer! Imagine that!

Anyway, my friend Christina (who made the fabulous b-day cupcakes and moon cake for my son's first birthday) needs a logo for her fledgling bakery business. Somehow we came to the agreement that we'd trade baked goods for design goods. Works for me! 

The ideas I gave her were based on what she was thinking she would call her business at the time. Initially she didn't really have much in mind besides the name, which was Cheesecake. She did want something with a retro flair and also wanted to go with kind of a pin-up feel. I mentioned that while the idea of a retro pin-up and the play with the name Cheesecake is cute, it doesn't really say 'bakery' and also kind of implies that her baking skills are focused on one thing. She got where I was coming from...but was still pretty set on the name. So I got to work.

My first idea was inspired by vintage cookbooks, with their awesomely cute illustrations of various pastries dancing along the bottoms of the pages. I figured using other baked goods would keep it from looking like she only baked cheesecakes. I picked a fun, playful script that reminds me of frosted lettering you'd see on cakes or cupcakes, and added Baked Goods to reinforce the idea that she can make you anything your sweet tooth desires.

The second and third logo were more literally translating what I thought she wanted in a 'pin-up' themed logo, again, trying to make the name Cheesecake a play on words and focus more on the silhouette then on the specific desert. The third logo is one that focuses the attention on a product (in this case, the cupcake—one of her specialties), and uses the name as the 'icing' on the (cup)cake.

In the end, she decided against the Cheesecake name, and thought long and hard about the direction she wanted to go in. Which, is completely opposite of where we started. With more information from her as to what she trying to achieve—we're starting over. And that's good...because now I have more information to base my new ideas on. Once we have something nailed down, I hope she'll let me share it!

Leopard Lovebirds

My friend Lori asked me to do her invite with little idea of what she wanted for her big day. My direction was pretty much that she wanted gold, dark green and leopard. *sigh*. I guess that means anything goes, right?

I knew all of us gals (I was in the wedding party) were wearing leopard shoes with our vintage repro dresses and we would be in period appropriate hair and makeup. Lori has a love for all things vintage...clothing, furniture, hair, makeup...etc., so I wanted to come up with a design that had a little bit of retro to it—but didn't scream out kitschy and tacky. Despite our love for the music and it's vintage scene, I didn't want the invite to be too "rockabilly" for a traditional ceremony and reception. It also had to reflect the groom, who has absolutely no ties or interest in it whatsoever. I also wanted to bring the element of their mutually shared passion of animals and animal rescue.

The bride and groom both had "Z" last names. How weird is that? So, it was easy to come up with a little logo for them to use on the envelopes, thank you cards, seating charts, stamps, return address labels...whatever they wanted to put it on from that day forward. Little love birds sitting on their initial was perfection! I limited the color pallet down to the black and gold, as the green just didn't have the same energy I wanted the design to have, plus there was more gold being used in her wedding decorations than green.

Incorporating the leopard into the design had to be approached delicately. It's a strong pattern to begin with, and using it along with the gold she had in mind meant that the combo could be a little more band flyer than wedding invite. The logo gave me a good place to use a splash of the pattern without it being too overwhelming, but it wasn't enough to really create the look that I think she wanted the invites to have. (More leopard! Make my logo bigger!!!)

These were also going to be another DIY project, with the only costs being buying paper and envelopes, so I had to come up with a unique solution to getting the vision I had pictured in my head. I wanted something different, something with sparkle and a little pop! Glitter? No...didn't work. Metallic paper is calling! I got Aspire Petallics in two colors, Black Ore and Beargrass, a gorgeous gold metallic from Curious Papers, and nice green from Royal Metallics. After repeated attempts to do something with the gold, I gave up and realized I wasn't going in the right direction with it and thought I would try a tone on tone printing with the black.

By printing a four color black out of my Phaser, the ink sits on top of the paper so it looks like two different blacks (yeah, I know you're thinking...isn't black, just, black?). So, I created a background by allowing the ink to mask out the leopard print from the metallic (Black Ore) paper, giving it the illusion of it being glittery ink on a black sheet. The effect was far more impressive in real life than my attempt to fake it here in Photoshop—but you get the idea. The body of the invite, envelopes, thank you cards and table numbers were all printed on the shimmery warm white paper (Beargrass).

Everything was hand cut, folded and assembled. The envelopes were run through the Phaser as well. Thankfully it was a small batch of about 100. It was a fun project, I was extremely happy with the result as were the bride and groom.

Bad, bad, blogger.

Yeah I know. You don't care about my lame excuses anyway, so let me just post some (not so) recent projects and get on with it!

December was Henry's 1st birthday (dang this year went by fast!!!), and so we commemorate this momentous occasion with a party! Gives me an excuse to make cool invites too! A while back I had seen a tutorial somewhere on how to make your own scratch off tickets. Didn't know I would need to know this at the time, but I stashed the idea in my lid for future cards/invites/fun stuff. Seeing as we, ahem—I mean I

*I*—decided that we were going with the Robot/Space theme, what could be better than a glittery metallic invite? Nothing!!!

I used an image that my fantastic, photographer sister-in-law Linda had taken of one of Henry's robots as a starting point, found the moon background on Thinkstock, printed them all off on some fancy Stardream metallic paper using the trusty Xerox Phaser, and got down to cutting and glittering! Underneath the "space dust" is the message to the invitee with details of the party. 

The invites were sent out with metal type souvenir coins with the date stamped on them that I created at a local arcade (*EDIT*, I should mention it was Marvin's Mechanical Museum in Farmington Hills. Go check that place out!) that has a vintage metal type machine. I would LOVE to have one of these machines! Check this site out that I came across! THIS GUY is keeping metal type alive and will send you a personalized coin for a donation, how righteous is that? Very! 

I found some really cool silver glitter gift bags at a party supply store and filled them with spacey/robot prizes for our guests. Everything turned out really well, the kids were so excited to receive the sparkly good bags and invites were a big hit—one little friend asked her mom "Is it REALLY space dust?!".  Awwww!!!!!! Six year olds rock!

Creating the scratch off is super easy! You'll need: Acrylic paint, contact paper, dish soap, brush, container for mixing. Glitter optional.

**1**
Take your choice of acrylic paint (I used metallic silver) and mix with regular old dish soap in about a 1:1 ratio. (I recommend something unscented...I picked some cheap stuff up at the dollar store and it stunk to high heaven).

**2**
Mix paint/soap together and paint an area of the contact paper. You can do this one of two ways, either cut out your shapes out of the contact paper and stick them on your card first, then paint them OR do what I found to be easier, which was paint a big piece of contact paper, then cut the shapes after. In my mind, it would be easier and cleaner then painting on the invites themselves. Less room to mess up since there was no painting 'in the lines'.

**3**
Sprinkle copious amounts of glitter on the wet paint and let dry. After everything is completely dry, cut your shapes out (mine was the square to cover the invite details) and stick it to your card.

VOILA! You have some fancy personalized scratch offs! Be forewarned, you will have glitter on EVERYTHING...so I suggest doing this in an area where you don't mind it getting a little sparkly. Luckily for me, Henry's birthday is right before Christmas, so I just figured it was a little more holiday sparkle added to the house!

Here is a link to the original source and a step by step, including photos, of how it all works. Valentines day is coming up...glitter on people, glitter on.

Viva Las Vegas!

I've posted before about my buddy Vic and his vintage shop, 

V-Male Detroit. Well, every year over Easter weekend, 

Vic is a vendor at one of THE best roots-rock/rockabilly 

music weekenders in the world, Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend. I've had some of the best times of my life there 

and it is an amazing weekend jam-packed with music, dancing, burlesque shows, cheap food, hot rods and vintage enthusiasts dressed to the nines in period appropriate attire. Good times, good times...

I really miss going, but having a baby is going to put a hitch 

in my long Vegas weekends from now on. That's fine by me though, we're having a rockin' time with him at ol' Hamco HQ.

Anyway, the point of me mentioning Vic and VLV is that Easter is right around the corner, which means VLV is going to be here before we know it. Vic is going to be vending again, 

so I thought I would post some of the things that I've had the pleasure of designing that he typically has at his booth.

So here's a variety of products that he'll have available. Starting at the top and moving clockwise, we have packaging for a line of Snoods (which is a fancy form 

of hair net); a label design for Greaser Goo, an all natural sun screen; package top for a fruit covered turban (think Carmen Miranda);  package top for bra inserts and 

clip on kitty ears, and box design for vintage stockings. Everything is printed using 100 lb. cardstock, Xerox Phaser 7750 and finished up by hand cutting and scoring.

Working with Vic is always such a good time. He and I share the same vision and he gives me a chance to make good use out of my collection of vintage ephemera. If you heading to VLV this spring, make sure to stop by and check out some of the cool stuff at the V-Male booth and make sure you tell Vic and Kim 'HI!'.

Reception Invite

Hard to believe it's been over half a year since our reception. Dang...time flies!! I've been meaning to do a post about our invitation for our wedding reception for months. A few things have been keeping me busy like, house hunting/buying/moving/renovating, having a baby, going back to work...and the business of everyday life that seems to get in the way of what you originally set out to do. But, things are settling down a little bit more now. Going back to work has put the routine back into my life that was completely lost on maternity leave. I miss being home with my baby, but being here means that I have the luxury of checking email or posting on this blog—things that go on the back burner when I return to Hamco at the end of a workday. So, once again, I am going to try and post with some regularity to this little blog o' mine.

So back to the invite.

My husband and I eloped in June, 2010. We chose the tiki gardens of the historic Mai Kai in Ft. Lauderdale. It had everything we wanted. A cool destination, historic significance, unique setting and built in entertainment, plus a-MAZING cocktails (of course, I couldn't enjoy having recently discovering I was pregnant)! I don't remember this, but apparently the last (and only) time I was there, I told my travel pals that I wanted to get married there. Premonition? Maybe. It was perfection. Eloping has a small guest list. A couple of our closest friends joined us as our Best Man and Matron of Honor, but that was it. No family, no other friends...just the four of us.

So we wanted to have a reception when we returned. We chose another historic location for our reception, Cliff Bell's Jazz Club in Detroit.

Since the two venues had very little in common, I wanted an invite that sort of tied the feeling of the Mai Kai and our tiki wedding in with our brunch. Using the Mai Kai mug as my inspiration, I created a barrel shaped invite. I had found a terrific local photographer on Craigslist, who's work seemed to elude to her ability to capture the events exactly the way I wanted (and she did an amazing job! www.daniellerphotography.com), so I incorporated her image and a few other Mai Kai, beachy, tiki items into the design. Once again, I relied on my trusty (ahem) die-cutter to contour cut the barrel shape. I added tiki drink stirrers to every invite so that they would look like a cocktail when folded with the stirrer sticking out. I used regular bright white Hammermill 100 lb. cardstock for the invites and chose French Dur-o-tone paper for the envelopes and ran everything through the Xerox Phaser 7750 (god I love those printers!).

Originally I chose French Parchtone in Natural for the invites, but due to the ink coverage on the laser printer, the paper was completely obscured under the printing, so instead I used that paper to make a guest book and thank you tags for the deserts/parting gift. Everything had a nice, aged and rustic look to it, which was exactly what I had wanted. The hawaiian and tiki clip art are downloads from French.com as well. Gotta love French!

I was super happy with the results of the invite and the party. Next time I'll use a padded envelope, as a few of the stirrers suffered the wrath of the automated machinery at the post office. Guests were super impressed by their invites and the souvenir stirrer added a little novelty.