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.

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.

Helpin' the Kit-tehs!

Friends of mine are huge, I mean HUGE, animal activists. They never fail to foster a stray, find forever homes for a litter of kittens, help a runaway find it's owner, or provide instruction and assistance to someone who needs it when it comes to the care and health of their pet. I give them MAJOR kudos for getting in there and doing what I myself wouldn't be able to do. (I'm too scared of getting bitten to help a stray on the street, and too big-hearted and weak-willed to volunteer at a shelter. One, I couldn't stand to see all those poor animals and two there'd be no way I could walk out without a new pet every day.) So when they came to me for some design assistance, how could I say no? This is the perfect way for me to help a great cause without ending up with a basket of kittens. This 8.5x11 tri-fold is chocked to the gills with info, so my design is relatively minimalist and clean. The kitty logo is inspired from some vintage artwork I found at a flea market years and years ago.

Project Kitty Connect is a non-profit organization that seeks to reduce stray and feral cat overpopulation through the method of Trap-Neuter-Return, as opposed to the dire trap and kill. They are trying to reduce the stray cat population in the most humane way possible—adopting out tamer animals to new homes and letting ones too wild to be pets live out their lives in the habitats that are familiar to them. There are a lot benefits to this method and if you or someone you know has the issue of excessive amounts of strays in their neighborhood, then I encourage you to give them a call or look for them online.

Kick Out the Blogs!

Yeah, yeah...FINALLY, a post!!! Sue me. I've been struggling to come up with anything blog-worthy. My brain is at a loss for ideas, but I figure I need to get moving on some things. This blog being one of them. Having recently discovered a few blogs that I've found very inspiring, I'm going to make more of an effort to get mine going. Originally, I intended for this site to feature some of my design work. But, I think it'll end up evolving into more than just an online portfolio...but to what end, I can't say. So hang on and we'll see where we end up.

Having said that, let's kick off this post (pun intended) with a recent project—Packaging Design. My buddy Vic is one of the best clients I have. He's the owner of V-Male Detroit Vintage in Dearborn Heights, MI. The thing about Vic, is he gives me full creative freedom—something that I don't always get in the 9-5 corporate world that I'm usually designing in. We share a love of all things vintage, so it's the best of both worlds to me: design and vintage clothing! Vic has a variety of exclusive products in his shop, the most recent being a line of seamed stockings, which he called upon me to do the packing for. Here we have it! The final design!

The image comes from Vic's personal collection of pin-up artwork. He thought it would be perfect and I couldn't agree more. Another fun aspect of designing for Vic is that everything is done in smaller quantities with extremely small budgets, so I love to find ways to do things the most inexpensive way without compromising style and effectiveness.

Originally, we intended to get custom lingerie boxes printed. Once we learned the minimum quantity to order was 4,000, our plans changed. At slightly over $1 a box, not only was the upfront costs out of the question, but finding storage for that many boxes would be impossible. So on to the more cost effective Plan B.

Vic ordered a small quantity of the plain white lingerie boxes, I picked up some full sheets of Avery labels and ran them through a Xerox Phaser 7750 laser printer. After cutting them down to size, I affixed them to the fronts of the boxes and voila! They're perfect! I am so pleased with the result. If you didn't know better, you'd think they were printed. Added bonus of doing it this way? We can change the labels as needed, depending on size/style/color...whatever he wants, it's a simple click and print!

Best part of it all? He's incredibly happy with the results and it didn't break the bank for him!! YAY!!!

If you want to pick up a pair, you can find them at V-Male Detroit Vintage, 23902 Van Born Rd., Dearborn Heights, MI. He's one of the original vendors at Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender, so be to check him out there if you're at the show.