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.

My Best Design EVER!

2010 was one helluva year at Hamco. My husband and I eloped in Florida at the legendary Mai Kai in Ft. Lauderdale and had an amazing reception at Cliff Bell's in Detroit when we came back (I planned on posting that invite months ago, but STILL haven't gotten around to it, but will...eventually). We started house shopping in August and shortly found our dream home. Fast forward to November when we finally closed and have been working our butts off to get the place livable (again, another post for another day) and ended the year with the greatest gift ever, the birth of our son Henry.

He is the best thing I have ever created. Hands down. Every day he gets more amazing and we are so in love with every smile, every coo and even every poopy diaper.

This is the announcement I created for him. My sister-in-law had created some personalized greeting cards for him, and I used her rocket artwork and added the moon and the birth info. The photo was taken by the hospital photographers. I printed them on photo paper using my HP9800. The greeting cards were printed using Snapfish.

More die-cutting fun

(This post began back in May sometime....guess I'm not so good at keeping up with this blog.)




This die-cutter has been a god send and a pain in my butt. There's a new one on the market that has features that make me swoon and I can't wait to get it. It's not available for Mac users until sometime "late summer" they tell me. Which, here we are in fall and they now tell me "early in 2011". I keep sending the company e-mails to ask WHEN?! and hopefully make them crazy enough they'll pick up the pace on production. Hey, I know...long stretch, but I can dream can't I? I mean, it'll cut chipboard. CHIPBOARD?! Anyway, I can't wait.
In the meantime, I've been abusing the one I have. Which, works 80% of the time. The other 20% is just weird random freakouts that I can't predict and are resolved by turning it off and quitting the die-cutting program. So, this latest project has really put it through it's paces.
It's a baby shower invite for a good friend of mine. Together, it looks like a strawberry. Pull up on the stem and out comes a baby & the shower information. It's all neatly tucked into an envelope on the opposite side of the strawberry. I made some custom gingham plaid envelopes to mail them in which will coordinate with the homemade goodies to be given as gifts at the shower.
Everything was printed using the trust Xerox Phaser 7750, then die-cut using the unreliable Sillouette (there has since been an update to the software that I've yet to test, so maybe it's better now).

Slackin' on the blog already...I know

Last week I put together an invite for a co-worker/friends son's graduation party. It's her oldest child, so first graduation and she's really excited about the party. I wanted to come up with something clever and fun to announce the event. I also wanted something really simple to that we could use paper and printers that we had on hand and customize it to incorporate his school colors.

And no, her son is not named Ella...I've changed the information to respect her privacy. Any of you who know me will get a kick out of the thought of Ella actually graduating. Technically, she's almost old enough, but I don't think she has the brain capacity or language skills to pass kindergarden—she's my cat!

Ta da! (I really need to work on my photography skills. My pictures are the worst!)

So, once again, I put the die cutter to the test! First, I cut the scroll and holes on some nice, bright white, recycled 80lb cover stock. We ran the invites through the laser printer. Quick and easy! The 2010 charms were an ebay score and we were so happy to see they were the perfect size. We found some nice metallic red envelopes to coordinate with the red bow and put it all together. She's so happy with the result and I can't wait to hear what kind of response she gets!