It amazes me when I come back to this blog and realize that it's been almost a year since I've posted anything. I am going to try to put stuff up more often.

We have been working on Halloween invitations lately and have just released them to the internet vendors. Here are a couple of samples.

My co-designer, Laura, painted the elegantly spooky one based on her view of the catacombs of Paris. It's one of my new favs!

I've also gone "girly" with our invitations. I have been working on all kinds of girls - graduation, holiday and Halloween. Each of our "girl" invites is available as a blonde, brunette, redhead or African-American. Some of them are also offered with an Asian option.

Each of our Halloween invitations also has a coordinating response card and 2.5 inch square label. Hope you enjoy!

Independence Day in my family means heading to the mountains of North Carolina for a family get together at my Aunt 'Nette and Uncle Davy's home. They have a home on a golf course and we all drag chairs out onto the tee box and watch the fireworks that night. This photo is one of my favorite family photos. My grandmother (in the center with the light blue shirt) and my father (on the right with a red shirt) both recently passed away so this photo is especially dear to me even if I no longer look anything like I do in this photo (I'm the one on the front row with the short brown hair).

July 4th Invitations

My blogging career has been sporadic at best. I get so busy at work that I forget to blog and my life at home has been a roller coaster ride for the last 6 months. I am, once again, trying to get back to blogging. It always helps when I have new products that I am excited about.

We have just released a new group of invitations for the summer so I have started with a July 4th patriotic themed inspiration board for your enjoyment. The beautiful children in the hammock are my nephew, Will and my daughter Aubrey from Independence Day 2004. My how they grow so quickly!

The invitation, called "Fireworks at Night" can be purchased from Invitation Box, by clicking here.

Holiday Part 1

Okay, so I've been working like a maniac for months now and ignoring my blog. And today is no different than the last 100 work days . . . there is production work to do, design work to do and administrative work to do. But I am going to take the time to blog because there is always other stuff to do and it will always be there waiting for me.

So today I am going to start showing off the new Holiday designs. In the interest of full disclosure, some of these designs were done by my co-worker, Jen. We really work as a team and you probably won't be able to tell which ones are hers and which ones are mine. And sometimes, we both worked on a card at different times.

I will begin the Holiday display with Halloween invites. We've never really done Halloween before so I am interested to see how this goes. Halloween is on a Friday night this year which translates to two things . . . the obvious is that there will be more Halloween parties (start planning yours now!) and the other is that there will be rehearsal dinners taking place on Halloween. In honor of that, I tried to design some invites that were elegant and yet Halloween-ish at the same time. Let me know what you think!

Return Address Labels

Well, lately I've been working on the cutest thing . . . circular return address labels to match the designs that we released back in January. They look so nice on the back of the envelope. Around the office, we are thinking about using the invitations as note cards with just our name as the personalization just so we can use the return address labels. Sorry, these aren't for sale yet. They will probably be released in a month or so. You just get the sneak peek today!

. . . or maybe not . . . . I can't seem to get the images uploaded for some technical reason. I will try to get them uploaded as soon as I can. Gotta go design for now!

Personalized Stamps

Well, I haven't written in a while because I've been bogged down in stamps. I thought I was headed toward holiday cards but I veered off and created an entire line of stamps. We released them to vendors on Thursday and the response has been tremendous. There are 80 different designs and these are just a few of my favorites. These self inking stampers are great for making your own cards, creating wedding favors or rewarding a young child just learning how to spell their name. If you are interested in seeing the whole line of stamps and stampable note cards, click here.

Sugar & Spice or Snips & Snails

Here are two more of the baby digital photocards that were just released recently. I must confess that I do have favorites of the cards that I have designed. They don't come along often for me, but I just love the snips and snails one. I especially like the "waggly" tail of the dog. And here's the thing that pushed me from happiness at a job well done to all-time favorite - the pattern around the edge. . . it's houndstooth. Corny, I know, but it makes me smile when I think about my little goofy design joke on this card.

Why is that boys get to be a tail of a dog, while girls are everything nice? It just makes me glad to be female!

Color

Well, Pantone came out with their fashion colors for the fall and I thought I would share both the fall colors and the spring colors.

I check for these color forecasts habitually and they always make me think of the diatribe that Miranda Priestly goes on about Andy's blue sweater in "The Devil Wears Prada" . . .

You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blithely unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.

People tend to think that colors just "become" popular, but what most don't know is that there is an entire industry devoted to forecasting what colors are the next big thing. I'm especially liking the blues and greens for 2008. I have been in a "green" phase for a while now, especially what I like to call "bright olive" and I have included a silk blouse in this color. My kitchen is very close to this, maybe a little bit darker and people often say, "Wow, what a great color. I would never have thought to paint such a bold color." Or, depending on their personality, they may say, "I love this color but I could never live with it." I just know that it makes me happy every time I go in my kitchen, even if it didn't make the Pantone list.

And fashion designers would agree . . . good design is about following the rules while great design is knowing when to break them.

If you would like to see or download the entire 33 page pdf from Pantone, click here.

Classic Design continued

Here are a couple of baby designs that I did just recently using a damask pattern and they have Engravers Gothic also.

Which just leads me to this conclusion: The Sound of Music is still the best movie of all time (I must confess to being prejudiced by childhood memories and the fact that I am named after Julie Andrews).

Have a great weekend everyone!

Classic Design

Last night I was watching The Sound of Music with my daughter and I was struck by how much I still like the design used in this movie. The script font used in the credits looked very much like Ministry Script, that we have just added to our list of available typestyles for customized invitations and the other typefaces looked very much like Trajan and Engravers Gothic, both of which are all time favorite typefaces of mine. Then, when Maria pulled down the draperies and made outfits for all the kids, I was struck anew at how "current" the design of this movie is. Oversized damask has been quite trendy lately and Maria was just a little ahead of her time when she outfitted all the kids in matching lime green and white oversized damask outfits. I think I may have to go work on a Christmas design using this look!