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!

A Fall Party/Thanksgiving

This entry is dedicated to my mom, who does Thanksgiving dinner for 24 at her home every year and she decorates to the nines and she loves every minute of it. Last year, my husband violated all of my mom's decorating rules by choosing a plate from one table and then sitting down at another table (each table is decorated differently and the rule is that you keep your plate at the table it belongs to!) My cousins and I snickered all through the meal, waiting for Mom to notice. However, since my husband is my mom's favorite (read: only) son-in-law and he's the turkey cooker, she let it slide. If it had been me, I'd have been dead meat (Thanksgiving pun intended)! I appreciated his disregard for the rules since he changed seats to sit beside me!



If you are interested in either of these cards or would like to see the other cards we have for the fall season, click here.

A Halloween Party for the Adults

Way back when (for me that was the late 80's), I shared a condo with two other single girls. We wanted to live in Fourth Ward (uptown Charlotte, NC - not downtown!) and when we saw the ad for a condo with views of the park we were sold sight unseen. Upon arriving at the condo, we loved it. It was large and open and great for entertaining (something we did alot of). The "park" however, turned out to be a cemetary with graves dating from the 1770's to the 1850's. When I think of an upscale adult Halloween party, I can envision our condo overlooking the graveyard as the perfect site!

For more information about this invitation or any of our other Halloween cards, click here.


This was our "view of the park." It wasn't a bad view even if it was a cemetary!

I'm Inspired!

So I was thrilled this week when Kati, over at The Finer Things and Rebecca at Tastefully Entertaining used one of my cards to create an inspiration board for a Halloween wedding. (Thanks so much for the mention!)

I was so inspired, I decided to try it myself. I went for a different card than they used just to mix it up a little bit. To see the entire Halloween collection, or to purchase, click here.

What fun it was to look for elegant Halloween wedding ideas. I totally love the dress (Ralph Lauren). It has an Eliza Doolitle feel to it but could totally be used as a wedding dress.

I enjoyed doing the inspiration board so much, I have decided to try it with some of my other invitations.

Hope you like it!

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!

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!

Typefaces

Looking over the items that I have chosen to include in this blog made me start thinking about font choices that I have made. I go through phases with typefaces with a few all-time favorites. All time faves include Helvetica, Mrs Eaves, Engravers Gothic and Bickham. I also really like Vectora, but it really isn't a "stationery" font. Current faves also include Fling, Bodoni (thanks to my cohort, Jen), Trajan and Ministry Script. I am currently really dying to purchase Feel Script, available at http://www.veer.com/ but I'm essentially too cheap to cough up the $99. If I still love it 6 months from now, I will probably break down and buy it. It has the best ligatures and alternate characters. It's one of the most girly fonts I have ever really liked.

Tuxedo Notepad Collection

Another item I've been working on is a set of notepads in acrylic holders - eight in each set. This first set is black and white and here are a few of them. One of the best ways I've seen someone customize these is to put "From the mom of" and then the kids names at the bottom with check boxes. Other options from the collection include a herringbone pattern, swirls, dots and lattice. These notepads are available for purchase from http://www.stationerystudio.com/.

January 08 Release (continued)

Here is another invite for the January release. I think it's perfect for a rehearsal dinner or bridesmaid luncheon.

Preview of January 08 Release

Every January, stationery companies release their new designs for the upcoming season. This is my first experience of creating and designing while concurrently producing all of the custom digital photo card orders for the holiday season. It's been a busy December, but I'm pleased with the new designs for spring. Thes designs are not yet currently for sale but if you see something you like or would be interested in a custom design, email me. Most designs that I show here are available in other colors and could be custom produced in any color you desire.