An educational Saturday

This past Saturday I attended this....

It was a combination of mental overload and teeny bit of a fan experience. As the above graphic mentions, the workshop was taught by the owners of Rock Scissor Paper. Heidi and Susie Bauer, the owners of Rock Scissor Paper have been in the stationery business for 15 years. I've been a fan of their work for the last 7 years. I discovered and fell in love with their stationery on one of my trips to L.A. before I moved here.

Heidi and Susie Bauer of Rock Scissor Paper

The workshop was held at Lala Press Letterpress Studio in Atwater Village. It's an impressive space with a gorgeous garden. The studio itself has several letterpress printers.

There were approximately 36 of us in attendance. All of us are in various stages of launching or maintaining stationery-related businesses. I hate to admit it, but I did a poor job of meeting people and networking. So, I'm not entirely sure of everyone's exact background in this industry. (Note to self, do a better job of meeting people at workshops.)
When we checked in, we were given these cute name badges made by Heidi and Susie.
The outline gives you an idea of the topics we covered. I wasn't sure what to expect. Sometimes, workshops are useful. Other times, they are a gigantic waste of time. This was definitely a highly informative and entertaining experience. If anything, I was a tad bit overwhelmed. They had so much information to share and were so enthusiastic about educating and helping up-and-comers. (This, sadly, is a rarity in creative industries.) There were moments where I could scarcely keep up. Thankfully, we were also given information packets. I swear these things are worth double their weight in gold. If I had to rely strictly on my chicken scratch notes, I'd be lost.
At the end of the day, I came away with so much information and a better sense of where I might fit in this industry. It also gave me a better sense of what I need to do for myself and my business. All in all, it was the best $200 I've ever spent.

Little Things Add Up

I have my very fun Sunday to recap and I will get to that a little bit later. I have been remiss in blogging about my design projects. This is not for lack of work. Thankfully, I have been fairly busy. Over the last month, I have been working on 2 invites suites and a plethora of small projects. It's these small projects that have really kept me busy. In the last couple of days, I have delivered 3 of them.

The first of these to be delivered were personalized notecards. These were requested by Melissa. Melissa wanted to give them as gifts for the hostesses of her bridal shower. She described one hostess as funky and the other as a girly girl. This is what I created for her.


The second project I delivered was for Wendy. She requested Bridal Shower invites for Janice. For this job, I was able to resurrect a design that another client had decided was not in keeping with the style and theme of their wedding. To add a teeny bit of flair, I created a matching envelope liner.



The latest project to be delivered was custom table numbers for Frances. Frances and her fiance Michael wanted to incorporate pictures of themselves growing up as part of their table numbers. Frances emailed her photos to me and I created a simple design. They had a whopping 17 tables! So, this could probably be classified as a medium-sized project. I didn't want to bombard this post with too many photos.






That was a preview of my small projects. I'll be debuting the two invite suites shortly.

Cherry Blossoms everywhere!

This is Scott & Aileen. Photo by Bumatay Studio

Aileen and I started chatting when she asked me about the printer who printed my Wedding invitations. In the course of our conversation, I offered to design her invites. They are having their wedding at the chic Shutters-on-the-Beach Hotel in Santa Monica.

Her requests were for me to use pink, chocolate brown, and a touch of sage green... oh and lest I forget... use cherry blossoms. I bought some clip art, which I restyled in Illustrator.

Here is the final product.
Photos have been adjusted for privacy.

Outer Envelope with design
(Due to technical difficulties, I was only able to Gocco a few envelopes)

Invite Enclosure tied with Light Pink Fabric Cording

The Big Reveal

Close up of Invite


Overview of Invite Suite

Close-up of RSVP with Gocco'ed Envelope

Close-up of Directions Card

What's Black, Yellow, and White?

Besides bees and Georgia Tech fans, shower invites come in black, yellow, and white.

Wendy's Maid of Honor, Janice contacted me about designing Wendy's Bridal Shower Invites. She had two requests. They were to use damask and the color scheme mentioned above. Here's what I came up with.

I designed the address and mailing labels using a damask pattern that I bought and manipulated.

Close-up of Mailing Label

Janice thought it would be a great idea to stamp emboss the back of the envelope.
Stamp courtesy of Jordana.

I designed this enclosure and printed the damask pattern on my inkjet printer.
We added a thick grosgrain ribbon to add more texture.

Enclosure with Invite Insert.
Actual Insert has a thin grosgrain ribbon running through the hole.

Close-up of Invite to show paper texture and ribbon.

These invites were quite labor-intensive. Thankfully, Janice called for some back-up and we had an assembly party at her house. Special Thanks to Debra, Jordana, and Janice for helping me put these together.

Something NOT on the registry

My friend Jeannette's wedding is this weekend. Jeannette and I met on the Knot last summer. We bonded over stories involving our equally quirky families and jaunts to L.A. Flowermart. She is also my first design client that wasn't a family member or part of my inner circle. She and her fiance, Matt, opted not to register for gifts. This gave me a golden opportunity to design and make a gift.

Working with paper is my forte. As such, I decided to create a guest book for them. I bought an album kit from Paper Source and went to work. I'd like to say that this project was a walk in the park. In actuality it was A LOT more work than I had anticipated. I purchased the art from a website and manipulated it to fit my needs. The motif matched their wedding stationery, which I will post later. This was the easy part.

My original plan was to transfer the design to fabric and use the fabric as the book's cover. This was a disaster. The image didn't transfer as well as I would have liked. The fabric did not adhere as well as I would have liked. The fabric was so thick that it required a disgusting amount of glue. This, in turn, caused the covers to buckle. Long story short. The finished product looked like a child's art project gone very, very bad. Thankfully, I did not take any photos of this pathetic attempt.

Not to be deterred, I went back to Paper Source and bought another album kit and some paper. I decided to skip the fabric and stick to what I work with best - paper. I printed the design on Luxe paper. Assembly went much better this time. As persevering as I am, I wasn't sure I could buy another kit and start over yet again. I am quite pleased with the finished product.

Here are photos of the finished product:

Progress with my evvvillll plans

This is Wendy & Lior. They are aiding and abetting in my eevvillll plan.Photo by Kim Fox Photography

I met Wendy through the Knot. We've become friends over the last couple of months. So, when she asked me to design her wedding invitation suite, I was honored. Wendy only had a few stipulations:
1. Invites had to have a modern feel
2. Incorporate a "Swirly Pattern"
3. Simple enough for her to Gocco print and DIY at home

I drew some of my inspiration from her wedding venue - Villa de la Vina in Malibu.
Here are some pics of her venue:


We ran into a few production hiccups. Because of that, her invites have had several incarnations. Thankfully, we got the kinks worked out. I helped assemble these invites.
Here is the finished product:

***Personal info has been removed to protect privacy.

Thank you Wendy & Lior for being among my first clients!

I have another invite suite to blog about, but I'll wait until after their wedding to post. Don't worry, JV...I didn't forget about your invites;)

Uncensored Thought

There are moments upon moments where I really could just hand little cards like this out.

I love my husband, but sometimes the ideas he comes up with deserve a card like this. I won't enumerated some of his fanciful ideas. I'll just say it takes all that I have to be diplomatic and tactful sometimes. I don't think it would be in my best interests to be mean to my husband all the time.

I would also love to use this card for some of the design requests I receive.

• 100 custom invites for $100 in a week? Hand the card. Here's your answer.
• Tags for baby shower favors tomorrow? Hand the card. Here's your answer.
• Brochure design with photo retouching for $150? Hand the card. Here's your answer.

It would be so sweet! Alas, it would probably be a poor business practice.

I would love to use this one for some people at work. There are some people that I work with that are incredible. They are talented and diligent. I admire them because some have long commutes and families that they care for. Then, there are the others. There is a small contingent that just the littlest amount of overtime or extra work causes them to whine louder than spoiled 4-year-olds at a toy store. Or, they expect to be patted on the back and given medals. It's aggravating. For them, I offer this card.

I think these would make life THAT much easier. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to continue to hone my diplomacy and sensitivity. I might just buy these cards and keep them in my desk drawer... just in case.