Another gift not on the registry

These are my friends Ali & Bryan. They are Ali and Bryan of Ragtime fame.
Ali is part of the monthly diner's club (Non-knot GTG). Her wedding is the weekend. Coincidentally, the same day as Wendy's. As a wedding gift, I offered to create her escort cards and table numbers. It was a bit of a challenge because they had a monogram that a friend of theirs had designed.

My instructions were to create something modern and traditional AND match their existing monogram. This is what I came up with.

Escort Cards

Table Number & Escort Cards

The photos do not give really give a true impression of the cards. Because this project was a gift, I used some really great papers. Names were printed on Quartz Stardream and adhered to Blush Luxe Cardstock. I had a lot of fun creating these. Ali's wedding colors are very similar to my own.

From the reaction I got when I delivered these, they both really liked the finished product. They're so sweet. They generously gave me a giftcard to CPK. It was not necessary. Although, it is much appreciated. I thank them as does Rob - my perpetually hungry hubby.

More design goodness to come. Stay tuned!

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:

Dear Santa

Image from Stock Exchange

Dear Santa,

I've been a good girl or a relatively good girl this year. It's been a long time since I've gotten a big ticket Christmas gift. I know that I got a lot of really cool and expensive Wedding gifts this year, but I had to share those with Rob. I'm a greedy girl and would love to have a gift all to myself.

To help in your selection process, please see the slideshow below. There are pictures and everything of items I would love to receive. If you could bring me the new iMac or the Nikon camera, you can skip the rest of the list. I don't need to have it all. My greed does have its limits.

Thanks for your time and hope to see a gift under my tree.

Your pal,
Anne

Wish List by annekdesigner

It's that time of the year

I can't believe it is December already. I love this time of year. What can I say? I am a sap. I have always associated this time of year with fond memories.

As I mentioned previously, our holiday season started with Black Friday shopping. As the oldest, I helped my mom with the rest of the decorating, shopping, and gift wrapping. I loved the bonding time. My mom has always been a career woman. This made one-on-one time with her very limited. The holidays afforded me time with my mom. It's one of the things that I miss now that I live so far from her.

Another aspect of the holidays that I love is gift-giving. I love getting gifts, but I love giving them even more. I enjoy finding little gems for the people on my list and their reactions when they open the gifts. For a short time, the shopping frenzy that takes place here in L.A. ruined my gift-giving delight. You haven't seen anything until you try shopping out here. The pushing, the shoving, the rudeness are unprecedented.

Thankfully, I have found a workaround. I now buy gifts online. This year I am being extra sporting, I am striving to buy mostly handmade gifts. No macramé or bead bracelets. I would post photos of my finds, but it will have to wait until after the holidays. It'll be good I promise. Until then, here's an article about buying handmade gifts.

Black Friday

For the fourth year in a row, I have skipped the shopping frenzy known as "Black Friday". While growing up, it was considered a sport by my family. My mother would have us scour the sales papers and we would come up with a "plan of attack". Our clothes would be laid out the night before. The woman was a machine. She would have us up promptly at 4 am with breakfast already on the table. To some this may be considered a smaller form of child abuse. To us, it was fun. It was the one time that we were ALLOWED to run around the store and grab what we were assigned to pick it up. What kid wouldn't want that? It was a weird form of family bonding. My mother had our undivided attention while we stood in line. She would subtly pick our brains as to what each of us wanted for Christmas. The woman was good.

Flash forward several years. I now live in Los Angeles which is considered a major shopping mecca. I tried "Black Friday" shopping with my cousin. I have never seen pushing shoving and maneuvering quite like that. These people were professionals! The thrill was gone. It was then that I realized that I was completely out of my league. As a realist, I decided that standing in line for $5 DVDs was not worth it for me. I have respectfully chosen not to participate.

As a result, I have become an online shopper. Last year I bought 50% of my gifts online. This year, I intend to buy 75% of my gifts online. To add to the challenge, I am attempting to buy mostly handmade gifts. Handmade gifts no longer mean ugly sweaters made by your Aunt. With sites like Etsy, unique and well-made handmade gifts are much more accessible. I plan to post my finds. We'll see how this goes...