Aug252010

Playing the 30 Days Meme Game

Have y’all heard about the 30 day blog meme? I’m giving in and playing along… I saw this particular version on Jackie’s livejournal and think it’s a better fit than the music or favorite things versions.

Here’s the list of topics. Stay tuned for Day 1 to be posted a little later. If my math is correct, this will finish up roughly 2 weeks before our wedding, so it’ll be a nice little segue into all the fun of Vegas. =D

Day 01 – Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – Your music
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your hobbies
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A precious item
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – An inspiration
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – Your mode of transportation
Day 14 – Where you live
Day 15 – Something you love about yourself
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – Your morning routine
Day 21 – Your job and/or schooling
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – Your sleeping habits
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your favorite foods/drinks
Day 30 – Your aspirations

Aug242010

August 24 TMW Post

Tweet: i’m having a major crisis of uniqueness.. my name goes from being 100% unique to utterly common in 50 days. 100s have my married name..

So, @celestialaxis and I were discussing this the other day. My name is currently 100% unique. I’ve checked. If you google my name, every result will be me. When I googled my married name, I found 38,100 results of hundreds of different people. Do you know how horrible that is? Yes, I am taking my fiancé’s last name. No, I do not want to hyphenate. Basically, I’m having a crisis of my identity. But no, not an identity crisis. I know who I am.. but, well, you know what I mean. I will become Mrs. Rebecca Maiden-name Married-name in a mere 47 days.

A big part of this crisis stemmed from my latest business plan. I am crafty (hello DIY bride!) and wanted to revamp my etsy storefront. Along with that revamping, I was creating new business cards for myself. Up until now, I never gave my personal brand a second thought. Since the moment I was born, I was MsRIB. My name has special meanings to me, not because I am the last of the line (I have 2 brothers) but because my father named me after himself. He signs his artwork MrRIB. MrsRBF doesn’t have the same ring to it. By the way, I’m not changing my twitter name.

Did you/ are you changing your name after marriage?

Aug222010

Busy Week in Review

Hello friends!

There is so much going on these days… and by so much, I mean wedding/ reception DIY projects, uploading listings to my etsy site, revamping my website, tweaking my business cards (and trying to find the money to pay for them), making jewelry, browsing online for jewelry findings, etc etc etc.

So yeah, DIY projects: I’m trying to make jewelry to wear for the wedding, but the beads I have at home are slightly lacking. I’ve been scouring several websites (Beadaholique, Fire Mountain Gems) for new beads, Swarovski pearls, and findings for both my personal jewelry and also for stuff to post to Etsy.

Personal Picture

Also, I’m now contemplating these adorable favors, alligator cookie cutters! Or rather, buying these and making them into favors for Vegas. I am currently obsessed with baking and, well, I am a Gator for life. Perfect, eh? After posting them on Twitter, my friend suggested mini alligator candy molds. That might make it as Miami favors: little chocolates. Although, the be fair, Steve has already said he wants to do M&M’s for the Miami favors.

Image source

I did a test run with the canvas boards I bought. Using BIC-MarkIt markers and drawing right on the untreated (by me) canvas was perfect. It looks like I’ll be taking an 8×10 canvas board with the bag of markers to Vegas. I feel so good knowing that at least this part has been resolved. And since it’s 8×10, it’s easy to frame.. yay!

Personal photo

Right now my Etsy site only has 2 items posted. It will, eventually, have a lot more. I’m kinda bummed that Etsy changed up their site design since now my profile, with a whole lot more information than before, only shows a few lines. Boo!

Wanna see my full profile? I thought so…

Hello and Welcome!

I am a graphic designer and recent bride.

As a designer, I thrive on unique and creative to market my business. I create custom business cards (both standard 3.5″x2″ and square 2″x2″ or 2.25″x2.25″), print and web logos, letterhead, and just about anything else you can dream up.

As a recent bride, I struggled to find the perfect paper products for our wedding and decided to create my own. Our package included announcement cards, reception invitations and RSVP cards, along with Photo upload cards. Check out all the sample images in this shop to get an idea of what I can make for you.

Also, I was never truly satisfied with the necklace, bracelet and earring sets I found online, and so I made my own. I have several individual pieces and sets available for purchase. I use all sorts of materials and can easily get whatever your vision requires.

Along with the paper products, I designed several stamps, cupcake flags, water bottle logos, favor bag logos for iron-on transfers, and much more.

Do you have a specific vision for your wedding or special event?
Does your business need branding or re-branding?
Custom orders are always welcome.

Cheers!
Becca

You’d be intrigued to buy from me, right? What other design products would you want to see posted?

Aug172010

August 17 TMW Post

Tweet: our ketubah wording has been finalized! now we need to create a design… oops #wedding

Tweet: ahhhhh our ketubah [text] has arrived! thank you thank you thank you to the lovely & uber talented @swoonoverit!

Way back in November, we started talking about making our own ketubah. If you’ve seen the prices being charged for even a very basic ketubah, you’d understand why. Anyhow, we tossed around the idea of drawing our own for a while and that’s when I contacted my amazingly talented twitter friend and calligrapher, Amanda. She and I went back and forth for several months over the fonts and the text and finally I got a sample. And then I got major goosebumps and chills. Seriously… this thing is REAL! Here’s a totally artsy pic of it, funky enough that you can’t really read it. I’ll save that for the final version. =D

Personal pic

For the uninformed, a ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract. As soon as it is signed by all 5 people, the couple is officially married. A lot of Jewish couples sign their ketubah’s just prior to the actual ceremony, making it more of a formality than anything. Our ketubah is completely in English, which is more common these days. My parents is in half Hebrew, half English.

So there’s your Jewish lesson for the day!

Tweet: Too big? Kinda heavy but I don’t care! 🙂 #weddingflowers http://twitpic.com/2euho8

Tweet: Up close for color accuracy #weddingflowers http://twitpic.com/2euhtf

Personal pictures

This one has orange/ red orchids, white miniature calla lilies, grass “filler” and stephanotis flowers. So basically my bouquet meaning is love, beauty, magnificent beauty, and marital happiness. There’s lots of beauty here apparently.

For the time being, the stems are tightly wrapped with green floral tape. However, mine must be super old since its way less “tape” and way more “green stretchy stuff” and is pinned around the stems. I cannot seem to find the original blue ribbon or sheer star ribbon (no surprise, I’ve moved 3 times since making the mock up) so for now, it’s unwrapped. Unless I buy more ribbon, I’ll likely use the 1″ orange and 5/8″ blue ribbon that I purchased a few months ago. My thinking, to keep the symmetry, is to sew the blue onto the orange and then wrap it. Or, wrap the orange and crisscross the blue around it and tie at the top with the memory lockets.

Aug142010

Flowers… aka my Bouquet

***Finally fixed the images.. sorry!***

Okie dokie… Here is what I put together this afternoon. Well, around baking Red Velvet Cake Balls, Key Lime pie and frying up some Homemade Potato Chips (All the recipes and more are listed here.)

Essentially I quadrupled the sample bridesmaid bouquet. The mock up had 1 stem of the orchids, 2 bunches of calla lilies and a bunch of the Stephanotis’ shoved around. This one has 4 orchid stems, 5 calla lilies, a whole bunch of the Stephanotis stems and a bunch of the grass.

For the time being, the stems are tightly wrapped with green floral tape. However, mine must be super old since it’s way less “tape” and way more “green stretchy stuff” and is pinned around the stems. I cannot seem to find the original blue ribbon or sheer star ribbon (no surprise, I’ve moved 3 times since making the mock up) so for now, it’s unwrapped. Unless I buy more ribbon, I’ll likely use the 1″ orange and 5/8″ blue ribbon that I purchased a few months ago. My thinking, to keep the symmetry, is to sew the blue onto the orange and then wrap it. Or, wrap the orange and crisscross the blue around it and tie at the top with the memory lockets.

Only problem is I must be mental as I cannot find the lockets I could’ve sworn I bought in Michaels several months ago. I guess I’ll be buying some now. My luck? I’ll find the ones I bought in a year or so cuz that’s how I roll.

So……….. what do you think?

Both are personal pictures

Aug132010

Flowers and Favors

With t-minus 56 days until we leave for Vegas and 58 days until the wedding, it’s probably time to start working on stuff to take, right? Yeah, me too. This weekend I’m planning on working on my bouquet and the welcome bags… and hopefully embossing all the envelopes for the reception.

Bouquet

This is my initial mock-up thrown together sometime last year and was for the bridesmaids when we were still having a bridal party. Since I purchased enough for 3 bridesmaids and my own, larger bouquet, I have quite a few to work with to make mine a lot fuller. This bouquet is wrapped with a royal blue ribbon then overwrapped with a translucent white ribbon with silver stars. I might switch it up to the orange and blue ribbons. Or even just the blue ribbon and use the orange to hang my memory lockets from. My what?

Personal picture

Guest bags

I am planning on buying 14″x16″ canvas totes from Cheap Totes and using the iron-on transfer paper I already purchased, putting the graphic below onto it to stuff with goodies for our Vegas attendees. Since I don’t have the bags yet… well or a printer for that matter… umm, OK not much I can do with this project.

In the bags, I’m planning on putting aluminum water bottle, deck of cards, candy, chips, gum, aspirin, transportation maps… what else do you suggest?

Actually, do you have a good printer recommendation for me? It needs to have wifi capabilities since I have a very mobile laptop. If I can buy one this weekend, then I’ll be working on printing this stuff.

The bag: source

Personal picture

Aug132010

Craigslist Makes Me Happy

I posted a few ads on Craigslist South Florida with a simple request and a decent pay range. I felt I would be fortunate to receive 2 or 3 responses to it. 9 hours after posting, I am up to 14 responses. Sure, not all of them are what I am looking for and some are way out of our price range, but they are all insanely talented. Sometimes I forget how talented people are. I think I take for granted that I live in (ok outside of) a bustling metropolis chock full of insanely talented and vibrant people.

Sure, I could have scoured CL for what I am looking for and taken a lot of time to muddle through it, contacting who I was interested in… but I took the easy way out and posted ads. And I couldn’t be happier with the outcome!

I’ll keep you posted on how these pan out.

Aug112010

Do you Groupon?

If you like photo books like me, you aren’t going to want to miss this one! The deal of the day for Toledo, OH (yes, I went digging to find this deal) is $25 for $100 worth of photo books from Picaboo. Seriously, I just looked at their prices and they consistently have good reviews, so I snatched up my Groupon deal for the day. Heck yeah.

Do you want the link? I’m sure you do! I won’t make you search all of Groupon like I did, so here it is: $25 for $100, Picaboo

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