crafty

Dec182010

Chocolate Favors!

OK, so favors. They’re not necessary, but I still think they’re adorable. No, i’m not talking about some little trinket our guests will throw in a drawer, stick on a shelf or throw away… I’m talking about food! More specifically, chocolate Kisses!

Yep, I decided on Kisses bc they’re a lot bigger than M&Ms and they come wrapped. I don’t really want to be touching food people are going to be eating.

Here’s my next choice… the packaging. Do I buy the 2x2x2 boxes and decorate them, or make boxes? Tonight at the bookstore, I was flipping through one of Martha Stewart’s big books of crafts and found a super cute origami candy dish.

So of course, I had to rip a piece of paper out of my little notebook and make one…

Background removed in PhotoShop

I was digging around online to find out the size of standard origami paper, which seems to come in a huge variety of sizes, and found the image below. It’s made of felt sewn together in 4 spots and might just be easier to make. If I find a rotary cutter and a thick mat, I can cut big felt pieces down to size.

Another option, made of felt

The thing with the paper dishes, is I’d buy a bunch of 12×12 scrapbook paper and cut them all down to 6×6. I’m fairly sure it could work.

The other option is to buy some 2x2x2 cardboard boxes and twine to tie them shut. The paper and felt boxes have that personal DIY touch, whereas the boxes have none. Hmm… What to do? What to do?

What would you do?

Dec122010

Thank You Notes Revealed

I totally forgot to post this! About a week or so ago, I ordered our Thank You notes from OvernightPrints. For those curious, I designed them in PhotoShop CS4 using their basic guidelines to ensure everything stayed in the printing lines, popped it onto their system and boom, ordered! One of the main reasons why I love OvernightPrints over VistaPrint is they don’t charge an upload fee.

After finally deciding to go with a horizontal photo, I messed with different fonts, wording, and layouts. In the end, it was down to 5 pictures. We chose the following picture and simply Thank You in a beautiful script font…

And of course gave credit to our fabulous photographers, Emeric Photography on the back of the card. I just love the blue, but maybe I’m biased…

Dec062010

Post-Wedding Update Type Post (Including TTD Pictures!)

Whoops! Had that OvernightPrints link all wrong! My bad.

Wow, has it really been 3 days since I last posted? Craziness!

This weekend has been really productive for me in terms of post-wedding stuff. And considering that we bought ourselves a Hanukkah/ early Christmas Wii, that’s really saying something!

Let’s see, in the last 5 days I…

+ordered our marriage certificate
+received our CD of Trash the Dress pictures from the amazingly talented Emeric Photography
+ordered our holiday cards (using an Emeric picture) from Shutterfly
+wrote, completed, changed, and ordered our holiday newsletter from Vistaprint
+ordered our Thank You cards (also using an Emeric picture) from OvernightPrints
+just finished and ordered our 2nd Inkubook that we won in the giveaway (all Emeric pictures)
+played lots and lots of Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga
+spent loads of time with my amazing hubby
+began knitting a pair of socks for a test knit

You want to see some of them, right? Seriously, I am in love with these pictures!

Using my Ebates account for Shutterfly, OvernightPrints, and Vistaprint, I am expecting a nice big fat refund check soon. I will never again shop online without first checking there to see what rebates I’ll get. It’s like the best “discount” ever! For OvernightPrints, I already had a coupon (HOLIDAY) for 50% off the cards, so not only was my order discounted, but I’m getting cash back. Yes, I’m cheap like that.

Most of our stuff was dependent on getting the CD, which is why so much happened so quickly. I had everything all laid out and just waiting for the picture. Of course, even then, I was still popping different pictures into the layouts.

This post is not sponsored by any company, I just happen to love Ebates and online shopping. <3

Sep122010

Cupcakes… Check!

As a follow up to the Help Us Pick Flavors, Please! post, I ordered the cupcakes! As a reminder, we’re having a 6″ cake to use for cake cutting pictures and a few dozen mini cupcakes.

Our 6″ cake will be Red Carpet a la “honey, which was your favorite Retro flavor?” “red [carpet], get that as the cake”

Red Carpet

There will be 3 dozen mini cupcakes as we’re having at most 7 guests. Initially I wanted 4 dozen, but as is, each person will be able to eat or take home 4 minis. But anyhow, we’re having 1 dozen cinnamon toast, 1 dozen pink lemonade, and 1 dozen milk and cookies. I contemplated the final dozen being red carpet, but Kari (one of the FAB owners) said definitely milk and cookies. She sold me with “it has the cutest little cookie on top” – oh yes, tiny cookies make me melt.

Cinnamon Toast	Pink Lemonade	Milk & Cookies
Above pictures are from Retro Bakery‘s website

So picture these all set up on our little cupcake tower. It’s being painted at the moment. I bought a disposable one at Wal-mart and am painting it gold to match our cake topper. And by the way, glossy shine aside, it’s finished!

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.

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

Jul262010

Canvas “Mosaic” Guestbook Idea

As seen in one of my latest posts, I am trying to think outside of the very popular wedding box. As I was tooling around on one of my favorite craft sites (Save-On-Crafts) for receptions ideas, I had a new idea. Rather than 1 or 2 16×20 canvases for guests to sign, the new idea is a lot of smaller canvases.

Picture a bunch of 6×6, 8×8, and 10×10 canvases, stacks of markers, colored pencils and Sharpies. Each couple or family can take a small chunk of canvas and draw or write us a note on it. I’m debating actually blocking off sections of each canvas, but if they’re not all used, it might look funny.

My initial idea is to hang them all on the little wall in our dining room over the pass-through from the kitchen surrounding our ketubah. Tonight I purchased a pack of 3 8×10 canvases to test with a variety of mediums to see which looks the best, doesn’t bleed or look weird on canvas.

This is absolutely not drawn to scale, but something like this is what I’m picturing:

What do you think?

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