The Gender Reveal - New Summer Arrivals!

We have a couple new arrivals to the Etsy shop, just in time for summer parties!

I had fun breaking out the watercolors for the quintessentially summer popsicle invite. The second features the most popular reveal method: the cupcake. Both are themed with The Sweetest Surprise.

The Sweetest Surprise Gender Reveal Party Printable Digital Invitation - Popsicle

Gender Reveal Party Printable Digital Invitation - Cupcake Surprise

Head on over to the official Gender Reveal shop to see all of the invitations we offer. Or find more sweetest surprise celebration inspiration at the most obsessive and rewarding site, Pinterest!

Pinwheel Baby Shower

Almost one month ago we held a baby shower at work for one of my good friends, Megan, who is due any day (I'm constantly jumping at any noise my phone makes to see if her little cupcake is here). Her shower didn't have a theme per se, but it was one of my favorite to plan and coordinate.

Look at the cute, happy couple, they'll make an adorable baby!

We tried to follow an "on-a-stick" theme for the food with Dark Chocolate dipped cheesecake lollipops, cherry pie on a stick (made by a co-worker, how clever?), and cupcakes adorned with pinwheels, you can see our tiny wind farm in the background with all those pinwheel cupcakes.

Guests enjoying the food on a stick and our blue and green poofs.

Me, our guest of honor, and Lindsay, another host; all coordinated with the party colors! (surprise, surprise)

A card attendees filled out with their guesses for the birthday of baby boy Langford. I'm guessing they're little cupcake will arrive very soon...

It's that time of year... cookie time!

Invitations are out for our 3rd annual cookie party! I was really happy with the invites this year, I've wanted to do something more extravagant the past couple of years, but I always have a hard time pulling it off in time. This year the invitations came with a cute little cookie cutter and multi-page invitation all wrapped up with bakery thread!







After last year's huge extravaganza, we unfortunately had to cut back on the guest list. There just isn't enough room in our tiny little apartment. It should be fun regardless! We're even having a cookie decorating context with prizes!

Wedding Invitations for friends!

I wanted to share some wedding invitations that I've been working on for friends. They're having a garden wedding next May and wanted a casual, fun look. I came up with four different options based on their color palette and wedding elements. I had so much fun working on these invitations, I can't wait to refine them even more and work on the rest of the wedding elements!

Option 1: Casual

Option 2: Trendy

(folded, no envelope)
Option 3: Formal
Option 4: Modern Citrus

(they may be using citrus fruits in their floral arrangements)

Jae's Bridal Shower

Speaking of weddings... we had a bridal shower for one of my co-workers on Wednesday to celebrate her up-coming union. This may have been my favorite shower so far! Jae made it easy on us and had originally created two color palettes for her wedding; one with soft pinks & golds, the other with pinks & greens. She decided to use the pink & gold for her wedding and we used the pink & green palette for the shower! Jae had also originally intended on using a bird motif in her wedding, but wasn't able to, so we picked up that theme and I created some "Love Birds" for her shower.

Above the beautiful bride with her traditional bridal shower bow bouquet to use during her rehearsal, the delicious party spread, flower decorations Dayle and I made, and the gift table with the laser-cut bird & heart strings. So pretty in pink!

Wedding Season is here!

If I counted right, 8 of my friends got engaged in the past 4 weeks. Eight! Right now we're in the midst of wedding season and I can't seem to tear myself away from all the eye candy I've been seeing on blogs lately. My co-worker gave me a link to a great wedding site and it's snow-balled from there... I usually try to stay away from dreaming about weddings (it's so cliche), but I'm using the excuse that it's "research for friend's weddings." So for all you newly-engaged out there, here's the wedding sites I've been gushing over:


The circus-themed wedding my be my favorite, so far, check out the site for more photos. It featurs lots of real weddings, with many unique & DIY solutions: www.oncewed.com

The name says it all, if you want to DIY: www.i-do-it-yourself.com

Of course, any list would not be complete without Martha's wedding blog.

Featuring unique or themed weddings: greenweddingshoes.blogspot.com

Showcasing real weddings: www.stylemepretty.com

Maybe not the most glamorous, but it's well... practical: www.apracticalwedding.com

And for the non-traditional ladies out there... offbeatbride.com

Enjoy!

'Lil Monkey Baby Shower

Images on mood-board are from Martha Stewart, Amy Atlas, and Paul Frank.

This past week we had a Banana Split baby shower to celebrate the anticipated arrival of a co-worker's baby boy. She's decorating the baby's room in a monkey-theme, so we thought a banana-split party was appropriate. I've held off on posting the mood board and other images, to keep the shower as much of a surprise as possible. The shower turned out perfect and went off without a hitch... more images from the actual shower to come soon!

The soon-to-be parents are keeping the name of the baby a big secret, so we played a guessing game with the shower attendees. We handed out cards to guess the name, date, weight, and *length of the baby.
*I put height on the actual card, but learned during the shower that this is typically known as length for babies... leave it to a non-parent to make the cards!

Guess whooo!

My manager is having a baby boy in December; so a couple co-workers and I have been working on shower themes for him. We recently sent out the above invitation for the party.

The baby bedding this super cute Silly Owl bedding, so we decided to really play up the owl theme and colors in the party. We're using lots of orange and warm gray with hits of light blue. And of course, no owl-themed party would be complete without Tootsie Pops!

Everything Leo & Amy have picked out for their baby room is super modern, so we want to carry the same simplicity through to the party. We're using the modern baby shower from Blueprint as inspiration, it's even the right colors!

Finally Finished!

I have been working on my Grandma's 85th birthday party for the longest time and we finally had enough of it planned to send invitations. I got them all sent out on Wednesday morning. Here is the final, purple and bird-loving invitation!

Weekend Projects

1. A co-worker recently recovered her chair at work with some green Amy Butler fabric and it inspired me to do the same at home. I have long-since wanted to recover my old desk chair at home, but didn't know how to go about it. I had some Amy Butler fabric laying around that I didn't know what to do with, so I decided this would be the perfect use. Using a rubber dishwashing scrapper I tucked the fabric into the rim of the chair top and bottom.

2. Printing, cutting, & embossing 250 wedding invitation for my friend, Stephanie. I'm really happy with the way they turned out. I still have some more cutting, folding, and printing to do, but I have the majority done.

3. I finally finished my letter wall art. I have been collecting and painting the letters for several months now and had them hanging on the wall in a different pattern before. I also salvaged this big corrugate pound-out from work and painted it the charcoal color, I was able to rearrange the letters and make them all fit on this piece.

4. More cupcakes! I picked up these nut cups and wanted to practice baking in them to see if it would work. I filled them 1/2 full, but next time I would make it a little more full so I can rim the frosting with decorative sugar properly.

The invitations were a big and long job, so I spread it over the entire weekend and rented Atonement and Charlie Wilson's War to help pass the time from my local Red Box. I am absolutely fascinated with the Red Box video rental system. What a great idea, a dvd vending machine and you can return the DVDs to any location! Now that I think about it, we really are getting to a less personal society starting with the invention of ATMs, to self check-out aisles, machine operated customer service systems, Red Box, etc. Also, now with e-mail, MySpace, Facebook, blogs, texting, and twitter we can keep up with our "friends" or acquaintances without ever having to talk to them, or if we do it's all digital messaging...

Freelance Mania... or should I say pro bono mania...

Last night I got a call from a family friend to present concepts on the RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Race Across Iowa) campaign for Jefferson, which is an overnight town on the race this year. I am really excited about the possibilities of this campaign, but also really nervous. I got the call on Wednesday night and I need to have concepts ready by Sunday! We are in the rough concept sketch phase, but being the over-achiever I am, I want to present more finished campaigns. I have some decent ideas, but I am finding it hard to get motivated to work on (thus me blogging!). I am working on concepting for so many campaigns right now it is a bit draining.

I was very honored to be asked to present concepts for Jefferson's RAGBRAI events. Jacque (the family friend) has also asked the two art teachers I had from elementary through high school. It's so crazy being considered on the same level as the people who started me on the very basics of art and design in my younger years! I would love to collaborate with both of my former teachers!

I am also working on Jefferson's annual Bell Tower Festival campaign, which has proven a bit more challenging in different ways than I had originally imagined. I am extremely excited to be able to help Jefferson out and (hopefully) give them a strong campaign that will create a more concise and fun image for the festival.

The Bell Tower Festival campaign is all revolving around a spray-painted look. We will use spray-paint to create the posters (above is a rough preliminary version) and stencils and spray chalk on the streets before and during the festival. The spray chalk should wash away in about 10 days. Using spray chalk would also be a really cool solution for RAGBRAI... but I don't want to be known as a one-trick pony. Because I am working on both campaigns, I am really trying to keep them unique and specific to their own needs.

I am also working on a friend's (Stephanie) wedding invitations (above are preliminary ideas). To give Stephanie & Beau the wedding invitations they deserve, I am giving them all of the design work as a wedding gift and we will make the invitations ourselves. Stephanie's colors are olive green, black, and silver as accents; she is also thinking of using decorative branches in some of the flower arrangements, hence the branch imagery in the initial invites ideas.

Whew! Thinking about all of that, on top of all of the extra projects I want to get done at my day job, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. I better get to work on something...