We went with a "Monsters, Inc" theme this year... I think. Going to toast my pumpkin seeds now! I hope this rain clears up for the trick-or-treaters to make their way down Indian Queen this evening.

As mentioned in my previous post, I created baby announcement cards for my friends' adorable new baby, Grace. I sketched the flower pattern by hand and traced and colored it with Adobe Illustrator. These flat cards were printed on matte card stock by Fireball Printing , an affordable and friendly local printer. I chose "baby pink" envelopes to match.

My great friends Heather and Mike have been two of my favorite clients to work with over the past five years. I have enjoyed designing and printing "save the date" cards for their wedding, Heather's bachelorette party invitations, announcement cards for their first house, and shower invitations and baby announcements for their new bundle of joy, Grace. Below is a photo of the "save the date" card. I used a champagne colored paper with a metallic finish as the bottom layer and printed the announcement in black ink on vellum paper. Guided by Heather's vision, I also created the illustration of her dress and his tux on hangers. The two pieces are tied together with a sheer and metallic ribbon. The supplies were purchased at Paper Presentation on 18th between 6th and 7th. Heather and I assembled these while sipping white wine and watching Pride & Prejudice (the Colin Firth version of course).

I love any excuse to make our two cats, Luna and Soli, look like best friends. What better way to bring them together than in a Halloween portrait? I used gouache paints (opaque water color) on water color paper. After scanning the painting, I used InDesign to make the layout fit to the card size. The paper purchase is the result of a fun trip to the new Paper Source store in Princeton (rumored to be opening soon in Philly, please say it is so!) and the stamps and paper were part of my (larger) purchase. I used double-stick tape to adhere the printed piece to the black card. I have found this to the best way to layer paper and avoid any nasty glue bumps. Each card made its way into an orange envelope finished with a skull and crossbones stamp. The only hard part to these was waiting for the ink from the rubber stamps to dry. I don't have much patience when it comes to getting cute cards out in the mail. Happy Halloween!

I can't believe it has been a little over a year since our wedding. I loved all the personal touches that we added to the day and I really enjoyed creating the invitations, favors, and thank you cards. I have included a few images of each piece below.   My inspiration for our invitations was the classic 1985 Merchant-Ivory movie version of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View . The display font, Delphin, and water-colored floral frame are based on the lavishly painted scene introductions in the movie.  We created a logo for our initials and used it for our wax seal and postage stamps. The gate-fold invitation also held a matching sage reply card and wine-colored reply envelope.