art deco table numbers

here's another piece of my in-laws wedding that i created. the look of the wedding was art deco inspired. on natural colored tags i hand lettered the table numbers with my micron pens. i used my light table to help me line up each tag so they came out similar and the numbers were relatively centered. and then each card got a unique art deco inspired doodle frame. i really enjoyed making these and love how they turned out. they were then hung on colored mason jars filled with big flowers (i don't know what any flower types are named, but they were pretty) along with pom pom flowers that sarah created.

new nephew gift set #2

a couple weeks ago i showed you a very hungry caterpillar sleep sack and cap that i made for my new nephew: http://boogiebeans.blogspot.com/2015/01/new-nephew-gift-1-very-hungry.html and here's the set i gave when he was actually born. i hand lettering and screenprinted 3 onesies for him. we're in ohio hence the locally grown design: i think that's my favorite one. although i thought i was pretty funny making the "full of shits and giggles" - haha get it? babies are full of shits and giggles :) and then there's the "i wake up awesome" which is just fun (it could have printed better; the fine lines didn't work great, but i still like the design.) and i made him another crocheted cap - this one is sized for a one year old though so he can get to it when he's bigger. i thought it was a fun hat, but let me tell you before you venture into making one that those fringe are a pain in the ass. they aren't hard to do, but they took forfreakingever. i seriously almost gave up several times because i just did not enjoy making the mohawk part. but i did it, it's cute, and i added one of those awesome "this took forever" labels on the inside. i love those labels (got them on etsy) and i am going to be adding them to almost everything from now on :)

2015 calendar tea towel

the spoonflower annual tea towel calendar contest just finished this week. this was my entry for this year. i went with an all hand lettered design. the top three images above are the finished linen-cotton blend tea towel and the last image is the original pen on paper sketch. the pink was actually a neon coral color, but didn't transfer well with scanning or photos (good to know.) and i went with a linear calendar for this design - which i thought was fun. anyways, i like it and you can buy the fabric here: http://www.spoonflower.com/designs/3585380

month of drawing: week 2

for week 2 of the spoonflower month of drawing challenge the main theme was lettering. you still got a daily prompt of inspiration, but they were all meant to have lettering incorporated in them. i love lettering, so this was my favorite week i think. i like most of what i made this week too. i already have digitized the dreamers of dreams one to use on a sleep mask design (i'm working on a whole set of lettering designed sleep mask fabric.) i love the dreamers one, but my favorites out of this group are the lemon and the toast. the "that's my jam" cracks me up every time i look at it - i love having these in a sketchbook, but i might have to recreate a couple of these in order to frame.

more ampersands

i've been busy doing all sorts of things and a lot of things i just can't post about - they'll be presents or they're not done and so forth. so instead of something brand new, here's some more ampersands that i've been making (and my favorite coffee mug in the corner.) my first ampersand mold broke - the top hole ripped out of the mold. you can see a few ampersands in the picture where the top hole is filled in. i got a few made that way and painted in that top piece - i like the look. and i made a new mold. this one is a double mold so i can make twice as many, but it didn't turn out quite as deep. they're still cool, but not quite as sturdy as the original set. but they still stand and they can hang out on a shelf or desk just fine. i tried some different colors and paints this time, but mostly had some yellow orders to fill. the black one is actually plastidip, which i've been wanting to play with but hadn't gotten around to it. i don't have one pictured here that i made completely black with plastidip (by accident.) i was dipping that one and dropped it so i went all in and covered the whole thing in black. also you can't really see the one with the top hole painted in red (actually it's glitter red) has the back section (not bottom) dipped in red which i think turned out nice - that's the one i kept for myself and is sitting on my shelf.

Amazeballs

i'm in the lettering group at work and we have three sketchbooks that we've started passing around the group. it's always fun to see what everyone has created. i originally had planned on filling two pages before we met again, but alas i only had time to fit in one page (but i'm sure i will get another one of the notebooks next meeting and i'll add something to that.) so i sketched "amazeballs" (that's just fun to say, don't you think?) i like it; i wish i had spaced the letters better, but when you're drawing ink to paper you don't really get the option to redo or ctrl+z.

wine bag stamps

my husband makes wine almost every year, so we gift a lot of wine. for some reason we never had a stock of wine bags on hand. and to be frank, there aren't a lot of wine bags out there that i like. so i bought a bunch of plain kraft paper wine bags and decided to design some stamps to personalize them. so i sketched out two designs: "cheers!" for the anyone wine gift; and "screw it" for a funny, edgier gift. i drew them out on paper, scanned them in to the computer, cleaned them up and then ordered a couple of stamps. they turned out great and now anytime we go to gift some wine i'm ready with a unique bag.

Happy Camper

i didn't get around to making my usual sugar lake shirts this year, so i went with camping shirts for a mini-birthday party theme. i hand lettered happy camper on some sketch paper, scanned it in and digitized it. i then printed it out on a transparency and created a screen of it. i made three different kinds of happy camper shirts/sweatshirts: plain black on grey shirts; white flocking on dark grey; and a black glitter on heather grey sweatshirts (for alex and i.) this was my first time experimenting with flocking and with glitter. in case you don't know what flocking is, it's that fuzzy stuff you find on old-school shirts and some greeting cards. so for both the glitter and the flocking you actually screen print glue instead of ink. with the glitter you then load on the fine glitter and let it fully dry; then shake off the extra glitter and iron to set. with the flocking you put on your sheet of flocking material, iron it right away; let that cool and then peel off the flocking sheet to reveal your design. both the glitter and the flocking have survived machine washing and still look good.

bachelorette and bachelor invites

i don't think i've shared these yet...so here are the invites to both the bachelorette party and the bachelor party. everything hand lettered and doodled. i love the envelopes, the iridescent vellum for the girls and the black vellum for the boys paired with flower seed packet stamps on the girls and johnny cash stamps on the boys. and silver hilighter worked on both envelopes. the bachelorette party was a day at the spa followed by pizza and a movie. the bachelor party was a dinner at an irish pub.

shower invites

here's another piece of the hand lettering set i created for the wedding. this is the bridal shower invite. i had a little bit of a geometric theme happening for this party, but i created the hand lettering on every piece of the wedding. and these irridescent vellum envelopes we found at hollo's are just beautiful (although a bit difficult to find a pen that works well  on them.) and again we carried the color theme into the shower as well, so the teal paper was a nice way to do that.

the save-the-dates

seems like forever ago now, but the first thing i created for the wedding were the save the date postcards. i lettered and drew all the designs by hand. i printed and cut all of them. they went out as postcards so they got pretty dirty in the mailing system, but that just adds charm. we did have problems with the first paper we chose - it was an irridescent laser paper, that did not seem to like being printed on at all! even thru a laser printer the ink was rubbing off - that was upsetting. so we redid on white paper, but they got the job done.

table numbers

i don't have a picture of the final table centerpieces, but here are the number tags i hand lettered. the tags are about 3 inches wide and we got those at hollo's papercraft (love that place.) each one is unique and hand lettered with a black micron pen (probably size 02 or 03, i don't remember.) i think i averaged one tag a night. these tags were then tied with teal and white twine to a tinted mason jar filled with a very large white hydrangea - they looked fabulous. with the table number mason jars were little milk jars in black carriers filled with colorful yarn pom pom flowers that sarah made. hopefully the photographer took pictures of the table set up so i can show those later.