One of my first shower invites, the Building a Nest invitation, is still by far my most popular Etsy item.  I’ve customized that invitation suite dozens of ways over the past year, and a customer recently asked for it in yellow.  We were concerned that a pastel yellow would make the text very difficult to read, so I decided to go with a deep, rich gold.  I think it’s gorgeous – so lively and bright!

Building a Nest in Gold

The bright yellow makes this invite perfect for a boy or a girl.

This version makes me want to try out a whole range of saturated colors – wouldn’t Building a Nest look beautiful in red?  Or purple?  Royal blue?  The possibilities are endless!  And if you’re interested in your own customized version of this one, go visit my Etsy store and place an order!

Dina purchased one of my stock designs on Etsy.   These are digital designs I’ve created that allow for some customization.  It’s a budget-friendly alternative to purchasing a completely custom creation, and for some folks, it may be the perfect fit.

This is the stock design Dina chose:

A stock design from my Etsy collection. This can be customized with any text or color scheme.

In her purchase notes, she told me that she was creating a gift for a baby shower.  She wanted the file customized with the name of the baby, and instead of the wedding text on the sides, she asked for the following phrases:  “Apple of our Eye” and “Grown from Heirloom Seed.”  She also wanted a grass green and pale yellow color scheme to match the nursery.

Dina told me she was going to print it and modge podge it on the front of an old fruit crate to use for storage in the nursery, and she was going to fill it with other fruit and vegetable themed items – onesies with carrots and peas on them, a hand-knitted strawberry hat, and an Anna Banana stuffed toy.  Is that the cutest idea in the world or what?  I loved it!

Stock designs include two minor revisions once the initial proof has been sent.  Dina was happy with the first draft, but she wanted the color changed slightly on one piece of text.  No problem!  We went back and forth on that color a couple of times (and I still count that as just one revision, since it’s trying to correct the same issue) before I finally hit on the perfect shade of dusty rose for the last name.

Here’s the final product (the name has been changed to protect the innocent baby!):

The stock design, completely customized and ready to print!

Thank you, Dina!  I’m sure your gift will be a hit!  I may even have to steal your idea for one of the million baby showers I have coming up this year .

If you’re interested in working with a custom design and you have questions you want answered first, email me or convo me on Etsy!  I’ll be adding more designs to the shop periodically, so keep checking back and see if there’s anything new that calls out to you.

Amber and Chris decided to go with a full-service printed option, which included a completely custom front-and-back design, printed A2 flat cards, and color-coordinated envelopes with the return addresses pre-printed on the back flap.

As always, I came to her with two different designs – both of them incorporated Oz Farm as a central element, and I used a photo of the venue and added some mock-painting effects in Photoshop to make it fit the vintage design.

Design #1. Please ignore the error in the date (ooops!).

Design #2.

They chose Design #2!  From there, I was able to work with the design elements and fonts on the front to create a design on the back that coordinated with it.  Here’s how it ended up:

The back of the A2 card, with all of the necessary information for the guests.

We decided to do an envelope in a coordinating color, and I found this gorgeous sky blue envelope that matched the exterior light blue border perfectly!  It’s shown in the picture of the printed product below – minus the pre-printed return address, which has been omitted for privacy reasons.

The printed card, front and back, with the coordinating envelope.

Amber and Chris, it was so fun creating this for you!  I wish you all the best in the upcoming year as you plan your wedding!

Since the SLCs are sort of like mini-schools that operate under the umbrella of the larger school and campus, the logos should have some unifying elements and some elements that set them apart from each other.  Each should reflect the SLC’s theme and course of study.

So, given these overall guidelines, I set out to create four distinct logos, one for each of the following SLCs:

• SHAPS – Sports medicine, Health, And Public Service
• ACCER – Architecture, Construction, Computers, Engineering, Robotics
• CALS – Creative Arts and Liberal Studies
• Green House – for incoming Freshmen students

I unified the designs by housing each one inside a giant “G” (for Gardena) and by keeping the outer ring of text and color the same.  Within that outer frame, each design reflects the unique offerings of that SLC.  Here’s what I put together:

Logo design for SHAPS; I incorporated the caduceus for Sports Medicine/Health and the scales for Public Service.

Logo Design for ACCER - the gears, ruler, and light bulb can all be relevant in the different fields of Architecture, Construction, Computers, Engineering, and Robotics.

Logo Design for CALS - since this SLC also includes two smaller SLCs (AME and SCIBA), I listed those on the pages of the open book.

Logo Design for Green House - this SLC was already designated and implemented prior to the formation of the others, and its focus is on preparing the incoming 9th grade class for success throughout high school.

Thanks, Gardena High, for giving me the opportunity to create these for you!

*Edit* – Thanks to copious amounts of Russian spam, comments on this blog post are now disabled.  Please feel free to email me with any comments, questions, or suggestions.

Kelly contacted me on Etsy and wanted me to design a custom vintage fruit crate label for her wedding to Jeff.  They’re planning a charming affair with the theme “The Perfect Pear,” and she wanted the label to involve pears and Southern California, since that’s where the two of them met.  The colors they are using are primarily clover green, yellow, and brown.

I asked her for a few more details – names, dates, places, etc., – so I could have some interesting text elements to incorporate in the design.  For a wedding design like this,  I like to know if the bride is planning to take the groom’s name; I respect and appreciate that many women make different choices about this issue, and I don’t want to offend anyone by showcasing one last name  when it wouldn’t be appropriate to do so.

We discussed the fees, and I created a custom listing for Kelly on Etsy that covered our agreed amount and the cost to ship the printed product.  As with all of my custom digital designs, this fee included two preview designs for her to choose from and three minor revisions to the design she chose.

Once the listing was purchased, I got to work!  Here are the two preview designs that I sent her:

Preview Design #1

Preview Design #2

Kelly and Jeff chose Design #1!  From that point, they were entitled to three revisions.  Kelly, sweetheart that she is, only asked for one – they wanted the label to say “Jeffrey” instead of “Jeff.”  Simple!

This is the final design:

The finalized design, with the text edited as requested.

Once Kelly approved it, I sent it off to get printed as a 12″x18″ sticker, then packed it up and mailed it to her.  She should receive it in just a couple of days.

Thanks again, Kelly and Jeff!  It was an absolute pleasure working with you, and I wish you all the best with your wedding and your life together!

My birthday gift to Mom and Dad was this invitation:

The front of the mock vinyl record invitation. I based it on an old Capitol Records design.

The back of the mock vinyl record invitation, with more information and some cutesy clip-art graphics.

I initially made up both sides of this invitation as two separate design ideas because Mom liked the colorful 50’s-themed graphics and I liked the more realistic record.  In the end, I used them both so we could include all of the necessary information.

Mom asked if I could do something with The Hop’s logo, which had a cool-guy bunny rabbit leaning casually up against it.  She wanted me to add a girl bunny next to him.  After a few unsuccessful attempts to Photoshop the low-resolution photo she had of the logo, I finally just drew it by hand, scanned it, and re-worked the file from there.

The invitations were printed on glossy circular labels and affixed to die-cut black linen paper circles for a realistic vinyl record effect.  I used bright orange square envelopes (not pictured; we had to mail out every single one!) and printed address labels for the mailing and the return address.

Want invitations like these?  Purchase a sample from my Etsy store and contact me to customize the text for your order!

After the party, I made up some business cards for my parents to send out in their thank-you notes so people could see the professional photos taken at the party and share their own images.  The best part of that was that I got to reuse that bunny logo!  Here they are:

This was a business-card sized insert that Mom sent out in the thank-you notes.

It was a fun project all around, and the guests seemed to really enjoy the invitations.

The outside of our rehearsal dinner invitation - a Playbill program.

The inside of our rehearsal dinner invitation, with all of the necessary information.

The back of the rehearsal dinner invitation, with hand-drawn Photoshop map.

I used a high-resolution photo of a Broadway Playbill and Photoshopped it to include one of our engagement pictures and our own custom text.  The inside contained the necessary information, but it was set up as a program.  On the back I included a hand-drawn Photoshop map with the address and directions.

We used black envelopes for these, so I created labels for the mailing and return addresses that looked like show tickets.

The ticket label for our return address; the mailing address was printed on a similar but larger version of the same label.

The files for this invitation are also available for free download from my married bio.  If you want me to re-work the design for you with your pictures and information, contact me and we can work something out!