Blog — "stationery"

Day 21 has arrived. That means I am in the home stretch for my 30 day design fest! Not that I'm finding a shortage of creative inspiration. Today alone I've created another three designs as I prepare to ship a box of note cards off to my mom. She has an amazing bakery back home in Indiana and no matter how biased you may think I am, I still have yet to find bread as good as hers here in Baltimore. First of all, she uses a wood-fired oven that my dad built. Second of all, there is no bakery in Baltimore that I know of with a wood-fired oven. And third of all, her bread is just amazing.

Lucky for me, I was able to enjoy a slice of her wood-fired white sourdough today during my lunch. She had snuck a loaf of bread into her carry-on luggage for me when she and my dad visited over the 4th. So I popped the loaf into the freezer for safe keeping until my bread stash at that moment was depleted. And yum! How delicious it was!

Long story short, my mother also happens to let local artisans sell their items at her bakery. She had offered to let me do the same. So as I began preparing a box full of cards, I suddenly had all sorts of creative energy arrive. An now being ink-less at the moment doesn't seem as horrible as I had thought it had been! In fact, I am enjoying the paper cutting once again.





These one of a kind lovelies were made to go along with some wonderful meadow green envelopes that arrived in my paper shipment yesterday. You'll be sure to see more envelope colors in the coming days! And lucky for you, these aren't making their way to Indiana and are still available in my shop!

Disclaimer: This design was printed with ink that I will not be using again. Am I happy about that? No not really. In fact, I'm super disappointed. I had a bit of an ink emergency. It involved a new recycled ink that I was trying out. As you may know the majority of my paper is recycled and produced using wind power. I am a bit of an environmental tree-hugger-- I'm not going to lie. Even my students call me a tree-hugger, and I accept it for what it is. So I like to offer environmentally friendly products as well. I've accomplished that on the paper front, so I wanted to conquer the ink as well.

It didn't work.

The colors were all messed up.

I did a ridiculous amount of trouble-shooting that involved lots of ink being wasted.

I gave up, for now.

So here is my design--




--but those aren't really the colors they should be. So yeah, I'll give you an update one I get some of those glorious Epson printer cartridges back in my hands. The difference will probably amaze you as much as it amazed me. Let's just say that the pink should be cotton candy pink, the brownish/orange should be a mango orange/yellow, and the blue should be a dark iris purple. And had I used Epson cartridges instead of my poopy recycled cartridges that's exactly what they'd be. Oh boooo. But hope you enjoy the design anyway! :)

It is depressingly dark out today. Rain, rain, and more rain. And when the thunder comes the clouds get even darker. I've been stuck in the house today with nothing to do so I decided to start designing. Today, I came up with five new designs. I'll share the sunny one with you just so my day will seem a bit brighter.





Ahhh! That's more like it! Get some sun into my life and I feel better already!

Today I felt like making personalized stationery with lots of bold colors. I couldn't choose which few colors to use, so I made an entire collection of colors.

I was thinking that since these colors are so fun, why not really show them off. I went with a nice bold block of color along with the somewhat retro Lobster Two font. I love the inverted white against the block of color on the j's, p's, q's, f's, etc.




I even made some of the samples with my own name so that I could enjoy them to send off to my friends and family! :)

Half way through this crazy marathon of designing! I can't believe it! Today's design was inspired by this morning's weather. So cloudy and I was sure it was going to rain, but then the sun began peeking out of the clouds.






I decided to go out on a limb and try printing some color inside with dashed lines for writing. It added a bright flourish of color for the somewhat dreary design. I must say, I really love these! Such juxtaposition-- dreary rain and a bright sunny day!