Shannon and Taylor's Starry Night Wedding Invitations

Alright, let's role out more wedding invitations, shall we?

Shannon contacted me because she had seen my wonderful and lovely best friend post things about my business. Shannon and her fiancé, Taylor, live in Chicago, but we set up a skype meeting and got things rolling right then and there. 

Shannon and Taylor are getting married in November and wanted a romantic, starry night theme for their invitations. But it had to be subtle. And non-promy, which was a term that we used a lot in our exchanges. 

Here's what we came up with. 

Shannon and Taylor just wanted a simple, one panel invitation that included an RSVP card.  They picked out Allura and Estilo as their font combo. 

I love how my porch swing has become the standard photo backdrop for all of my invitations. I also just love my porch swing.

As for the envelopes, Shannon actually ordered those on her own. She went with a white envelope with a navy flap for the invite and an ever-so-cute orange envelope for the RSVP card. I love that the orange in the RSVP brings out the little bit of orange we used in the invite and RSVP.

Speaking of the RSVP, I just love this little guy.

So there's another invitation in the books (I have no books). I love how these turned out and Shannon was wonderfully easy to work with. I'd be glad to skype with any bride from the Chicago area, anytime. :)

Vivian Elle on Etsy

Pssst - to cut to the chase and go straight to Vivian Elle's Etsy Shop, go here. :) 

Vivian Elle has an Etsy Shop. A shop that has almost been open for almost a full year now! Opening this shop was one of my goals for 2012. I accomplished it, and I'm so glad I did.

There are a few different categories that you'll find on Etsy, and I just want to bring them to your attention here if that's OK. They are:

Pre-designed wedding suites:

You can purchase these here.

You can purchase these here.

You can purchase these here.

You can purchase these here.

Baby Announcements:

You can purchase these here.

You can purchase these here.

You can purchase these here. 

You can purchase these here.

You can purchase these here. 

You can purchase these here.

For more baby announcements, go here.

Christmas Cards:

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

To purchase these, go here.

And the best seller of the Etsy Shop by a landslide, our one and only Mad Men Birthday Invitation:

To purchase these, go here.

The Etsy Shop has done pretty well and apparently, many customers are happy, at least judging by their reviews. :) Make sure you go here to check it out!

John and Andrea's Wedding Invitations

A long time ago, we started playing volleyball with John, who I will from here on out call Palmer because that is his last name and that's what we call him. Palmer had this girlfriend that came to all of our games, but sat about 50 feet (I'm a horrible estimator, so my husband will probably correct me on that) away from us on a picnic table. We never talked, but she looked really athletic so I imagined that she just sat there and thought about what fools we looked like trying to play volleyball (spoiler alert: my game hasn't improved much since then). 

Since that time, Palmer's girlfriend, Andrea, began playing on our volleyball team, and come to find out, was an absolute delight to play with (which for me basically means she doesn't make fun of me too bad when I foot fault to lose the game, which by the way is a true story). Luke and I started to get to know Palmer and Andrea better and years later, they are our good friends. 

So many years later, when they got engaged and then came to me/were forced by my husband to use me for wedding invitations, I was completely glad to help them out. 

Here's what we came up with.

Andrea and Palmer wanted something nice and formal and simple. They thought a custom monogram would be an elegant touch, so we through a simple P together in an ornate frame.

Fonts are Trajan Pro and Hiatus.

The ecru invitation was backed with a nice subtle patterned paper. 

Everything that Palmer and Andrea's guests need to know is right on the back of their invitation. I love the simplicity of having guests RSVP to a website - I've noticed that several of my brides lately have chosen this option. It saves on postage and keeps the bulkiness of your invitation to a minimum.

We'll be gearing up for another volleyball season in November with these two, but first we're so happy to celebrate with them as they get married off!

Next week I'll be back with a starry night wedding invitation that I'm really excited about. :) Until then!

Mary's Pea Pod Baby Shower Invitations

A few months ago, an old friend named Mary came to me to see if I could design some baby shower invites for her. She is one of those super cute pregnant girls and her and her husband are about to have a little baby boy. 

Mary said that she thought lime green and pea pods would make for a cute shower invitation. I immediately agreed, especially because I think that having a boy doesn't necessarily have to equal all things blue. Here's what we came up with. 

Mary's super athletic - a runner, works out, all that good stuff. The green banner just seemed to fit her more than something baby-ish or floral or vintage. Luckily, she thought so, too.

Font throughout the invitation is Hero Light - a recent fave.

So there you have it. A cute invite for a super cute - and easy to work with - pregnant lady. :)

I'm guessing a lot of you are heading out to enjoy Labor Day weekend - have fun! I'll be back next week to continue on with some of this summer's wedding invitations. See you then. :)

Trish and Dave's Save the Dates

You may remember Trish. I worked with her back when I did her business cards. Well, get used to seeing this lady, because she has a wedding coming up later this year and I've been working on several fun projects for it.

First up are her Save the Dates. Trish basically wanted something very simple over a super sweet picture of her and her fiancé. I think we accomplished this mission.

I LOVE the picture Trish ended up using. Trish is an avid lover of all things Detroit and so when it came time for the proposal, her fiancé planned to do it downtown at Hart Plaza. The picture we used is one that his friend snapped right as Dave was bringing out his guitar to sing a song to Trish before he proposed.

Fonts are (in the order they appear):

BD Hanover
CAC Champagne
Railway Thin
Novecento Wide

(I got a little crazy up in hurrrr with the fonts.)

I love that the save the date is simple so it doesn't take away from the picture.

Trisha used the loveliest color for her envelopes - Envelopment's persimmon, a nice coral-y color.

We are so not done with Trish and Dave yet. A shower invite, their wedding invite, and some wedding extras will all be showing up in the months to come. 

And please, go read the whole story behind Dave's proposal here on Trish's Kitty Haw Vintage blog and check out Kitty Haw Vintage here on Etsy.

Team World Vision Postcards

Happy FRIIIIII-DAAAAYYY (said like Oprah). 

So, I'm trying to knock out some blog posts on these side projects that I've been doing this summer. I'll be back next week with more (a save the date and a baby shower invite, to be exact), but for now I just wanted to show off a personal project of mine. 

As I've mentioned before, this is the year of the marathon. Which means that the following things are now common in my life:

1. Going to bed at 8 PM on Friday nights in preparation for 6 AM group runs on Saturday mornings (my husband is so pleased). 

2. Thinking I can eat everything in sight because I'm running (thus, I have lost 0 pounds even though we're up to running 10+ miles on the weekends). 

3. Bumming everyone out on every vacation I've taken this summer because I'm like, "oh, by the way, RUN WITH ME."

Overall though, training has been going well so far, meaning that I haven't had any injuries and I've managed to complete each run on my training schedule without dying. But tomorrow is my longest run yet (and I mean my longest run ever) at 15 miles. And I'm really really nervous. Like, already feeling a total uneasiness in my stomach nervous. And it's still 16 hours away. 

But the only reason I know that I can do it is because I'm running with Team World Vision. I signed up with them because I knew it would be great to have so many other runners running with me, but also because I knew that if I was going to make it a whole 26.2 miles, I was going to need to do it for a cause. 

So I signed up and I started the process of raising money, which meant that I did nothing for close to half of my marathon training. BUT the reason I did that was because before I asked people to donate, I really wanted to make sure that I was going to do this thing. And considering I'm at the 15 mile point in training, I'm hoping that people see that I'm serious. 

So I designed a little postcard and sent it out this past week. 

When I first signed up with World Vision, I asked the head of our running group how $50.00 ends up providing clean water for a person for life. It's because World Vision goes in and drills wells, or rehabilitates them if they're in poor condition. When they have clean water, a lot of good things happen (look to the postcard, people!).

So instead of a form letter (like in olden times), I thought I'd come up with a quick, concise little postcard to send to people to let them know what was going on and what I was doing it for. Here's the back.

So my obsession with postcards continues...I'm working on my Thank You for the Referral postcard right now, just so I can have another one to print out.

Next week I'll be back with the aforementioned save the date and baby shower invite and I might even throw in a random summer wrap up post, just for kicks. Until then, enjoy your weekend and please, stay out later than 8 PM tonight, for me. :)

Want to check out other postcards from Vivian Elle? Go here, here, here, and here.

Ashley's Hostess Only Party Postcards

Ashley falls into two categories:

1. Family
2. Savvy business women that are so very inspiring

You've seen Ashley before here when I did a hostess brunch for her last year. She works in direct sales for Premier Designs (you can see her FB page here) and she has worked her business this past year and kept getting hostesses and so the annual hostess only party needed to continue (it is annual, after all).

This year, she basically said she wanted teal and black and chevron and polka dots. Here's what we came up with.

Do I use any excuse to pull out the Samantha Script font? Oh, yes I do. The block font is Hero Light. 

Here's the back. You'll have to excuse the fact that it did go through the mail (I sent these directly to Ashley, so she sent me one so I could see how they turned out).

So that's it. Chevron/polka dots/teal/black - I think we got it all in there.

I can't say enough about how much I love postcards. They are so easy - so much so that I'll be back tomorrow with a bonus Friday post to show off some postcards I made for myself. See you then!

Want to check out other postcards from Vivian Elle? Go here, here, here, and here.