Babies (Part II)

A few words about my mother-in-law, Cathy.

From the moment I told her I was starting a business, she's been 100% supportive. I remember when I first told her about it. I started off by sharing what I was doing and how I was intending on doing it. She seemed excited for me, just like any mother-in-law would.

But then I told her I was naming the business after her granddaughter and her excitement level went through the roof. If she hadn't already decided she would be supportive, she was fully on board now. That evening I think I received about three emails from her with different projects she would like me to do. If there was a way she could help me, she was going to do it. I was (and still am) oh-so-thankful.

One of the projects was to make invitations for a baby shower she was involved in throwing. Josh and Amanda are the son and daughter-in-law of one of her closest friends, Ines, and they were having a baby girl.

What I loved about this project was that it was my first lesson in simplicity. I realized that when you're working with a good paper product, you can make a beautiful invitation with very little material. Here's the finished product...

So simple. I love it.

We liked the color combination of green and brown and then we decided to add in an orange-ish/pink color ('persimmon', to be exact :)) with the envelope. I threw in the cute little bird with a funky paisley print on him and we had our little baby shower invite! I loved it because it said "it's a girl" without being too...pink-ish.

So congratulations to Josh and Amanda and thank you again to my mother-in-law for letting me play a (small) part in their baby shower! 

Babies (Part I)

I met Melissa when I worked at my old job. Let me be honest about one thing. When I first met her, she intimidated me. My reasons were twofold:

1. She had been working there for a really long time and knew everyone (Yes, think back to high school here - "I'm intimidated because she's more popular than me." Except I was in my mid-twenties.).

2. She had a rock on her finger that was practically the size of my fist. I remember going over to her desk when she first got engaged and practically gasping at the sight of that thing. Intimidating!

So when Melissa's desk was moved next to mine, it was a pleasant surprise that I actually had no reason to be intimidated by her at all. She was funny (with an infectious laugh), loyal, a team player, and enjoyed a good Bon Qui Qui video on a Friday afternoon as much as the rest of us did. 

All this to say that when Melissa asked me to help with her baby shower invitations, I gladly accepted. In fact, I was so excited that I had to text a mutual friend, Debbie, with the following:

"Mel is going to get invitations from me. Yay for my first official client!"

Only I accidently sent the text straight to Melissa. Humiliating. 

Luckily, Melissa dealt with it ever so gracefully, telling me how happy she was that I was doing them. God bless her.

So here is the final product. Melissa picked a beautiful polka dot panel that I absolutely love. I matched a couple of colors with it and we had ourselves a baby shower invitation. 

Once the invitation was done, we had to pull it all together by printing the envelopes too. I used the same fonts that were on the actual invitation - Scriptina and Optimus Princeps (two of my favorites).

Melissa wanted an invitation that was clearly for a little baby boy, but had her style and personality. I think we accomplished just that. She has great style and I absolutely loved doing these invitations for her. 

Thanks for being an awesome first client, Mel!

Website

It's so close to being done I can't even stand it.

It's COMING! And I'm so excited and equally nervous all at once. Because once you have a website, you have to do something with it...and that's just scary. I actually have to market it! How the heck am I supposed to do that?!

I'm too nervous about this so I will stop writing. Instead I'll post a precious picture of Vivian Elle, in honor of the website almost being ready.

I bought her this purple vest. I like purple...in case you couldn't already tell by my blog.

Christmastime

I was over-the-top thrilled to do both my mother and my mother-in-law's Christmas cards this year (because who else would they pick to do them, really?). Both of them have such different tastes so it was fun to do two completely different looking cards. I had a blast doing them and I'm pretty sure I had two satisfied customers (thanks, Nance and Cath!).

Here are the final products. First, the Ruark family...

This card features a design from Envelopments, the amazing paper supplier I work with. My mom and I looked through their templates one day and this one stuck out to both of us. The top says 'Laughing All the Way', which pretty much describes our family in a nut shell. The artwork is straight from Envelopments line of hundreds of pieces that I have access to. And that picture? That's my family at my little brother's wedding this past summer. A perfect event to display on the card, I would say.

I loved that my mom stepped outside of the box for this one - green and orange don't tend to be your traditional Christmas colors, after all.  But anything goes for Christmas colors these days, so she went with the orange and green colors with the wonderfully sophisticated envelope liners (which I am more than in-love with). The card was a basic off-white layer mounted on a beautiful piece of metallic card stock. I was able to do the design using Adobe Illustrator (my new best friend).

And now let me introduce you to the Haddad family...

Z-cards are so great! I was really excited that my mother-in-law picked one out so I could work with it.  But the thing I love most are the pictures she chose - one from our great trip to NYC this past fall and another from a family picture contest that I won (though my sister-in-law might try to claim 50% of that prize :)).  But really, these z-cards are just a lot of fun and SO very simple to assemble. Basically, I just mounted the pictures and the white card stock and we were all set!

Having taken the time to make these cards, I decided last minute to do cards for Luke and I (who, I just realized, I don't even think I've taken the time to introduce in this blog yet...well, you'll see him in a minute :)).

I used my all time favorite colors and designed a very simple Christmas card, with a fun little note on the back (at least I thought it was fun...). Again, I used Adobe Illustrator to help design the back of the card and again, I need to state how much I love Adobe Illustrator.

So here's my honey and I. What a fun year we had together, with a fun Christmas card to match:

 

Looking forward to many more invitations in the New Year!

My Fantastic Photographer

I have a friend that I've been friends with for a really really long time. Like, almost 20 years long.

Her name is Amy Sayre and she's not just my friend, she's now the official photographer for Vivian Elle Invitations. When I decided to start this here invitation business I knew I would need someone to take photos of my invitations, so they didn't come out looking like this:

(This is an invitation I made...and those are the hands of my wonderful hubby. This is the best I could do on my own. I clearly was in need of some help.)

Luckily, Amy not only agreed to take the pictures of my invitations, she did one heck of a job. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

I couldn't be happier with how these turned out and I couldn't be happier that I have such a great friend to take my photos. If you ever need a fabulous photographer, visit her website here. Tell her Jenny sent you. :)

Amy and I on my wedding day.  Naturally, she was my MOH.

                                 

Here goes...

This blogging thing scares me. A lot.

I've been thinking about starting a blog for about three months now and it has just not happened. I tend to move the tasks that I think are most difficult to the end of my to-do list and they stay there for a really long time.  For some reason starting a blog was one of those super difficult tasks that I was just not ready to do.

But today when I received an email from my friend Heidi saying that she started a blog (which came out of nowhere, when I've been all talk for three months!), I decided today was the day. So I logged in here and just started to write. I thought I'd write about my hesitation before telling you the real reason I'm here, in the hopes that anyone who reads this would like to know a little about the personality behind this blog before they look at some invitations.

But before moving on to posts about said invitations, I'll introduce myself. My name is Jenny and I'm the face of Vivian Elle Invitations. Here is what I look like:

(I should mention that I don't have a lot of options for a picture of myself because I rarely take pictures of just me. This is why you're looking at a picture of me at The Melting Pot from my last birthday. And I cannot remember what was on that fork, but I assure you it was delicious.)

And though my name is not Vivian Elle, I have a good reason for making that the name of my invitation business. Here she is:

This is my little niece, Vivian Elle. I call her Viv. She is precious and completely worthy of having a business named after her. Don't you just want to squeeze those cheeks?!

Well, that's all for now. More posts to follow. I promise they will be about invitations.

Welcome to my blog. Turns out it isn't so scary after all. :)