gorgeous!!

ultimate color!

(photo by lizette bell via oh joy)

With paper, you can do so many things and be just as creative without even drawing on it!  I posted this awhile back.  Yulia Brodskaya is a graphic designer / illustrator / awesome artist.  Even her home page is to drool over!  Marian Bantjes is another designer who just kills it everytime!  She’s known mainly for her beautiful typography and how she incorporates so much more than just a type to make the forms.  But all her work from the type to the illustrations are truly amazing!  When I came across this on Love Ardently, I fell in love all over again! sigh!

(all photos from Yulia Brodskaya)

I don’t know how I feel about this.  Although, it’s an ingenious idea of bringing the years old art form of letterpress home, as a stationer, I feel a little betrayed.  The other part of me wants the machine and wants to try it out!
Here’s what I’m talking about…

It’s the new letterpress kit by Lifestyle.  Paper Source jumped on it and is now selling it.  At 150$ it’s definitely been released as a $$ maker for the holiday season!  I’m curious to see what the feedback and reviews will be.  What do you think about this little new discovery?  Does it break the years old tradition of movable type?

I absolutely love looking through other people’s workspaces.  Not like a nosey thing but as a way to get inspiration for my own future workspace!
So I was completely drooling over this when I saw it on Truly Smitten.  It’s the studio / workspaces for Studio on Fire, a letterpress company in the midwest.

I’ve been working late hours lately and this is what i’ve been up to…

Hopefully, I’ll have my website up and running very very soon!! =)

Just recently I had the honor of co-hosting a baby shower for my sister and brother-in-law.  They’re expecting their first!  We invited friends and family and had a blast eating and playing cheesy baby games.

I designed and produced the invitations for the shower and wanted to make them whimsical and cute.  Something Bo Young and Ji could hold onto and look at as a reminder for their baby Jabez before he was born.  The colors were muted blues, greens, and aquas and we tried to stick to that as much as possible, mostly in part to my obsessive nature of wanting things to look coordinated.  But that’s not a bad thing, right?

Here are the invitations:

Here is the happy and very prego couple!

All the little details were due in part to my two other sisters-in-law who kicked ass in prepping!
Hunky-Hunky’s younger sis (just fyi…my nickname for my husband, which he hates, but i love it, so i win!) made this diaper cake…super cute!

We had a dessert & candy bar for favors and to eat during the little shin-dig.  I loved it!  You may not be able to see it in the photo, but I thought it would be cute to add little tags to each jar so people would know what kind of candy it was.  It’s not an original idea, but definitely worth the little detail.

And I know these are waaaay played out, but we had to!!

FOOD!
menu consisted of:
Cucumber salad
Cheese & crackers
Pita & Hummus
Seafood Stuffed mushrooms
Baked Brie with Cranberries and Walnuts in French brioche
Mini spicy steak sandwiches with carmelized onions & peppers
Portobello fries with lemon aioli
comment below with your email if you want the recipes!

Whats a party without cheese!

Baked Brie (cheated on this one…Costco!)

This is really my own recipe…Mini spicy steak sandwiches.  I kind of “Sandra Lee” this, but it was still a hit!

I wanted to make this ever since I ate it at Bottega Louie in downtown.  Seriously, so good!

Red Velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting & sprinkles

Thanks to my sister-in-law Susan for hosting AND helping make food at her home & to sister-in-law Cindy for being so shik-shik-hae (awesome!) and leaving her son at home just to come and help!

********************

WOW…onto the next.
I met this couple, Andy and Tracy, this past summer.  They contacted me and asked me about invitation suites.  So when I met them, I thought it would be the usual bride comes with ideas and the groom inputs a little here and there.  But this couple was awesome!  The groom had been an event planner / marketer for clubs in the past, so he knew what he was doing!  This was HIS element.  :)  Tracy and Andy let me know what they wanted and we went right to work…They wanted to go with a lovebird theme so I obliged and designed a cute little invite with all the fixin’s.  Their wedding is this weekend so I had to finish up programs and escort cards.
250 programs waiting to be packaged up!

All done and ready to go!

This was a request from my friend, Nancy.  So thanks to her, I am doing my next post today…the day after the last post…which usually never happens!

So to mend this problem I have with inconsistent blogging, I share with you one of my things on my wishlist for 2009 and beyond…
This gorgeous plate from Bailey Doesn’t Bark.  I think that they’re so pretty that I wouldn’t want to use them! Just look!  But since they are functional items, I would use it for one of those “don’t touch unless it’s a special occasion” china/plate.  no?  I love the organic look or the dots yet very modern.

Re Jin Lee is the worker bee behind BDB and has expanded her line to jewelry, home accessories, and…..drumroll….STATIONERY!
This one above is a holiday set of cards in her collection…

(photos all from Bailey Doesn’t Bark)

Awhile back I blogged about a logo I designed for a good friend and a fellow wedding vendor, Nancy of So Happi Together. She started her event design & coordination biz after her own wedding because she’s in love with all things wedding! who isn’t??? hehe

Go to the actual post on smp to view the photos….part I & part II

CONGRATULATIONS NANCY!!

(photo credit: connie m chung photography)

look out for some surprises in the upcoming months!