This last weekend was a very productive one, in terms of hand lettering practice anyway.

I was feeling a little burnt or something with all of my shop stuff (Christmas cards!!) so I decided to shift focus and work on some personal projects instead!

My grandparents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday (!) but they didn't want a party.We did a family reunion last summer to celebrate, but my mom thought it would be nice to send out an announcement to those family and a few friends who didn't make it.

I was pretty excited to do it, and I'm glad that I did! I ended up smoothing out some wrinkles I was having with printing and quality, and I was super happy with the result!




Since it's the gold anniversary, I gold embossed the 50 on all of the announcements, and I thought it turned out super cute!

I do have a confession to make though. The dates? Those aren't my handwriting! I got most of the way through the editing process before realizing that I hadn't done those yet.....so in the interest of saving time, I used a hand written font instead. Kind of cheating, but it is still hand lettered, just not by me. (Don't worry though, it was licensed for personal use!)

The calligraphy, the 50, and the laurel leaves are all mine though. The front had what you see here, as well as a picture of my grandparents from last summer. Then the back was a black and white photo of them on their wedding day! I won't be showing those though, because they don't really want their photos all over the internet.

Then, I drew up a quick invitation for my little sister's birthday party! She put me in charge of planning (and oh man am I having fun with that!) and so I decided to do something fun and informal for her to pass out to friends.





I have always liked the look of this kind of lettering, where everything is filling a set space, and all of the word shapes play off of each other. I never tried it before, because it seemed too daunting, but I'm glad I gave it a shot! I really liked the result, and so did she! I only kept one for myself, but I actually printed it in three different colors, fitting in the party's theme.

I may go ahead and share her party here down the road, if it turns out as good as I'm picturing! And maybe even if it doesn't.

Now that I had a solid weekend, and I'm feeling a little refreshed from some new projects, it's back to those Christmas cards! I'm really feeling the time ticking for those, so I should have some things listed for sale in the next couple days.

Happy Monday everyone, here's to a great start to our work week! Thanks for stopping by!

My goal this week was to finalize Christmas card designs, and get them up in the shop.

Now it's Friday, and if you look, there are no Christmas cards there.

I've been running into a bunch of different problems. Apparently no store in a 30 mile radius of me sells the weight of card stock I need, so that's a pretty big one. And I've just had too much on my plate!

Hopefully though, I will have some stuff ready by the beginning of next week, and I have some stuff that is almost ready, aside from a little tweaking. One new card that I'm really excited about will be available as a digital option, meaning that you send me a picture you want, I will customize it with your family's name (s) and then send it back to you to print where ever you'd like!

This is how it would look as my card. It needs a little adjusting, but hopefully it will be ready to offer soon!

I'm feeling very festive and Christmas-y these days.

I know it's a bit early, but one thing I've learned recently, is that as a producer of merchandise, you need to have holiday stuff ready way earlier than the actual holiday!

I think this is especially the case with Christmas cards, since most people probably get a jump on those pretty far in advance. Which means I'm already feeling behind on those, and I'm giving myself until the end of this week to get some of those up and in the shop!

I'm trucking right along though, and I have one design almost finalized. What do you guys think?