I seem to have a very bad habit of letting this little blog of mine just sit and collect dust!

I'm not one of those people who can just consistently knock out posts, especially when things get busy!

And things have been especially busy around here lately. A couple weeks ago, two of my little sisters had birthdays, and we went out of town to see our Oregon family for Thanksgiving. Then with work, and a bit of procrastination, all of a sudden we're two and a half weeks from Christmas, and I'm barely starting my shopping!

Of course, the glutton for punishment that I am, I decided to do a mostly home-made Christmas this year, which means that even though I did most of my shopping today, I still have to make all of said gifts.

Yeah. Wish me luck.

Anyway, it's also been weeks since I've been on here, and last I remember was that I promised to share my sister Tiffany's sweet 16!

I love, LOVE planning parties, probably more than I should. So, when she asked me if I would plan it for her, I obviously jumped at the chance!

Her favorite colors are teal and maroon, so to incorporate those colors, and the season, I thought plaid would be just the thing. So the theme was fall and plaid, even though there was snow outside at the time!




I made the cake, and I tried my hand at making my own fondant using this recipe. As far as fondant goes, I think it turned out pretty good! However, it was also my first time using fondant, and it definitely showed. They say practice makes perfect though, so I guess I'll just have to make a few more cakes!




I've been wanting an excuse to do a hot cocoa bar for years now, and I finally had the chance! This might have been my favorite thing from the party, and now I just want to do cocoa bars with every get together I have!



Next time I'm back on here, it will hopefully be to show off some of the sketches I've been working on lately, and some of the Christmas gifts I've made!

Thanks for stopping by!

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?