Goodbye Seattle!

Well friends, today is our last day at residents of the wonderful state of Washington. We hit the road this afternoon and head north to Vancouver, east to Banff, south through Montana, Wyoming until we arrive in our next home town of Denver, CO! I'll be off line (if I can stand it) for the next week and look forward to blogging from the other side of the continental divide.

My empty house...

Sarah's Basho

Sarah called me about her wedding invites a few months back, she had a vision of using basho along with her colors of Sapphire, pink and purple. Originally we were planning to use a photo of her wedding location as the background for set, but it just wasn't working once we did an actual mock up. Sarah had an idea to use different tropical graphics on each insert. We brought in her Sapphire by using a sparkly deep blue matte between her main invite and the textured basho paper. I think captured her vision, even though our phone calls always wound up more about the trials of wedding planning and other misc chit chat than about the actual invites :)

Cork in Cork, Ireland!

Congratulations to Will and Marcie who were married in Cork, Ireland Monday!

When talking about their escort cards, Marcie had asked if we could incorporate corks as their place card holders. Ask and the bride shall receive! Not only did we make place card holders out of cork for the wedding in Cork, but we also personalized them with the brides & grooms names in a font that coordinated with their program covers and Save the Dates!

Small detail. Big impact.

Tasty Face

We all know about the tiny tastiness that are M&M's. Who can resist?

Photo credit: mymms.com

You might even know that you can have personal messages printed on M&M's as a wedding favor...

photocredit: mymms.com

Perhaps you've even combined your love for chocolate and baseball...

photo credit: mymms.com

But did you know that you can now print pictures on M&M's too??

photocredit: mymms.com

The My M&M's website: http://www.mymms.com/, has tons of creative ideas on how you use photo M&M's and also has a few restrictions: according to the website, they won't accept vulgar language or pictures...they "don't want to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth."

Cookies Part II

Since we were talking about cookies yesterday, here's another great company to check out , Meli and Angi,

http://www.meliandangi.com/.

photocredit meliandangi.com

Ridiculous Deliciousness

Most of us look for design or wedding inspiration in, well, design and wedding magazines. Last week I stumbled across this fabulous find in a magazine, yes, but not where you might think. I found these in Newsweek, right next to an article about golf courses in Bolivia and what investments will safe guard your savings.

Well, these little gems definitely don’t fit into the safe guarding your savings category, but boy, are they just not the cutest things?

Check out these Butterflies in Nature cookies by Eleni's New York, http://www.elenis.com/.

photo credit: elenis.com

Elenis New York offers hand iced cookies perfect for wedding favors and bridal showers, but they also have a cookies for kids birthday, holidays and thank you gifts.

photo credit: elenis.com

Feeling Fortunate? Fortunate Biscuits, http://www.fortunatebuiscuits.com/, offers hand-dipped fortune cookies that are a delightful surprise. With cookie flavors ranging from the vanilla to pineapple and toppings from cappuccino cream to banana and Cinnamon.

photo credit: fortunatebiscuits.com

photocredit: fortunatebiscuits.com

photocredit: fortunatebiscuits.com

Practical? No. Fabulous? Definitely.

Programs, Programs Everywhere!

Program set
Originally uploaded by CryBabyInk

Bridal season is upon us my friends and boy have I been busy cranking out the accessory details! Programs, escort cards and table numbers for brides from Ireland to Hawaii.

The programs came in all sizes: single panel, small, mutli page and tall! Each had custom elements that reflected the wedding style, some brides even supplied their own graphic details which is an easy way to tie elements from different sources together.

Your program size will usually be determined by the amount of content you need, here we used a tri fold, this allowed us to print a lot of content but keep the finished product down to a single sheet vs. adding pages.

For Marcie & Wills program, we went with a more formal booklet style consisting of 6 printed pages.

Look closely at Daniela and Tony's program, can you spot their monogram initial "B" in the top and bottom flourish?

Happy wedding day to all of my brides! I can't wait to post pictures of your big day!

Table Decor, Martha style

Check out these 2 fabulous and simple projects from http://www.marthstewart.com/ ! What an easy way to personalize any event.

Fire and Water

photo credit marthastewart.com

Simply take a small candle holder (pillar or votive) and place it inside a larger one. Fill the space between the 2 holders with water (tinted with food coloring) and you can create a centerpiece to match any decor.

For complete instructions, click here: http://tinyurl.com/6aavet

Festive Drink Umbrella

photo credit marthastewart.com

And what is a summer party or ocean side wedding without a cocktail umbrella? Thursdays "Craft of the Day" on http://www.marthastewart.com/ shows you how to make your own Festive Drink Umbrella out of origami paper. Think about all the possibilities...what about printing the bride and grooms name for a wedding or, better yet, using them as place cards? What about printing little fortunes on each for an Asian dinner party? What about printing titles of One Hit Wonders from the 80's that your guests will have to sing, after a few cocktails of course!

For complete instructions click here: http://tinyurl.com/6legkn

Sign up for Martha's craft of the day here:

http://tinyurl.com/652ust

How will you use your creativity to make these projects your own?

Home Design

A few weeks back my mother was in town for a visit. She loves quilt stores as much as I love paper stores, so I took her on a little tour of Seattle quilt shops. Normally, I don't buy anything, having no idea how to quilt, sew or do much of anything fabric related, I usually just take on chauffeur status.

A print caught my eye with it's deep reds and sparkly golds called Graceful Geisha's from designer Lonni Rossi. I wound up buying it, having no idea what to do with it, but knew I'd eventually have a vision.

This is a 1 yard panel of the fabric

And this is what happens when you have a gorgeous print, a few canvases and a staple gun...

Where will you find design inspiration from?

Height of Elegance

What kind of invitation do you make for a bride and groom with impeccable taste and a traditional vision?



I worked with Marcie and Will on their Save the Dates a few months back. Since they're getting married in Ireland, we knew we'd go with an Irish theme. They were pretty clear that their invitations were to be formal, but we could be a little more casual with the Save the Dates. We used a shimmery green backing and 2 color thermography (raised type) to give the text that sparkle that you just can't get with digital printing. We went with an envelope to match the matting and viola, a sparkly green treasure delivered to each guest.

More pics coming soon

Then it was on to the invitations. I knew the bride and groom wanted their invites to be the official announcement of their event, so we had to think classic and elegant, but with a WOW factor. The bride and groom also requested a special detail that I just knew would be a big hit, they wanted the invitation to be personalized with the name of each guest.

So, I called my friend & master calligrapher Laura Hooper of LH Calligraphy, http://www.lhcalligraphy.com/ and told her my vision. She hand designed an invitation in calligraphy then had it letterpressed with a blank space so she could go back and personalize each invitation with the name of the guest.

Blank

It was a hand crafted effort from beginning to end, lovely calligraphy complimented by the beauty of letterpress, each piece was truly a work of art.

Personalized

Inserts

What will you do to WOW your guests?

More DIY: Petal & Layered Programs

Once upon a time, a brand shiny new Micheal's Crafts opened it's doors in a land not so far far away...

Strolling through the aisles, I can across a some products that I've received numerous requests for, Petal Fan Programs and Layered Programs. In the past I've tried to steer clear of taking on these projects, they are amazingly time consuming to create from scratch and as you can imagine, the more components to an item and the longer it takes to cut, print and assemble the more expensive it becomes.

DIY Petal Fan Programs

Once again, Gartner Studios to save the day! They have partnered with Brides Magazine to come up with an exclusive line of print at home wedding accessories, not just invites, but wedding programs, chair signs, favor boxes, even letterpressed (looking) place cards sold exclusively at Micheal's. Usually, I'm not a huge fan of craft store wedding products, to much painted plastic and tulle for me, but I think Gartner really hit this mark this time. Their designs are modern and sophisticated, including everything from whimsical soft pink dots to elegant black damask designs (p.s. you'll be seeing much more damask in the coming months). It's an inexpensive, or should I say, less expensive, way to add all of those extra details to your wedding without having to take out a second mortgage.

Some others fun things from the collection:

DIY Chair Signs

Damask Place Cards

See the entire line here: http://tinyurl.com/3yr23n

Happy Planning!

Imprintable Invites at Target

Stay tuned for Cry Baby Ink Letterpress Imprintable Stationary and Pocketfold DIY kits...

Until then...

Looking to get that letterpressed feel at a DIY price?

Target and Gartner Studios have introduced a line of imprintable wedding stationary that they are calling Letter Impress. Their design suite offers a letterpressed graphic on a card that you can run through your printer at home. Great idea, great price. The only thing is, it's not actually letterpressed, hence the name Letter Impress. It's printed flat, then embossed, and only the graphic is embossed, not the printed text. But unless your one who checks registration and such things, no one willever know.