Bowen Bear

Every year, I design a christmas card for my family and send out to all our friends, family and colleagues. I have had a few requests from friends, to sell some of my card illustrations this year at the local craft fair. I wanted to come up with a 'Bowen 2010 Theme' and that's when I decided on the following:

This year was very exciting for Bowen Islanders as we had not one but TWO bears show up on our island. They were able to trap and re-locate one of our bears but the other one still remains roaming our isle. I thought it would be fun to do a series of the 'Bowen Bear'. Here's one idea - I may take the text off the front and put inside...or I may keep as a postcard...or both. Who knows...

Pretty Little Invites

Very good friends of ours just had their dreams come true...a baby came to join their family four weeks ago. They are enjoying the roller coaster of new parenthood and to help celebrate this beautiful addition, a couple friends and I are throwing a little Jack and Jill baby shower this weekend. I wanted to make some invitations and decided to use some supplies that I already had at home. I am very happy with the outcome.

I was inspired by all the pretty bunting flag patterns I've seen recently, and decided to use that simple repetitive shape in pretty, girly colours. To jazz up the back of the invite and to add some more thickness to the cardstock, I spray glued the invitations to two different scrapbook papers. Cut them out, then used my round corner punch to finish them off. The envelopes were looking a little blah, so I printed up some labels, glued them to the fronts and added a little butterfly accent with some of my scraps left from the card backs. Voila - pretty little invites for a pretty little girl.

Design on the Fly!!

I just found out there's a little techie tradeshow this weekend on Bowen to let people know what is available on the rock. I thought it might be worth my while to participate and rent a table - one small problem...I don't have anything to display. About six months ago, I decided to update my logo, which of course means, I have no business cards, postcards, portfolio is out of date...etc... So I spent the majority of yesterday and this morning while Logan was at school to design some collateral, presentation boards and ship off to the printers. It was such a whirlwind but I'm pretty happy with the outcome.

18" x 24" presentation board which will be printed and mounted on black foam core.

4" x 6" postcards double sided. Thumbnails of projects on front and information on the back.

New business cards. For now I'm just having them digitally printed, but in the near future, I think I'll have them screenprinted onto brown kraft cardstock.

Brainstorming

I just bought this book yesterday. There's a lot of great ideas on how to promote your craft company and make yourself noticed in the marketplace. One idea was a newsletter or a mail order. I have to admit, as you can probably tell, I'm finding it difficult to keep up with the Monthly Makes so maybe a tutorial could be part of a newsletter/mail order that is quarterly. I'm brainstorming aloud hear - would anyone be interested in signing up for a quarterly newsletter? Or perhaps for a small fee (to cover shipping) I could put together some super duper awesome quarterly mail orders that would include all kinds of fun treasures.

Hmmmmm...let me know.

The Modern Day Family Photo Album

About a year ago, I discovered this great on-line bookmaking company called Blurb. I have used other companies in the past to have digital albums made, but never been very impressed with the quality. I am happy to say, that the quality of Blurb's paper, printing, binding is exceptional and the prices are fantastic. They have a free software that you can download that is easy to use, customizable with many layout options which is what I have used in the past. I have three albums (2007, 2008 + 2009) that I've been working on for months and months and was just about ready to send them in to be printed, when I discovered that you can also design your books in InDesign and upload a PDF. YAY!! Only problem though is that I cannot export the books I've already made...I have to start all over. NOT YAY! But at least this gives me the opportunity to use my design software, otherwise, I may forget (boy I was rusty). And, these albums will be with us forever, and eventually passed on through the generations, so I guess having to start over and make it perfect is not such a bad thing.

Here's some of the layouts I've started designing for my 2010 Album. I wish there was a way that you could enlarge them as I have put a lot of little details on some the pages. Hmmm...if anyone knows how to do this in Blogger please let me know. thanks.