Category Archives: graphic design

a bit of a shameless plug

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Now that I’m not planning a wedding, I have the time to take on more interior design clients, and a slew of other things. That being said I’ve spent the last few days updating my website to include the services I offer such as:

Interior Design – full service design, e-design, decor in a box, furniture flipping, custom upholstery, and several a la carte items like personal shopping, consultations, etc.

Graphic Design – branding, marketing materials, web design, personal stationary, and wedding items such as invitations, save the dates, menus, programs, etc.

Wedding Planning – organization and budgeting, designing the look and feel of your big day, as well as several DIY projects such as decorations, favors, embroidery, etc.

I enjoyed planning our wedding so much that I wanted to be able to offer this specialty to my clients as well. When I say wedding planning though, I don’t mean “day – of coordinator” I simply mean that I can help you with the services mentioned above up until your wedding day. For actual wedding day services, I recommend hiring a professional day-of coordinator.

Anyway, if you are interested in working with a licensed professional in your home, for your business, or for your big day. Please have a looksie at my website to see how we can get started together. :)

better late than never, right?

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I know that I’m about 18 days behind (to be exact), but I couldn’t seem to get around to making the annual YMC calendar. So although it’s a few weeks late, it’s still January so that counts right? This year’s theme was inspired by our ceramic animal filled wedding, and I decided to use animal silhouettes for each month. I tried to match them up with appropriate months, but really? There is never a good month for an octopus. So some are a little random.

If you’d like to download a copy of it yourself go here! It will print on regular 8.5 x 11″ paper and then you just trim it down to make a nice skinny little calendar. I printed ours out on card stock so that it would hold up a little better. I liked it so much I even brought one to work too :)

If you like to see our previous calendars here is 2011 and 2012 :) We’re moving tomorrow which we couldn’t be more excited about! We’re already making a room by room list of all of the projects we want to tackle, and we can’t wait to get started and share everything with you guys. I plan to take more pictures of the place tonight when we pick up the keys so I’ll be sharing those on Monday along with a video tour. Yay!

Happy Weekend!

vintage stamps for sale!

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During the wedding planning process I became a regular at our local stamp collecting shop and have accumulated a boat load (okay more like a laundry basket load) of misc. vintage stamps of all different denominations. And knowing I will never in my lifetime use all of these stamps I am selling them!

***UPDATE!! AS OF 1/30/13 I AM CURRENTLY OUT OF VINTAGE STAMPS, YOU GUYS CLEANED ME OUT PRETTY FAST! I’LL BE GOING TO THE STAMP STOP THIS WEEKEND TO REPLENISH MY COLLECTION, AND I’LL LET YOU KNOW WHEN WE’RE BACK IN BUSINESS :) ***

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They are all “face value” meaning that whatever number is written on them that’s what they’re worth (ie: .6 cents = .6 cents), and I have several colors, themes, shapes and sizes.

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The going postage rate for a standard letter right now is .45cents and for an oversize (or square) letter (like wedding invitations) is .60cents. So I’ll be selling them in packs of .45cent bundles and .60cent bundles so that you will have the exact amount you need for your letters. Basically if you buy 10 packs this means you have enough stamps sorted for you to mail 10 letters. Got it?

So after choosing your quantity you can then specify if you simply want a mix of stamps (totally random themes, shapes, sizes, etc.)

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or to follow a certain color palette like red:

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or to follow a theme like botanicals/nature:

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Or if you want your bundle to be small with only a couple stamps with high denominations:

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Or large with several stamps using small denominations:

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The choice is yours! I’m charging .60cents per bundle of standard .45cent packs and .75cents per bundle of oversized .60cent packs. Why am I charging more than their worth? Call it a labor fee. I did sit down for hours to hand pick each and every one of these stamps, none of them are random they are all stamps that I have chosen due to their colors, images, sizes, etc. So you won’t be getting a bunch of American flags and doves. Any stamp you see pictured above I own, and to see more of my collection go here (which only shows you about 5% of what I have.. I’ve also added a TON of Christmas themed ones for your next Christmas cards). To see more ideas on how to use vintage stamps with your letters go here.

If you’d like to request a quantity that is different than what’s provided in the drop down list, please email me or leave me a comment with your exact order. Each pack of stamps will be sent to you in small ziplock bags to keep them sorted. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!

wedding (not) wednesday: DIY welcome boxes!

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Since we technically had a destination wedding (neither of us are from SA) 90% of our guests were from out of town or out of state. We wanted to make them feel welcome in a city a lot of them had never visited before, and feel appreciated for making the journey (some all the way from NY!) to the lone star state. I planned to have welcome boxes greeting each guest as they arrived in their hotel, as long as they stayed in the room block otherwise I had no way of tracking them down. So I started gathering a few treats for them to munch on, and began working on some important info they could use during their stay.

We had a lot of guests that stayed the whole week so I decided to put together a little itinerary (Your Modern Couple style) to use for their stay. It included some of our local favorites rather than just the typical touristy spots so that our guests could see why WE love our city. I also added a little welcome note to greet them, a map of the downtown area, and directions to the church and reception from each of their hotels. Thorough is my middle name ;)

I found a pile of these boxes in the dollar spot at Target and grabbed enough for all of our out of town guests.

I just loved that they were covered in polkadots (how perfect is that?) and made cute little boxes with handles.

I knew I wanted to include some fun beverages along with yummy snacks for our guests so I ordered a couple palettes of Izze soda, one of Clementine and one of Apple. I wanted these boxes to be a little preview of the fun colorful wedding they were about to attend, and what is more fun and colorful than Izze?? I found them on Amazon for super cheap plus free shipping, so I think we’re going to order Izzes that way from now on it’s way cheaper than getting them at the grocery store.

I paired them so that each guest would get both flavors.

Then to give our guests a little preview of all of the animal-ness that was about to take place, I also included a box of Barnum’s animal crackers. Who else used to carry these around like a purse when they were little? Just me?

I also included a box of Junior Mints because who doesn’t love Junior Mints??

When I found these cheddar whales I just about died! So I found some little treat bags and filled each one with some cheddar whales and printed cute little tags to seal up each bag.

I then placed some of that scrunchy shredded packing fluff (that’s the official name you know..) in the bottom of each box to keep everything in place, and rolled up a little map of the city to tuck behind everything.

Then I printed out the welcome letter, directions, and things to do pages and tied them together with a ribbon and placed them on top of everything so that the guests would see that part first.

Then my mom and I went to town on the rest of the boxes! Hello crazy living room..

For the finishing touch we tied little tags I printed out to each bag with a black ribbon. This also helped keep the boxes from popping open. The Monday before the wedding my mom and I hand delivered all of the boxes to both hotels, and a couple guests who had already arrived were greeted by us at their front door bright and early that morning!

Our guests just raved about their welcome boxes, which made all of our work totally worth it! I really wanted our guests to feel included and important that day, and I really think something as little as a welcome box can make a huge difference. And each box only cost me about $5 to make :)

you’re invited (well.. not really)

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Oh hello! Remember me? I have a new name now (not legally.. that takes a million days) and it’s Mrs. Derek Klepac! What what! So I’m sure most of you are expecting either pictures of our wedding (oh don’t worry I’m still on the edge of my seat too! C’mon Lynsey! ;)) or pictures from Rome (also on hiatus, until our video is done). So instead for the next few days I will tide you over with some wedding projects I had to keep secret until the big day. And the rest will have to wait until after we get the profesh photos in. I know.. what a blog tease right? Okay here is the only decent wedding photo I have of us, that I literally stole off of our photographer’s Instagram :) (which she stole from the preview on her fancy pants camera)

Okay back to business.. I didn’t want to share our rehearsal dinner invitations with you guys until after it happened for mostly safety reasons. We have a very public blog, and I didn’t want to risk any creepy rehearsal dinner crashers popping up unexpectedly. But alas, here they are!

The purpose of the rehearsal dinner invitations was to not only invite our wedding party and close family to a nice dinner to thank them for all of their love and support, but also to include a specific ~~day of~~ week of schedule for everyone so that they’d have a general rundown of how the week was going to pan out.

This was of course a very watered down schedule of what was actually planned that week, but for graphic design purposes I just hit the main points and emailed them all the mother of all schedules later that week.

Once again I used more of my vintage stamps, and organized them by color this time.

I sealed the envelopes with pink and white striped washi tape.

I lined all of the envelopes with a fun Jonathan Adler wrapping paper I picked up at HomeGoods for $2 which happens to match our ring bearer pillow (more on that soon!)

Here’s a little closeup of the details..

Each person received their own schedule according to their duties.

And dropped them off at the post office for safe delivery :)

The typefaces that were used were Sail, Copperplate, and Futura Std. To see more graphics from our wedding here are the Save the Dates and our formal invitations. Tomorrow we’ll have more wedding shenanigans waiting for you :)