Having a Pinkalicious Day

Today I went to Confectionately Yours. It's located on 19th Street SE, between Vista and McGilchrist. I LOVE that store! Michelle, the owner, was there to greet me as I walked in and as always she was super friendly and helpful. She's the type of person who is generous in conversation and makes you feel like you've known her for a long time. I browsed around the store, picking out my treasures while chatting with Michelle all the while. And when I left to walk to my car, I thought, "Geez she would be a nice person to have as a friend or co-worker." Never do I feel like she is salesy but instead is genuinely interested in my projects and my needs. If more stores had customer service like that, I think more stores would stay in business!

Anyway, back to my treasures...now how cute is this charming birdie!!! I was looking for a cookie cutter for some party favors for a baby shower a friend and I have been planning. It's a "feather her nest" party so we are working around a bird and bird nest theme. Well this cute little guy was just the perfect shape for the party favors! Don't you think?

And I found these leaf shaped cutter that I thought could make a cute little wing for my handsome bird.

Here's some neat sprinkles I found as well. Light pink sanding sugar (for another project) and editable glitter! Yummy!

Our Pinkalicious cupcake!

So this afternoon the kids and I made Pinkalicious cupcakes. If you're not familiar with the book by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann, you're in for a real treat. It's an adorable children's book about a little girl who eats too many pink cupcakes and turns pink. I love the illustrations in the book since they have a cool collage feel. Well we devoured out cupcakes and with any luck we'll be able to take a nice little nap. Ahhh...

New Toy

The Scrapbooking craze is just so amazing. It has encouraged millions of people to become little historians, recording moments in time. It has allowed people who otherwise thought themselves as non-creative types to experience the process of art making. But most of all, I LOVE that it has made tools available to the mass population that before were non existent.

I used to be a scrapbooker, but since I enjoy so many other creative outlets like painting, graphic design and sewing, I don't have much time to scrapbook any longer. But when I started out scrapbooking, the industry was just starting to take off.

As a kid, I grew up in a rural area of Maine. I often begged my mom to drive 45 minutes to the local hobby store where they sold some art supplies, doll supplies, and miniatures. It was definitely not like the super craft stores of today.

I was the kind of kid who created paper dolls from clippings of Christmas wish books. I made houses from shoe boxes, and canned foods for my barbies from metal pencil tops (minus the eraser). And if I was lucky, sometimes I would make the crafts following directions from Highlight magazines. Then, the materials were simple and basic.

Now, because of the scrapbooking craze, crude tools have become obsolete. Fancy papers can be found in almost any design wished for and those that you can't find, you can create for yourself with printers that print pigmented ink. Every do dad imaginable has become an embellishment for scrapbooks. Buttons, washers, metal brads, eyelets, gears, if you name it, you can find it in a craft store. I love and embrace this new era of crafting excess.

So when I was talking with my friend Allsion (see her blog Creative Bliss) I was amazed to hear there are electronic die cutting machines that actually cut images you make on your computer. Silhouette by QuicKutz is much like a printer but instead of printing, it cuts. I was in awe and looked into purchasing one. I'm happy to say my Silhouette machine arrived this weekend and I'm just loving it!

There is no need to purchase cartridges since I can design shapes and sayings using Photoshop. One of the projects I'm working on is a silhouette mobile of our family members. I'll hopefully be able to share some free templates that you too can use with your Silhouette machine and some projects as well. It's another tool that would have never hit the market without all those scrapbookers out there.

Digital Facelift

I've been working on a few design projects for a very talented cake designer, Jennifer Haas, owner of Bittersweet Baking. She has been so much fun to work with and I've really enjoyed trying to best capture the look and feel of her business. Her expertise is designing whimsical party cakes and cupcakes as well as elegant wedding cakes that taste as decadent as they look.


We first worked on the logo. Her clientele is mostly women so she felt very comfortable staying with her old color scheme of pink and chocolate brown. Jen did however wanted something that was a bit more whimsical and updated. The old logo was built as a bitmap image rather than vector and it also looked a bit flat. After a few cupcake styles, we came up with this playful cupcake design with her favorite polka dots and rich bittersweet chocolate color. Our typography choice was chic hand which looked much like the kind of script you would see on a birthday cake made from icing.

I then worked on her business cards. We ordered these online and they were so very affordable!

Before

After

Currently we are working on her website. The old website can still be found online. Hopefully soon, the new design will be up and running. We need to tweak the content and get the new prices finalized and then the new design will be live. The new design is clean and crisp as well as playful and savvy. I think it fits Jennifer's needs and style perfectly. The site should be very easy to navigate, and is full of fresh ideas, as well as helpful information that will set party planners at ease. There will also be an image gallery where clients can drool over her inspiring creations.

I also talked Jennifer into having her own blog. This is a place where she can upload some of her newest creations and talk about the hottest trends in cake design. It's a place where she can control all of the content easily without the cost of maintenance fees from a designer.

This experience has been very rewarding and I look forward to working with Jennifer in the future to help with stickers, brochures, letterhead and other promotional material. It's very important to me to keep my rates reasonable so I can help with a variety of projects for a business so that the look is consistant and expresses just what the client wants.

Thanks for letting me share my ongoing project with you!

This however is GOOD DESIGN!

Thanks Sarah for this fun clip!

Welcoming Good Design!

I see it all of the time. Someone gets a copy of photoshop and they start clipping heads of dogs onto superstars or create rinky-dink brochures chocked full of clipart and poorly laid out text. Then they have the audacity to call themselves designers. It makes my skin crawl and it makes me angry! Sure, I'm all for someone expressing their creativity and learning new technical skills, just don't start advertising your services as good design.

I know what I'm saying may not be popular and if you feel differently, I'd love to hear your comments! I'm not making this statement to anger others or be overly critical. I'd just like to keep people aware of some basics and to encourage good design.

Below are a few rules I follow and would love for the world to follow as well.

1. Just because someone might own a copy of Publisher doesn't make him/her a designer! Desktop publishing is only a tool, and knowing how to use the program is important but knowing design principles is what really counts. It takes years of study to really understand color theory, basic design, and typography principles. THEN you get to learn how to use the tools and finally you learn about the printing press, screen printing, web design, etc. Talent, creativity, and education makes you a designer. Not your software!

2. Good designers don't steal images and music to use in their projects. Good designers take the time to create it themselves or pay money to other artists for their products. Copyright law is very convoluted and technical but it doesn't take a genius to know the basics. Give credit where credit is due AND respect other artists by paying them their fair share. There is public domain imagery out there...and dare I say it?...clip art. If you can't afford to hire a freelance illustrator or photographer, then turn to these options. Or best yet, just take the damn picture yourself!!!

3. Learn the difference between vector vs. bitmap (raster) graphics. Bitmap graphics are built using pixels. For an example most photographs are bitmap images. They look good at a certain size but in order to make the image bigger, computers add more pixels to the image. Because the computer is just mimicking the relationship of pixels and making up the colors and gradients as it goes, images get fuzzy and look pixelated. That is why good designers make logos using vector graphics. Vector graphics are mathematical creations. Computers can correctly predict what the image looks like at any size. Logos should only be created as vector files. Popular file extensions for vector include ai (Adobe Illustrator) and .cdr (Corel Draw).

4. Too much centered text. Really, centered layouts just scream out a big ol' boring yawn. Using flush left or right usually gives structure to the page and creates more of a relationship between text and imagery. An exception here might be wedding invitations which are traditionally centered.

5. Get ride of that nasty double spacing after sentences. Using double spaces after a period is a carryover from the days of typewriters. Now fonts are more proportionate and not monospaced. Double spaces are not needed. Instead they are somewhat distracting, creating unattractive gaps down a page.

6. Learn about colors and which format to use for what purpose. Use CMYK for printing and RGB for computers. Use Pantone colors and CMYK formulas for press work and RGB values for web work. Remember things look differently on different monitors, so using formulas really helps.

7. Most of all, good design speaks to its audience. Get out your crystal ball because designers need to be mind readers. They need to not only get into the client's head to figure out what the client wants but also must predict what the target audience will be drawn to. Designers do this by communicating effectively and listen to others.

Quote of the Day

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt

Technical Support to the Rescue!

Goodness, it's been a crazy day! Nothing as bad as losing a limb or a job, but it's been one challenge after another. It started when we woke up and hubby's car wouldn't start. Since he had to do some traveling across town, he couldn't take the bus. So, I loaned him mine and rushed to get the kids ready for school. School is in walking distance but I wasn't planning for the extra time it takes for little man to walk there. I became some sort of commander, snapping orders to my children as if it was the front line. Too bad my subordinates are monkey with AD/HD. Focus kids, focus!

Little Man complained all the way and wanted me to carry him. It was the same way on the way back to pick up sister. Geez, we need to walk LOTS more! I've got to toughen up my little soilders.

Thank goodness I have AAA. I called in the afternoon so I could make sure I was there when the the auto guy arrived to jump the car. Hubby came home to help, and the automotive guy replaced our battery and every thing! I'm so happy that it wasn't the alternator or something worse.

So this afternoon I came up with a clever birthday idea for hubby. I'm always encouraging him to write, one because I think he is a genius, two because he's very funny, and three because he tells me he wants to be a writer. Since he is so critical about himself, he never gets any writing done. So my brilliant idea was to register his very own domain and create a blog for him where he could get some writing done under a pen name.

So somehow Blogger and I argued over who was logged in (okay...it's my bad, I got confused) and then I became the author of hubby's blog. That's not what I wanted so I went to delete the blog and what did I do??? Well, once again my blog was deleted. Every thing was gone...pictures, past posts, formatting. Good thing I saved everything on my own host. But nothing was linking.

The good news, I needed major "technical support" (read ice cream) and found the most yummy flavor...slow churned Take the Cake ice cream from Dreyers (aka Edy's). It's AMAZING! It has frosting, cake and even sprinkles in it. I'm sure it's made for kiddos but I think it's now my favorite. Hubby was sent on a mission to find me "ice cream now!" and he came home with a winner!

So with my "technical support" I'm happy to say the blog is now fixed. 4pm-9pm not too bad. Not perfect, but fixed. I've just played with the archives below, so I can go back to see past posts. Ahhh....