A little sad that this is the conclusion of the b&b invitations. But let's not forget that there are so many more paper elements in a wedding (remember my long list a couple posts ago?), so my work definitely does not end here.

When Bethany first told me about the theme of her wedding ("the best things in life start with b"), I could not stop thinking about b words! Even the bad ones :X. I was genuinely excited and went through a few initial ideas, but those were scrapped. Note to self: Bethany does not like bees, bubbles, or balloons. Eventually, what really got the final design into momentum was sitting down together on a Sunday afternoon and drawing and laying things out on a piece of paper towel. It was a little weird constantly grabbing and referencing to that paper towel while designing.

A lot of the time spent on these invitations was just doodling on my Wacom tablet and creating 31 icons of things that start with the letter "b." Sometimes I would mess up, or a straight line wouldn't look straight at all, but I decided to leave it, not because I was tired or lazy (okay, maybe sometimes!), but because I think it added to the quirky feel that Bethany was going for. Among some of my favorite icons are... blackberry, backpack, bicycle, and bethany-bus (Bryan's Subaru WRX).




Here's the complete set.
Left to right, top to bottom: Invitation interior, invitation back, invitation front, envelope, map&directions card.




Okay, I admit... I am smitten with the map... It's my favorite part of the invitation.
I should go into cartography.  




The long list of words that start with b (notice the one line of Korean words).


Here's to the beautiful batch of b&b invites. Bye!

I can finally post! The first batch of Bethany and Bryan's invitations were handed out last Sunday after church service, and the couple mailed the rest of the invitations yesterday. In the next few days I'll complete part one with part two with a more formal debut of the invitations.

For now, here is a photo documentation of our short and sweet invitation compiling.




Freshly cut and unfolded invitation interiors before they were butchered by ATM cards.





Map inserts ready to be coupled.




Bryan, the groom. Now do you understand the rivalry I was referring to?




The front displays six of the thirty-one icons that I created for wedding paper usage.










This King and Queen postage coincidentally matched well with the sage green envelopes.




Bethany busily sorting envelopes and me on my laptop doing who knows what.




Stamping in action! I love the sound that the rubber stamp makes when it hits paper.




Each envelope was sealed with a custom stamp in purple ink that I designed for the couple (great for future use!). Bethany got the rubber stamp done at Berkeley Stamp--just email the company with the stamp size you want to purchase and an image of the custom graphic in actual size at 500 dpi black. It was ready for pick-up in less than two days!







Make sure that your hands are squeaky clean before handling the invitations and envelopes. I used my travel size Purell bottle. You don't want oil and dirt spots on your invitations! We also used wet strips of paper towels to seal each envelope.




Ready to be handed out and mailed!
Folding, sealing, stamping, and sorting took less than two hours with three people!


Their wedding website is also up and running! I created mock-ups of the introductory splash page and actual website, but our mutual friend Richard did all the coding and made everything come to life!

Because these invitations haven't been handed out yet, this is just a teaser of what is to come.



I paid a visit to my first bride and groom, Bethany and Bryan,  yesterday afternoon. They had just come back from the city to take care of some of their pre-marriage errands, and were ready to check off invitations from their to-do list. They had some printing issues the night before and ended up getting a lot of assistance from Kinko's, but thankfully, it was relatively cheap--for 250 pages of cardstock at a time, each cut came to $1.50. Bethany's invitations are 2 per 8.5x11" sheet and her map&directions cards are 4 per 8.5x11" sheet, thus she only needed three cuts totaling about $5.00 plus tax!

Folding creases was a different issue. Kinko's said that to crease cardstock, you need a "bomb folder machine," which apparently they didn't have (otherwise it would have been 3 cents per fold).

So to make this post more interesting... here is DIY Folding 101. I was nervous to start, seeing Bethany's fiance Bryan struggle and throw one invitation after another into the "crap pile." However, I caught on relatively quickly! My first crease was perfection, and this led to a bit of a rivalry between Bryan and me.

How to Nicely Fold Cardstock:



First, bring the corners together so that they are perfectly aligned.
And look--whimsical thumbs in the flesh!





Use a hard edge to fold the paper. In my case, I used my ATM card.
From the aligned corner, lightly bring the hard edge to the opposite corner and slowly apply pressure to the fold (right to left, the entire movement should be a "L" shape) so that it is creased about 70%.



Finally, apply a heavy amount of pressure along the crease with the hard edge.



A beautiful fold without tears and wrinkles!


Invitations will be passed out soon!!

Hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine's Day! Nate and I had an impromptu movie date in which we watched the new release Valentine's Day, that had every celebrity and their moms in it. It was definitely a very cute movie--pretty secular relationships, but what can you expect? I was especially heartwarmed by the storyline behind Julia Roberts and Kathy Bates. Sadly, Taylor Swift partially ruined the movie for me...the girl can sing, but definitely cannot act. I rate it better than Love Actually (I never liked Love Actually, actually). Afterwards, we had a fancy seafood dinner and called it a night.

Nate's Valentine's Day gift to me was two tickets to see "Fiddler on the Roof" in San Francisco this coming Tuesday night!

My gift to him was an engraved cover with a moleskine blank-paged notebook. I noticed that during Sunday service sermons, he's always taking notes on our church's weekly printed programs, so I thought that this would be a very practical gift for him. I purchased the item at Engrave Your Book, and let me tell you, this company is absolutely wonderful at what they do. The covers come out gorgeous--which led me to buy one for myself! They also smell SO GOOD (mm... cow). You can order a pre-designed cover, or submit your own design for the engraving. Of course, in my case, I went with the latter.

As for the design, there's a special place in Nate's heart that is infatuated with guns, hunting, and wildlife. He completely admires the design. :)







What did you get your Valentine?

I subscribed to Etsy a few weeks ago and have been admiring all its users' handmade items.

Recently, this item caught my eye... and I was in love. I wanted to buy it for myself, but saw that not only was it sold out, but $20.00, and that's not including shipping! I thought to myself... hey, maybe I'll just make my own.

I told my boyfriend about my fabulous idea and explained to him that I would be "jelly" and he would be "peanut butter," and we'd have ourselves a new set of keychains! Of course, he thought my enthusiasm was adorable and agreed to sacrifice a bit more bulkiness to his growing collection of keys.

Last night, I decided to take out my polymer clay, cutting board, trace paper, and xacto knife. There was a lot of kneading, rolling (I had to actually use the kitchen's rolling pin), and cutting. It was constant mess-ups, which resulted in me starting over three times. Midway I thought to myself, "I should have just bought the actual product." Truthfully, I thought the keychain looked like crap. HAHA.

It turned out somewhat okay. The one on sale at Etsy is definitely 3x better. But oh well, it's made with love!






And I decided to stamp our names on the back!

Wait until you see Nate's actual Valentine's Day present. Update later!

Saw this on harmonie intérieure, a home interior design company, and totally agree with its "philosophy."



Especially #3 and #5!

Bethany printed the first huge batch of her envelopes last night! Exciting, isn't it? I volunteered to help her enter in 100+ addresses from a Google doc to Adobe InDesign and noticed only one typo! A missing "n" in "Vincent." Fortunately, Vincent was near the end of the list so she hadn't gotten to printing it yet. Whew!

Most people don't self-print their envelopes, but if you're on a tight budget, it's definitely the way to go. Bethany expressed that she did NOT want to print out address labels and stick them on her envelopes (they can look quite tacky), and we unfortunately do not have the privilege of knowing any naturally talented calligraphers among our friends.

So how do you do it? It was definitely a trial and error process and quite an emotional roller coaster ride. Bethany was the coaster, I was the rider.

We diligently researched anything and everything about envelopes and their printing services. From working at tiny*prints, I knew that they printed envelopes that were included in their new Mailing Service Order option (so it is possible!). However, after suggesting Bethany to use tiny*print's live chat, we were informed that the MSO option was only available as an addition to people who ordered cards, and the employees did not know of any places that only printed envelopes. Lame! Educate yourselves if you're in the business. I admit, I have a love-hate relationship with that company.

By the way, I'm not talking about printing standard envelopes aka yucky business envelopes, but heavy-paper squareish colored envelopes (for special occasions).

After some more googling and yelping, there in fact are companies that print only envelopes, such as Autumn Press and Mercurio Brothers, both located in our very own Berzerk-eley. Sadly, these companies charge a crapload of money! Autumn Press goes at $1/envelope (excluding the price of the envelope)!!

And thus began our DIY envelope printing process. It came out to be a success!

Here are a few tips:

1. Figure out the exact size and name of the envelopes you are using. We used A2 envelopes, which were 4 3/8 x 5 3/4".

2. Create a template for these envelopes, and after creating all the envelopes, turn it into a PDF file. Creating and editing this file can be done various ways (ex. Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign). Because I dished out a ton of bank for an Adobe Creative Suite, I went ahead with Adobe InDesign. :) And besides, Adobe rocks my socks.

3. Use a top-feed printer. Bethany used her fiance's Canon PIXMA 460 printer. You can't tell from the picture, but it is a top feed.

4. Test on regular paper before you hit the envelopes! This is crucial because it'll help you tweak the printing settings to make sure the envelopes print at the correct size.

5. Be mentally and emotionally ready to sacrifice a few of the actual envelopes for more test printing. This is when I had a taste of the roller coaster... The first few envelopes Bethany printed came out all smudged in one corner. What were the emotions? Defeat, disappointment, anguish... Fortunately, she tweaked some of the printer settings, and they later came out perfect! A glimmer of hope goes a long way! :)

6. Which brings me to my disclaimer point... every top-feed printer and computer is different. Be patient to play around with settings (google.com is an excellent tool) so that your envelopes turn out to be just as good as the professionals'!


Expect your invitations soon!

Going into depth of what kind of projects I'll be working on in these next few months... Three of my good friends from college all got engaged within half a year (two on the same day!!), and asked me to help with their wedding "stationary." Three lovely girls... three wedding days... a LOT of paper.

Honestly, I didn't realize how much design and paper items went into a themed wedding, especially if the wedding wants to reflect personal touches of both the bride and groom. And what young modern couple doesn't want that!?

The first wedding that is coming up is expected to be in late April, giving planning roughly three and a half months. Yikes! Thankfully, she is a sweet and thoughtful type A. She responds to my emails within minutes and is full of ideas, opinions, and resources. I am completely immersed in the planning and preparation of her wedding. Sometimes it's all I can think about and I spend my time brainstorming, AdobeIllustrating, and tweaking. My boyfriend officially refers it to "bethanizing" (her name is Bethany).

"Hi, dear. Are you bethanizing?"
"Yes."
[doesn't respond for hours]

Poor boyfriend. :(

These are the items that require paper&design:
1. Invitations - check
2. Venue map and directions cards - check
3. Personalized envelopes - check
4. Thank you cards - check
5. Website - in progress
6. Rehearsal dinner invitations
7. Programs
8. Seating chart
9. Seating place cards
10. Favor tags

I'm sure more details will come up... The list always has potential for growth!

When items are actually publicly released, I will post with photos.

P.S. One of my closest friends got engaged this morning! Will post a bit on that later...

With an overflow of new projects, I thought it would be appropriate that I start documenting via blog-style. Ever since my seasonal job at tiny*prints ended, my relationship with paper hasn't . In fact, it has actually become quite an ambush, as if the paper industry is purposely trying to haunt me. Of course, I enjoy it. I'm currently in an awkward stage of limbo, and thus freaking bored with my life. I graduated from college last May and am now waiting upon graduate school admissions this coming March (no, I am not pursuing graphic design).

Anyway, many more posts to come about my current shindigs!

Why thumbs? Because they're the most important appendage of the hand, duh. Without thumbs, we wouldn't be able to hold a pencil, grab an apple, turn a doorknob...you get the idea. Thumbs allow us to properly function, and just make life so much easier. We really take thumbs for granted!

Oddly enough, God endowed me with clubbed thumbs (scientific term: brachydactyly). Meaning... they're short. and wide. and a bit chubby. Throughout my life, I've always gotten crap about my thumbs. I've heard it all...from toe thumbs to stubby thumbs. The most creative name of all came from my 7th grade keyboarding class: gnome thumbs. I never really considered my thumbs to be beautiful (I still don't), but they're unique and I've decided that I should embrace them.

Palmists believe that clubbed thumbs show an inclination to the arts and a wild and hot-tempered spirit. Interesting, yes? Meh, palmists are full of crap anyway.

So here it is: Whimsical Thumb. Let the designing begin!