Thursday, September 13, 2012

Just for Fun: Invitations

Another little side thing that I like to do is play around in Photoshop--not just to edit photos.

This past week I have been working on invitations for a couples bridal shower that I am throwing in honor of a best friend from high school and her upcoming nuptials. 

The shower is going to be a laid back, outdoors, night time, barbecue with TVs located on the patio for football. The backyard is heavily treed and our plan is to have tree lights, Christmas lights, globes and candles to light up the yard--I think it's going to end up being very mystical. 

The brides colors for her wedding are plum, turquoise and then metallic silver and burlap additions.

With all of that in mind, I wanted the invitations to kinda show that it was going to be an outdoor dinner, pretty casual and of course, I wanted the invite to be unique and quirky like me!  

My favorite shower invite thus far was actually from the second to last wedding I was in. 
They were hand-drawn and then printed on card stock--pretty easy to do.   

My next favorite were done by hand as well, but they were hand painted with watercolor paints and then color copied--a little bit harder to do.

Both ideas involved one thing: drawing by hand.

So, I one day at work when I didn't have much to do, I sat down and started sketching a table. Once I had it to where I liked it, I scanned it into my computer and put it in photoshop.

After a few edits, here's what it turned out to look like:


Pretty cool, ehh?

The next task was to find a tree and chandelier that I liked and try to sketch that and then scan it in as well. The chandelier was pretty easy: 


But the tree on the other hand posed some problems for me. 

I ended up using a photo from google and then editing it in photoshop until I liked the way it looked: 


Then it came time for the text of the invite. This kinda took me awhile because I wanted it all to line up straight and perfectly and have different fonts for variation. 

After several hours of being meticulous, here's what the invite ended up looking like:


I tried other color options and adding/removing the table, like the picture below. 
The bride liked the dark grey color instead of the turquoise so, we decided to remove 
the table because it was too crowded :(


The next idea I had was to do an invite with just text and then a burlap border. Here's an example of what that one turned out to be like: 


After having two options for the bride to choose from, 
I sent her an image like this one explaining what the differences are between the two options:


The bride liked what I sketched and we decided to go with the tree/chandelier invite! I printed them at OfficeMax (I receive a company discount yea!) and then I went to Paper Source to get the perfect sized and color envelopes! 

All in all, for 40 invitations, I paid just under $27 not including postage! 
I am very happy with the results and price!! 







Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Upcycled: My (Kinda) Blank Canvas

For a little while now I have been carrying around this canvas that was given to me. It was of a tree and was painted by a friend who disliked it after having painted it for her own room. 

Ever since then, I have always wanted to paint something for myself, but I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do. 

I have a few things that I want to paint--but out of all of them, this photo of French (I believe it's in French) words on canvas really stuck out to be my favorite.  


Now if you don't know, writing in cursive, with a brush and paint, is very difficult. And I think that's why I chose to go with this one--I wanted a challenge and I wanted to do something meaningful.

Since I speak Italian and love the language, I thought I would do a excerpt in Italian, but then after hearing suggestions from friends and family, I decided to do lyrics from Nickle Creek's song, "Doubting Thomas"--that way I don't always have to translate the text when questioned.

First I had to cover the canvas in white. 
(I left a little blue in areas so that there was a little color variation)


Then I started writing the text in colored pencil and then painted over it with black paint. 

I think I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Of course there are little words that I'm not too excited about with regarding my cursive, but all in all, I like it. 


And I think it looks pretty nice up on my wall :)


The next art piece I want to paint will be on a large rectangle cardboard cutout. 
That one should be fun!