Over the summer two wonderful people tied the knot: Isaac & Monique. They are film and music enthusiasts to the core, and had some fantastic ideas for their wedding invites and reception ‘guestbook’. When Isaac suggested a postcard styled after the Punch Drunk Love poster as an invite, I immediately loved the idea. I hadn’t done a ‘homage’ piece since I was in school at SAIT. They had their wedding photographer shoot a few images of them with the poster as inspiration. I manipulated the colour of the photograph they liked, re-created the colour ribbons and sourced a typeface that was a close match to the original.

In addition the these postcards, Isaac had a vision for their ‘guestbook’. Something that’s become popular is a photo framed of the couple with an oversized matte for guests to sign on their way into the reception. To make this idea a bit more personal, Isaac thrifted some records that had never been played (Michael Bolton was my personal favorite) and asked if I could do some custom labels for them. At his request, I found high-res images of the Sun, Verve, Apple and Atlantic record labels (from specific years) and manipulated them to include song titles that were unique to the couple. I wound up printing these on Avery sticker-paper, cutting, lining up and sticking them to each record. The results were better than expected—some guests even asked if they were real, until they read the song titles. After the wedding, family of the couple had them framed, and now all four hang in their condo.

All in all, this project was really fun to work on. Dream clients who were enthusiastic and had some really unique ideas (not to mention a beautiful wedding!) Congratulations Isaac & Monique.

My sis-from-another-miss, Robin, is getting married this summer. She contacted me in the fall about the possibility of putting together the wedding invites for her big day. We got together, chatted about options, budget and design. She shared that her wedding colours were a deep purple, black, white and silver. She was looking for something traditional without being too frilly or flowery. We went back and forth emailing ideas and type choices, and landed on a personal type favorite by an illustrator/letterer I admire greatly: Buttermilk (by Jessica Hische).

I had a lot of fun doing this invite. Hours of bending bezier curves while grooving to Cat Power and Mumford & Sons proved to be pretty relaxing and therapeutic. Robin opted for a digital print, and Warwick did a great job for us. The silver foil-lined envelopes, sparkly star and white ribbon finished it off, all on budget.

A good friend of mine, (Jen Bussey) recently began the challenging journey of training with Joints in Motion. She is blogging about it, and is well on her way to running a marathon in Honolulu this December. Basically, she’s an inspiration to me.

A little history on Jen: she was the first friend I had in this life. She was that girl beside me in every pink-icing birthday photo as a pre-schooler. We played in the mud, watched movies like Labyrinth and Gremlins in our pajamas, were there for each other through the barbie/my-little-pony phase, and shared our Ninja-Turtle obsession in elementary school. Life sometimes had us lose touch for years at a time—but thankfully social media made it easy to find each other again (shout-out to Mark Zuckerburg) … I feel truly lucky to be connected to this beautiful, interesting and inspiring woman 20 years after playing Kings Quest on DOS.

To thank her sponsors, Jen asked that I put together a thank-you card. I had a lot of fun with this. They were printed by Warwick Printing in Lethbridge (thanks Lee). The original sneaker vector was drawn by Khia Jackson and used with permission. I added a splash of colour and some copy and voila:

A few months ago I posted some mock ups of Shalon and Alfredo’s wedding invites. They’ve been printed and sent out, and as promised, I stopped by her house to snap some images of the finished product.

After they were printed, (by Complete Printing in Calgary Alberta) Shalon added the rhinestone two-prong fasteners & sent out the invites in a variety of vibrant envelopes (pictured below).

Shalon showed me the other pieces she’s been assembling for the big day—centerpieces, table coverings and favor bags. Something about the patterns, colors and textures she’s decorating with make me think Chintz and Company meets Guatemala. I can’t wait to see how it all comes together, I’ll definitely snap some photos and put them up on the blog.

Next up are her favor tags and thank-you cards. I’ll post them as they’re ready.

Thank you for all of your comments and emails, your feedback has been wonderful.

As I’ve mentioned in a couple recent posts, Janelle released her first album, titled “Free” at the Cabin Cafe on February 26th. I was fortunate enough to work on the album art for her (previewed January in this post). Below are some images of the finished product, as promised.

These were printed by the wizards at CDwest. Janelle ordered directly from and dealt with the printer herself—she was happy with the quality and service. CDwest does a range of different printing and is a great fit for musicians. They had clear specifications online which made it easy to produce the types of files they prefer. I would certainly recommend them for this type of product.

There’s just something about being in liner notes that makes my day. Janelle has been so gracious throughout this process—she always lets me know how much she appreciates what I do. (I really dig this about her).