Wedding invite approved!

I got the final sample done for those wedding invitations and sent the pics off to the bride last night; thank goodness, she LOVED them! Now I just need my UPS man to deliver the rest of the materials so I can get to work assembling them all!

Here's a taste:


With custom monogram on the front


The inside with three inserts


RSVP card

Paper: Chocolate Chip, More Mustard, Very Vanilla
Ink: More Mustard, Chocolate Chip
Stamps: Baroque Motifs, Together Forever, plus custom designed monogram (non-SU)
Accessories: Glue Dots, 1 3/8" circle punch, lots and lots of Snail adhesive

Custom book finished

I finished one of the custom book orders today. The bigger thing is that I made a miscalculation in how many packs of more mustard cardstock I needed for that wedding invitation order (was I INSANE to accept that bid??) and had to have two packs shipped 2nd Day Air to get to me in time to make the deadline. The shipping cost more than twice as much as the cardstock! Yikes! There went that extremely slim profit margin and then some. Gah. Have to start somewhere, I suppose.

On the up side, I printed out one copy of all the printed part of the invitation and trimmed it all to make sure that the margins and everything "worked" and except for one little error that was easily corrected, they all fit and trimmed fine! I'm going to have to spend a day at Kinko's having quality time with the big paper trimmer there since mine is on the fritz (I need new blades in a big bad way), but that's okay. The one at Kinko's is way better than mine anyway and I can get it done faster with the ruler guides and being able to cut multiple pages at once.

On the downside, my lovely babysitter has to take two days off this week and they are the worst days! Thursday and Friday--can you say bad timing? I've gotten so spoiled. Hopefully, I can just get an assembly line going once I get it all cut out.

Layerlicious card

I squeezed in Kerin Sylvester's sketch challenge this afternoon. I started out wanting to use Bella Birds DSP, but ended up using a small scrap of Candy Lane instead. I started brain storming about stamps and my under-used Flower Fancy and Define Your Life sets caught my eye. With my color challenge card from last week still dancing around in my head, I decided to riff a little on it! This is probably the most layered card I've done to date!

Paper: Pink Pirouette, Barely Banana, Brocade Blue, Candy Lane DSP scrap
Ink: Versamark, Basic Gray
Stamps: Flower Fancy, Define Your Life
Techniques: Heat embossing (clear) chalks (on flower petals for pink accent), sewing (buttons)
Buttons: Clear and former white men's dress shirt buttons
Ribbon: Pink (Non-SU) stitched 5/8" grosgrain ribbon

Books, books, books

Nothing to post today except to say I'm T-I-R-E-D. Got up early (again) today, thinking I could get an hour's worth of work in on a custom order before my son got up, but no, he decided to get up early too! So I didn't get as much done in the early morning as I would have liked. I, however, did finish the design work on the custom wedding invitation order I'm working on.
Look for pictures in the next week and a half!

In other news, I got two custom book requests in the last day, so I've been scouting for book binding supplies. I had most of what I needed on hand, but had to get a little bit of book cloth for the edge of one of the books. The other one required some running around for the image I'm using on the cover. Will post pics of both books when complete.

So mostly, my brain is mush right now. I keep hoping to get to Kerin Sylvester's sketch challenge by Wednesday, but honestly, I'm barely opening my stamps the last few days. I did go to a stamping open house hosted by my upline-upline, Claire Lawrence, yesterday, and that was fun. Got to make two cards with retiring stamps and play with glitter. Always a good time!

So since I'm working on books right now, I will leave you with some pictures of books I have in my etsy store that I made last fall.

Handsewn Journal with Italian paper

Accordion Book

Weddings in June

In pursuit of building my etsy store business, I've been making LOTS of bids on various alchemy requests, including wedding invitations. Mostly I've been shot down, but that's how it goes. Fake it 'til you make it. Well, I think I made it! I finally got a bid accepted by a bride in California for 75 pocketfold wedding invitations with 2 inserts and response card. Whoo-hoo! She needs them in a hurry, however (long story...), so that's what I'm going to be furiously working on for the next 2 weeks!

Here is the shades of gray sample I made for her to see what it would look like. Hers will be chocolate brown, gold and ivory, however. I'll post pictures when I'm finished with them. After some tips from Melissa Chadwick Levy, another Philly Inker, on how to use the big Baroque Motif stamp, I think I'm finally loving this set!

Paper: Basic Gray, Going Gray, Whisper White
Ink: Basic Gray
Stamp: Baroque Motif
Ribbon: 1-1/2" off white organza ribbon from Michaels or A.C. Moore (bought for a swag project a few years ago...)

Sweet Sunday 23

This was cutting it close to the wire! I uncharacteristically popped out of bed this morning at 6:00 a.m. after dreaming all night about patterned paper (guess I've been doing too much crafting lately...) and decided to have a go at Karen Giron's Sweet Sunday sketch. I had almost decided not to do it because of all the other irons I have in the fire, but I've been noticing color combinations lately and saw a tangerine tango-rose-red-elegant eggplant combo on a sweater a few days ago. Decided that would be the perfect thing to try with my Bright Delights Rub-ons, which I haven't even had time to play with since they arrived this week! I just couldn't get that 5th box on, however, no matter what I tried. The sentiment is very small and hard to see in the photo--"Thinking of You" is in small print above the green strip. This card has NO stamping! Perfect for an early morning fast card.

Paper: Elegant Eggplant, Rose Red, Kiwi Kiss, Tangerine Tango, Whisper White
Rub-ons: Bright Delights

Another Custom order complete!

My son's godfather just graduated from Swarthmore and commissioned 60 thank you cards from me, which I just finished and put in the mail to him. I decided the finished product looked so nice I should take a picture of the box, ready to send!

So many thank yous!

With the purty envelopes (I put them in a plastic bag before I sealed the box...)

The original card, which you can find in my etsy store.

Paper: Whisper White, Basic Black, Old Olive
Ink: Basic Black, Craft White, Old Olive
Stamps: Pocket Silhouettes, Polka Dot Punches