I’m partial to this baby announcement I designed for Stephanie and Dean* because inspiration is right outside my window; I live on a hillside where there’s always at least one—if not a hundred—olive trees in sight. Olive trees have become one of the distinctive emblems of our life on the Mediterranean.

The olive pattern in the background started out as a simple branch that I painted in Photoshop.

I then repeated the olives on a roughly painted background of desert-inspired colors.

With a few Photoshop filters (including my favorite, rough pastels), the background turned into this:

*Names will always be changed.

I took one week off from blogging. Don’t you go picturing me on restful holiday, however—I was busy working. So busy! Overnight I went from having zero design projects to having ten; I just thought it was about time I start accepting projects again.

It’s crazy how that happens. One day I decide to take projects, and the next day I have ten inquiries.

Anyway, this is the first of several “my projects” posts you’ll see in the next few weeks.

I like the simplicity of this birth announcement, and the contrast between cheerful color and quiet layout. Most of all I love the cute little icon in the corner—imagine just adding a flower to the vase when this family has their second child!

*Names, information, and photo have been changed.

I mentioned that I was working on a promotion for a community center library. Here’s what I have so far:

There will be several different promotional pieces that tout their different categories. I’m having so much fun with it!

My little boy is four years old today. Four! Crazy how fast it goes yet most days we’re too busy to realize it. Speaking of busy, I’m frantically getting ready for tonight’s tiny birthday party. Here’s a preview of what’s coming!

*As usual, names and vital information changed.

Every time I happen to glance over at my husband’s nightstand, I deliberately change course and walk over to it. Little Bee, a novel by Chris Cleave, is so enticing in its cover design that I can’t ignore it, even if I tried.

This morning I finally turned to the book over to see who designed it. It’s Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich, a New York-based graphic designer and illustrator whose portfolio is blowing my mind.

You know, when I first set out to become a graphic designer, I imagined my career would go in this direction. I certainly had the motivation and I even thought I had the potential. Yet now I feel so far off course that this no longer feels in my reach—or even in my realm.

And I can’t help but ask myself… do I still want it to be?

A potential client just asked for more examples of my simple-and-modern baby announcements, so I pulled out this one that I did two years ago. It’s different than most of my other announcements in that it has a cool-jazzy vibe!

When Naomi and Magnus* first approached me, they couldn’t envision exactly what they wanted but gave me some good keywords—simple, modern, brown and aqua. So I sat down with those keywords and considered how to apply them to a meaningful design.

I came up with the idea of four intersecting lines to represent each member of their growing family. I wanted the lines to be fluid, almost as if two of the lines spun out of the other two. The result is smooth and sinuous; and the lines are not just symbolic, they also do their job as a design element by moving the viewer’s eye from one point to the next.

Luckily I got it exactly right in the first round (easy clients!), so we had very little work to do. The only thing they asked for is a second option—one without a photo, in case they couldn’t get a good picture of the twins right away.

We actually ended up using both designs, so that was nice.

*Names will always be changed. That includes the baby names. What, you thought someone really named their twins Warrick and Digby?

I wanted to give Galina and Jon* a more cute, traditional announcement for baby Marcus. This is what we came up with (sans baby photos):

You can probably tell that there’s some kind of lined texture in the background. It was super easy to create! After making a new layer in Photoshop, I just drew messy, vertical blue lines with the paintbrush tool.

Then I filled the background layer with a slightly darker shade of blue, using the paint-bucket tool.

Once I added other design elements, it looked less like a messy mistake and more like an interesting, yet subtle, background texture.

Ridiculously easy! One of my favorite tricks in Photoshop.

*Names will always be changed.

We’re back from five wonderful, and slightly insane, weeks in the U.S. of A. The majority of those five weeks were spent either with our families or in shopping centers (not blogging, apparently, which surprises me—I mean, come on, all that free time! NOT), and of course everything led up to the highlight of the trip, my sister’s wedding.

Which was beautiful. My goodness, everything was perfect. The waterfront location, the weather, the dress, the ceremony—every detail from that day deserves way more than one adjective, but all I can think to say right now is “perfect.” Sorry to be such a tease!

Anyway, before I crash, let me just finish up my wedding-design entries by posting an image of the program:

as well as some of the other print collateral, such as the “guest book” (which was actually a poster that guests stamped with their thumbprints, choosing from peach, coral, pink, or fuchsia ink—cute, right?):

and the letter-sized signs that were affixed to the back of front row chairs for the wedding ceremony:

and finally, some of the other various signs that were sprinkled around the venue:

I’m so tired from the thirty hours of travel (I think I fell asleep sometime between uploading the last image and writing this sentence), not to mention the worst travel experience of our lives (think: two kids on a red-eye flight, barely sleeping a wink but with enough energy to whine or cry for a full ten hours) so that’s it for tonight. It’s good to be home. More tomorrow.

My about-to-be-married, creative/foodie sister and her fiancé threw an engagement party last week. They made it an Iron Chef party, and asked every guest to bring a dish containing the special ingredient: bacon. Fun, right!?

I wanted the invitation to complement the wedding designs, but only subtly. Below you’ll see the same colors, type treatment, and clean-whimsy style as the save-the-date and wedding invitation—without replicating them exactly:

It’s hard to believe that my sister’s wedding is now only a month away! We arrived on U.S. soil last Sunday as part of our five-week holiday leading up to the wedding. Exciting! Right now I’m at my in-laws’ place watching my husband play with our three year-old, and waiting for our eleven month-old to wake up from his nap. It’s like a normal day, but only better because we’re all together. This is going to be a great five weeks.

Naturally, once my sister’s save-the-date card was completed, we got started on her invitations. I wanted to use the same cute floral pattern and strong text, but because it’s the wedding invitation—part of, yet more important than, the save-the-date—I wanted to switch things up slightly for an element of surprise.

So instead of using the pattern as a border, I used it as a strip along the top, and to add something new and unexpected, I enlarged an ampersand and a curly bracket:

Now that we’ve added this new, enlarged-punctuation element to the design, it’d make sense to continue it elsewhere in the wedding; so now I’m completely fixated on where. Any ideas?

*These fake names are a stretch. Yes, I know.