If I had my own spring 2012 collection, maybe this would be part of the color palette. Pretty pale lilac, delicious cherry red.

As a side note, when I started this blog last year, I never planned to post these illustrations. Since I’m not a fashion designer, I don’t want to pose as one. Yet I admit—it feels good to have a place to store all these images floating around it my head! And now that I’ve started, this is rapidly becoming one of my favorite subjects to post. So thanks for reading!

This is what I’m fantasizing about today. A cropped, wool blazer in navy blue, with shiny blue paillettes around the neckline.

If I was a working girl again, I’d wear it with a caramel tweed pencil skirt. But as a stay-at-home mom, I’d wear it with skinny distressed jeans and a relaxed gray tee underneath. Seriously, where’s that robot tailor?

I woke up this morning knowing exactly what I wanted to wear. Unfortunately, this outfit exists only in my imagination.

You know, I could really use a robot. With just a simple command, my robot could process my Photoshop illustrations and produce my fantasy outfits within a couple of hours. Now accepting applications.

Today I’m wearing a wrap tee in the most delicious shade of peach you’ve ever seen (thank you, J.Crew Crosstown Tee in Georgia Peach). It’s simple and lovely when paired with cropped black pants, black gladiator sandals, and gold filigree chandelier earrings.

But this color, oh this color…! It makes me want to be somewhere else. Oh, I don’t know, like Lima. Lima, Peru. Like here:

And here:

And definitely here:

*Photographs of Lima by Eve Andersson.

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.

I should name every outfit for the place I could imagine myself wearing it.

In which case, today I wore Paris. Black sheath dress, soft and drapey gray cardigan, black gladiator sandals. It’s what I imagine myself wearing if I were walking on St. Germain and stopping somewhere marvelous for cheese and chocolate.

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about sheath dresses. I only have one, but if I were ever to adopt a signature look, it would be the sheath. They’re always classic, effortlessly sexy, and insanely flattering.

Time to buy more sheath dresses and make a trip to Paris! Who’s in?

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.

If you assumed I’d be designing my sister’s save-the-date cards, wedding invitations, and programs, you were right! I’m knee-deep in her wedding design, and I love it.

Our starting point was some of my wedding inspiration boards. The two boards I really liked for her were Youthful Pink and White and Crisp Coral and White. We had a couple of back-and-forths about how to apply one of these color palettes, when it occurred to me that we could combine the two.

My sister really liked the idea of a softer color with something brighter and punchier, so I sat down to brainstorm how it would all come together. I wanted to give her a visual before going much further, so I created a collection of spring dresses from Banana Republic:

And a collection from J.Crew:

And voilà, we were done with the hardest part! With the green-light* on a coral and pink palette, it was time to come up with an overall motif for her big day. I wanted so badly to go with stripes—like you saw in the inspiration boards—but it just wasn’t connecting. My sister isn’t “stripes” as much as she is “cute flowers.” I had to trust my instinct by switching gears completely and going floral.

Initially expecting to design just a few cute flowers, I was pleasantly surprised as an allover pattern began to emerge! I haven’t done pattern design in years (such a shame, considering my love for it), so it was very exciting. Once again, green-light (yay)—so I refined the pattern to make it seamless.

While applying the pattern to our first project, the save-the-date card, it became clear that the girlish sweetness of the colors and style needed to be balanced by something more tough and masculine. So that’s how I approached the information.

Here’s the final card (with names changed, obviously):

*I’d just like to note that the green-light came from both the bride and groom. In case any of you were thinking there’s no way the groom would approve! Nuh-uh, this is a couple that works in total unity.