Something NOT on the registry

My friend Jeannette's wedding is this weekend. Jeannette and I met on the Knot last summer. We bonded over stories involving our equally quirky families and jaunts to L.A. Flowermart. She is also my first design client that wasn't a family member or part of my inner circle. She and her fiance, Matt, opted not to register for gifts. This gave me a golden opportunity to design and make a gift.

Working with paper is my forte. As such, I decided to create a guest book for them. I bought an album kit from Paper Source and went to work. I'd like to say that this project was a walk in the park. In actuality it was A LOT more work than I had anticipated. I purchased the art from a website and manipulated it to fit my needs. The motif matched their wedding stationery, which I will post later. This was the easy part.

My original plan was to transfer the design to fabric and use the fabric as the book's cover. This was a disaster. The image didn't transfer as well as I would have liked. The fabric did not adhere as well as I would have liked. The fabric was so thick that it required a disgusting amount of glue. This, in turn, caused the covers to buckle. Long story short. The finished product looked like a child's art project gone very, very bad. Thankfully, I did not take any photos of this pathetic attempt.

Not to be deterred, I went back to Paper Source and bought another album kit and some paper. I decided to skip the fabric and stick to what I work with best - paper. I printed the design on Luxe paper. Assembly went much better this time. As persevering as I am, I wasn't sure I could buy another kit and start over yet again. I am quite pleased with the finished product.

Here are photos of the finished product:

Designs that didn't make the cut

Here are some designs that didn't make it into Wendy & Lior's Invite Suite.

* Design edited for client privacy

This was their original invitation design. I had to edit the design when Wendy realized it would take her 7 Gocco screens and hours and hours of labor to mass-produce this piece. I was a little bummed that I wouldn't see this design "fleshed out", but loved what ultimately printed.

These were the original monograms I created for Wendy & Lior. They loved them until they realized that each monogram had to be hand-cut to be used as pocketfold seal.

Progress with my evvvillll plans

This is Wendy & Lior. They are aiding and abetting in my eevvillll plan.Photo by Kim Fox Photography

I met Wendy through the Knot. We've become friends over the last couple of months. So, when she asked me to design her wedding invitation suite, I was honored. Wendy only had a few stipulations:
1. Invites had to have a modern feel
2. Incorporate a "Swirly Pattern"
3. Simple enough for her to Gocco print and DIY at home

I drew some of my inspiration from her wedding venue - Villa de la Vina in Malibu.
Here are some pics of her venue:

We ran into a few production hiccups. Because of that, her invites have had several incarnations. Thankfully, we got the kinks worked out. I helped assemble these invites.
Here is the finished product:

{Photo by Wendy Mills}
{Photo by Wendy Mills}
***Personal info has been removed to protect privacy.

{Photo by Wendy Mills}

Thank you Wendy & Lior for being among my first clients!

I have another invite suite to blog about, but I'll wait until after their wedding to post. Don't worry, JV...I didn't forget about your invites;)