Disco Ball Bachelorette Party Invitations

Disco Ball Bachelorette Party Invitation

I have been an invitation designing machine this week, but I think this one is my favorite.  It's shiny and pink and fun, and a little bit moody. 

These Disco Ball Bachelorette Party Invitations sport a sparkly pink disco ball, and are great for those bachelorette parties that involve bar hopping, dancing, too many cranberry and vodkas, and forcing the bride to wear embarrassing head gear and flashing buttons to celebrate her last hurrah before she's married.

Click here to get these invites for yourself.

Martini Bachelorette Party Invitations

Martini Bachelorette Party Invitations

 Martini Bachelorette Party Invitations!

These are for your classier 'girl's night out' bachelorette parties.  The ones where your friends don't make you wear a veil pinned with condoms or do embarrassing things to random men.  Ones where maybe you all sit around and sip Cosmos, and open up a pile of presents that contain pretty lingerie.

(I swear to god, the pink color isn't actually that acidic and eye-watering.  It's actually a mellow rose.  Damn web safe colors.)

Click here to get these for yourself!

Bags & Boxes Bridal Shower Invitation

Bags & Boxes Bridal Shower Invitation

The Bags & Boxes Bridal Shower Invitation is decorated with gift bags and pretty wrapped boxes in a variety of colors with a line of horizontal stripes in coordinating colors.  They're simple, cheerful and bright, and work for any type of bridal shower.

(I'm really pushing my creative limits with naming stuff today, I know.)

Click here to get these invites for yourself!

WIP: Rapunzel's Tower

WIP: Rapunzel's Tower

My husband is gone for the weekend, and when he's not around I get really bored and start crazy complicated art projects.  Like so.

I haven't seen Tangled yet, but ever since this picture of Rapunzel's tower was released I've loved every inch of it.  Yesterday, I was bored and sick of watching tv, so I decided that I'd make myself a small scale version of the tower to grace my pretty bookshelves.  I spent several hours making the base of the tower and I made a start on the top portion.  I did some more today, but I had to stop, because I bruised my palms.  I didn't even know this could happen!  But I guess rolling out clay over and over will do that.  So I'll have to wait until it doesn't hurt my hands to finish the rest. 

The tower is made of polymer clay (Sculpey III) and bamboo skewers made the skeleton.  I used crumpled aluminum foil to give the bricks texture, and the bamboo skewers were also used to give the 'plaster' texture.  I'm also planning uses for acrylic paint, toothpicks, clumps of aluminum foil, and paper clips.   And possibly beads and glue for the windows... I'm not sure if the idea I have is going to work yet...

Vines Wedding Invitation & Stationery Set

Vines Wedding Invitation & Stationery Set

The Vines Wedding Invitation & Stationery Set!  It has maroon leaves, gold birds, and a pink background.  It's all pretty and girly, yet still clean and simple.  Though I originally made this design purely for wedding invitations, I realized it worked just as well for personalized stationery and business cards.

This invitation set has invitations, a matching reply card, envelopes, address labels, stamps, stationery and (though not pictured above) there are also business cards and letterhead!

(If you go in to get a closer look, you'll notice that the invitations template has the names of Mercedes and Kurt from Glee.  I tend to marathon watch tv shows while I'm working, and I just pull names from whatever I'm watching while I'm designing - it's more fun that way.  I guess while I was doing these I was watching that episode where Mercedes deludes herself into thinking she's got a crush on Kurt.  So yes, I realize that Kurt is gay and wouldn't be marrying Mercedes, but they are BFF's, and maybe somewhere down the line they'll make one of those pacts where if they don't find anybody to marry by the time they're 30 they'll marry each other!  You know, for tax reasons!  It could happen.)

Christmas Cookies

I made Christmas cookies!  My mom gave me her Kitchen Aid mixer (!) while I was home for Thanksgiving, and I got the yen to bake.  I made the dough, rolled out the dough, formed the cookies, and baked for about four hours on Sunday, and iced them all day Monday.  It took a crazy long time, and killed any dream I ever had about opening my own bakery, but I freaking love that mixer.  I would write odes to that mixer.

I used recipes that I got off the internet - you can find them here:
Best Rolled Sugar Cookies
Sugar Cookie Icing

The icing recipe is a good one, but you have to fiddle with the amounts of milk to get the right smooth consistency.  I followed them to the letter the first time and it gave me what looked like good snowball packing snow.  But after you figure that out...  The recipe gives you that shiny frosting that you normally get in bakery cookies, but be warned - the light corn syrup gives you the shiny, but if you put in too much it will take hours for the icing to dry.  Long, sticky hours.  (Something to think about: I used the almond extract suggested in the recipe, but that stuff is really sweet.  Too sweet.  I should have just used vanilla.)

The cookies are good too.  I'm usually not a huge fan of sugar cookies, but these are pretty tasty.

Disney Coloring Book Pages, WIP's

(Do I ever post anything that isn't a work in progress?)

All this time I thought that other digital painters must have some secret that they weren't sharing with me.  I thought I couldn't make the really pretty stuff because I didn't have the right program or whathaveyou, but it turns out I'm just stupid.  It's called 'Flow', and it's a brush setting in Photoshop, and all this time I thought it was just another way to say 'Opacity'.  It's not.  *facepalm*

I recently found a really amazing digital artist on Deviant Art.  Her painting style is just gorgeous.  It's all big brush strokes and texture, and I love it.  Anyway, I was going through her stuff and she wrote a bunch of FAQ/tutorial things, and one of them was what brushes she uses, and it was there I learned about 'Flow'.  So I've been trying to mimic her style all weekend to figure out how she does it.  So far I'm an epic fail.  I see chunky brush strokes and my brain goes, 'Gah!  Soft edged brush now!  Smooth that out!'  So that part isn't going very well, but I'm learning stuff through failure, which is a plus.

I've been trying things out using the painting exercise shown above.  You take a Disney coloring book page - Choose your favorite princess! - and you paint it in the style of some work of art.  It's fun and pretty silly, but I've seen it done with impressive results.

I started out this exercise with Jasmine, as I attempted to turn her into a Degas ballet dancer (in the coloring book page she's holding this length of sheer fabric, and I thought it might work), but my digital painting skillz aren't up to imitating Degas, so I gave up.

I moved onto Ariel and Eric.  I'm painting them in the rococo style (you can see the painting I'm drawing from here: Francois Boucher's Venus Consoling Love), because this pose screams 'rococo' to me.  I'm actually really excited about this one.  I don't think it's very accurate as far as being rococo goes, but I think it might turn into a cartoonish version of it.  And anyway, Ariel's hair looks fantastic.

I only started on Alice this morning, because I wanted to try the eye thing.  She's going to be the creepiest version of Alice I've ever seen.  The only part of her that's 'done' is her eyeballs, though I think I need to make the inner part of her irises darker...  But she'll be fantastic and weird when I'm through.