Happy Birthday, Charlotte!

Here's an invite I cooked up for little Charlotte's first birthday party.

Southern Vintage, Come to Fruition

Remember those southern vintage inspired invites I designed for a friend? I printed them up using my gocco a while back, and here is a sneak-peek of the results.

Southern Vintage

Sorry for the hiatus. In the last month, we moved, I finished my semester, we visited my parents (hi mom and dad!), etc. I guess the time just got away from me.
On to the crafting: my friend Sarah, who you would not know to be southern until you get her all riled up about something and her accent gives her away, is having a vintage inspired southern wedding in September, where her colors are going to be whites (cream, blush, white), navy and silver. Here is the invite that I came up with for her. The grey will be printed on my trusty gocco in silver.

...and the RSVP card. We are still working on the phrasing, but the "is comin', y'all" kind of fits...

Menus

My friend Dana is getting married in a few weeks and I was super excited when she asked me to help out with the paper goods- these have been in the works for a while, but I just printed them this weekend... Dana made a last-minute call on the gold (we were going to go with black and grey), and predictably, because I love all things sparkly, I'm pretty stoked about it. More pictures to come- I am finishing the program printing today.

Moving

The camera is a little wonky today, but here are some images of the moving announcements that I goccoed this morning. It was just a little doodle that I cooked up while watching an episode of Weeds (Best. Show. EVER!). I had some issues with the blue ink (namely, it was old and had separated, so it ended up being all oozy all over the place in some places and clogging up the screen in others). No matter; it's a sunny Saturday, and we all need a weekly exercise in letting imperfections go. They're shown along with the narcissus that I got at the green market from a man in a plaid hat with a bushy beard, the inside of whose van looked like the Dutch countryside.

turning my back on the digital revolution

This may not exactly the next biggest thing, but it might be the next old biggest thing. I have been using film, yes, the old fashioned kind that you can't even buy at the drugstore anymore, to take some pictures since I bought myself a lomography supersampler for my birthday. I just got back some rolls of film (one that had been in my camera FOREVER, one from this past Christmas, and one from this past Easter at Jordy's aunt's house) I gotta say, there is something about film that is just so freaking hot. It's all about the graininess and the way that light is captured - it reminds me of photos from when I was a kid, or that my parents took when they were my age. Film just reeks of long hair and salt water and late sunsets and eating outside. We shot our wedding with some vintage Super 8 film cameras (think the opening sequence of "The Wonder Years") for our video- seeing these rolls makes me want to get those rolls developed stat.
Here are some shots that I think were much better captured on film than they would have looked had I taken them with a digital camera.
This is from Greece (I can't remember where):
Here's Dexie on a beach in San Francisco:
Jack showing off his Easter eggs (taken with my supersampler):
Here's a shot of Berkeley, also taken with the supersampler (in December).
This photo might be the favorite that I've ever taken- I took it on a whim in a fish market in Istanbul:

Presenting...

...MY ETSY SHOP!

There are a few card designs available right now; be sure to check back throughout the week, as I'll be adding some jewelry and some other card designs. There will also be custom designs to come as well. Tell your friends!
(The url if you want to go there without clicking on the link is hirabayashidesigns.etsy.com.)

Etsy Store Launch

Okay, so Thursday isn't early in the week. In my defense, I live on Manhattan, therefore I feel like I am entitled to live on island time. So sorry for the delay, but here is the big news: I am launching an Etsy store (which I had hoped to have up, but thanks to the less than stellar weather here, the photography conditions for my goods have been not so nice). Yesterday, I participated in a little craft fair at school. I got to meet some lovely people and sell some wares. Included were these valentine-ish cards that will be coming in my new Etsy shop. I'll also have some jewelry up, and will now be taking orders for custom stationary from people other than friends and friends of friends.
I will post later on in the week with the link when the store is up and running.

2008 Family Calendar

Jordy's family has a great tradition of making a family calendar every year with pictures from the year and everyone's birthdays and anniversaries. I thought that this year, having a great collection of pictures from the wedding, I would make a calendar for my dad's side of the family. I used the photo booth photos from our wedding to make a 5.5x8 calendar held together with a binder clip. After an epic battle with my parents' printer, they finally got printed out exactly right- I also included a t-pin for hanging them. There they are at the bottom, all ready to be distributed at Christmas eve.

Printed

We just had a delicious dinner with Emma and Drew. She made an eggplant dish- I can't remember what it was called- with mozzerella, portabello mushrooms, ricotta, and eggplant- it was phenomenal. For dessert, we had a cookie plate and mint hot cocoa. If she's not careful, I might end up moving in with her. Anywho, they printed out the save the dates today and I got a sneak peek. She chose a smaller card than she had originally thought that she wanted to use, and it looks really, really good. Emma and Drew feel like the design "looks like them", and (toot, toot) I agree! It's funky, but still very vintage-y, with a great color scheme that Emma chose (I'll post about her bridesmaids' dresses here later). They also think that it looks a little like a Grateful Dead concert poster, which alludes to the fact that they both used to be hippies. I like them both a great deal anyway. Here they are printed out (again, excuse the crappy camera):

save the date!

I love weddings. I especially love weddings when I am not the one who has to deal with putting the guest list together, which is why I am so excited about my dear friend Emma's wedding. She is marrying her charming beau Drew, and lucky me, I got to design their save the dates. Emma and Drew wanted a vintage-y seed-packet look, and I was more than happy to oblige. I perused the internet and found this gorgeous example:
This is fantastic-I love the muted colors, detailed drawings, the font, everything. However, Emma and Drew are a bit less country bumpkin, and a bit more fun and funky. So I took some inspiration from a vintage botanical exhibition poster, and came up with this:

It's a 4x6 postcard, featuring the flowers that they are going to use for the wedding (zinnias-her mom is growing all of them), along with a little picture of the church where they are getting married. They're printing them this weekend- I'll put up a photo of the finished product when I get mine in the mail! Here's a sneak peek at the back (with room for address labels and a quick note from Emma and Drew):

Make Way!

Here is the invite that I designed for my friend Emily's baby shower. I love the idea of a book shower, since hearing about why people chose the books they did is much more fun than playing those awful baby shower games. (Who ever decided that it is fun to taste baby food and guess what it is? There's a reason that only babies eat it.) I think that kids' books are so evocative for most of us- all of us have a book that we remember reading over and over and over as a child, and as we grow older, we associate great books with reading to the kids in our lives. One of my favorite kids' books is Make Way for Ducklings (written by Robert McCloskey, who also wrote Blueberries for Sal), so I thought it would be fun to use that as a theme throughout, since Emily lives in Boston. Enjoy!