Wedding invitations...

My friend Heather is getting married in a little less than a month and she gave me special permission to post these wedding invitations, which we dreamed up back in February when I took a whirlwind weekend east coast wedding prep trip to see her. I had told her before she got engaged that I would do wedding calligraphy for her, and we not only did the envelopes but also managed to work it into a few other places.

Her colors are orange and navy, so all the ink was navy and we found the cute striped ribbon to wrap around the envelope.  I wrote the names on two inch stickers from paper source to hold the inner envelopes closed. I sent her scanned copies of their names in calligraphy, and a few other key words and she worked them into the invitation:

And finally, my favorite part-- she wanted to include her dog (for whom she happened to find an orange striped bow tie!) Check out these stamps!

I can't wait for this wedding!

Bridal shower invitations...

I have been busy lately.  My best friend Heather is getting married in June and I have had a lot of projects lately. I made these invitations for a bridal shower my mom is having this month. We were going for something festive but not too girly, and I think these were perfect.

They had navy calligraphy ink and slid into the little pockets. We have been brainstorming polka-dot themed food and decorations for the last two weeks. It is going to be so cute!

More Baby Bee details...

Baby Bee's mom assured me that she didn't think I went overboard with bees, but I was worried for a while.  Here are a few more Baby Bee shower details...

The Baby Bee sign.  I have always wanted to make one of these, and I loved the way this one turned out.  The bee wings are glittered.

Bee logo name tags. It took me a while to come up with an idea for cute name tags. I printed out the bee logo and wrote names in calligraphy, then tied a tiny bow with the ribbon and stuck them together with a glue dot.  They pinned on with a corsage pin.  I made corsages with pink spray roses for Mom and Grandma-to-be.

A sheet with the bee logo for recording gifts that I mounted on white cardboard...

Calligraphy signs for the Baby B wishes jar and the "guess how many bees" game...

And of course lots of flowers.  I used yellow roses, orange gerbera daisies, pink spray roses, orange and pink snapdragons and tulips, and some yellow filler that was perfect for the arrangements.

Baby Bee food...

As I mentioned, in spite of the dog's cookie rampage the Baby Bee shower turned out perfect.  Here are more details on what we served...

The table-- we served tea sandwiches, mini quiches, deviled eggs fruit skewers, scones, strawberries filled with cream cheese, bee cookies and mini beehive cupcakes.

The beehive cupcakes were a big hit. I just piped buttercream onto the top of them with a wide tip. Then I took yellow M&Ms and piped frosting stripes onto them, stuck them into the frosting and added a couple of almond slivers for wings.

We also had a mini candy bar with yellow, pink, and orange candy.  I made little calligraphy signs with the bee logo.

And finally, more bee cookies.

Dog versus bee...

I am a big fan of edible favors. Mostly because you know someone will almost always eat them, whereas other favors tend to get thrown away. (Yes, sorry friends, I probably won't keep that wedding mug you hand out at your wedding. Nothing against you, I just like my mugs to match...). So my original plan for the Baby Bee favors was cut-out beehive and bee cookies. Actually, it was not just a plan-- I fully implemented it and I had 20 that looked just like this:

 I have large craft table in my garage and I have a habit of piling all of my projects on it, so when I finished packaging them, I put them neatly in a bag and set that bag on top of my table.

When I did that, however, I forgot that (1) we put the dog in the garage when we are gone and (2) the dog loves cookies. She is a really good dog and has never really chewed on anything but her dog toys, so it didn't even cross my mind that the bee cookies might drive her crazy. But they did... and she attacked:

And when I came home my garage looked like this:

The dog had eaten 15 beehives, who knows how many bees. She was on a major sugar high (kind of funny) but otherwise unharmed, and not sick in the least. She even licked up crumbs as I cleaned up, and she never licks crumbs.

After I cleaned up her mess, I had to think of a plan b for the favors. I had a lot of bees but not enough hives, so I repackaged them in smaller bags with smaller tags and just one bee cookie. Fortunately they still turned out cute:

But now you know what happens when Dog takes on Bee... if it is a cookie, the bee has no chance!

Baby Bee Invitations...

Last week I gave a little preview of the Baby Bee shower that I hosted this weekend.  One of my good friends has a last name that starts with the letter "B" and I have been calling the baby "Baby B" ever since I found out she was pregnant.  They are probably going to give the baby a "B" first name too, so I thought a "Baby Bee" shower would be perfect.

When we heard Baby B was a girl, I decided a color palate of yellow, orange, pink and gray would be nice, and I found the perfect ribbon from May Arts.  I designed the little bee in inkscape, and wrapped it all up with the ribbon and a "baby bee" tag in a Papersource petal enclosure.

The calligraphy is mine, scanned into Inkscape and colored gray to match the rest of the invitation.  I mixed up some gray ink to address the invitations.  This was the first time I had done a return address in calligraphy and I loved the way it turned out.  I also got lucky at the post office-- they just happened to have the perfect extra-postage stamp for the square envelopes!

We also thought something like a guest book would be nice, so I made little notecards for people to sign with their wishes for Baby B.   At the end of the shower, we wrapped them up and sent them home for mom and dad-to-be to read together.

Stay tuned for bee cookies, behive cupcakes, how to turn a yellow M&M into a bee, and what happens when a yellow lab takes on bees!

Holiday hostess gift...

We have had a lot of holiday parties this year.  I have sort of mixed feelings about homemade hostess gifts, but I have the best recipe for sweet-hot spiced nuts that is worth sharing.  It is really good and really easy.

I also had a bunch of little metal cannisters that I had been saving for something that turned out to be just the right thing for nuts.  So I printed out the recipe on a little card, calligraphed the recipe and our names, taped the card on the cannister and tied it all up with a nice bow... an easy, cute holiday hostess gift.

Business cards!

It rained here all weekend... not good.  It gives me headaches and my dog gets moody (seriously- she really hates rain).  But it was kind of cozy and it gave me a chance to start a few projects I had been meaning to get around to.  I had been thinking it would be nice to have some business cards.  Since I don't really have a need for them yet, I decided to keep it simple and try printing my own.  Paper Source, my favorite paper store, carries paper in every size and color, including business card size, so I bought a pack in blue.
Then I got out my calligraphy supplies and played around with different logo ideas.  I played around with incorporating little flowers into it, but my taste is pretty basic and flowers seemed a little busy.

So I settled on one of the logos I had written, scanned it in to the computer, played around and figured out how to turn it brown (I liked the combination of blue and dark brown), and typed in the rest of the information.  I decided to go simple- logo on one side, name and contact information on the other.  I have a great Canon printer that seems to print any size paper I put in, so it was really easy and now I have 25 business cards.  I'm not sure yet when I will use them, but it's not a bad start!