Monkeying Around

A few weeks ago I was super pumped to receive another request for a custom item. A friend of mine is expecting her firstborn in a few months, and being super organized, she was already planning ahead for Thank You notes for her baby shower.

Her brief - she is keeping things neutral since they don't know the sex of the baby, and they are planning a beige, brown, olive green, monkey themed room for their little one. She wanted a Thank You card that was like a postcard.

Since all my Etsy items are Print-at-Home digital designs, I wondered how easy it would be to create a two-sided design that could be easily printed at home.

Before I could figure that out, I first had to create my monkeys. I do a little research online for images, then sketch out my idea before getting started in Photoshop creating my designs. 

Isn't he cute?

I used this basic shape and tweaked a few things to make a daddy, mommy and baby monkey. I usually let my ideas marinate in my head for a while before trying anything out in Photoshop - otherwise I get distracted by trying out new techniques and lose track of the task at hand. 

So when I opened up Photoshop I knew I was aiming for a 4" x 6" postcard with two sides. The front being an image of the monkey family peeking over a fence saying, "Thank You" and the back as a basic postcard with a space for a stamp and address, a thank you message on the other side and room for a personal message. 

For some reason I thought an argyle pattern would match just perfectly with a jungle/tropical feel. It kind of balances it a little and has a bit of "preppy meets rustic" feeling to it. What do you think?

The front of the card - with a "jungle-y" font. 

Back of the card with a custom message from the client.

As for how the printing would go - I left the back without a border so that if the printer was not spot on it would still print basically in the middle of the card. The client received a PDF with 2 pages with the front and back lined up to print two copies at a time. Here's what the client said about the printing process:

 It printed perfectly. My printer rolls the paper over and prints on the back so thankfully I realized that as I was putting in the paper so I had to put the printed side up. But It is perfectly aligned and looks great when I cut them out.

This item is available for purchase on Etsy

I also have plans for my Monkey Line so will be working on some more items with this theme.