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.

Custom Creation

We just got our first order for a custom design! It's so great to work on something from scratch without drawing on any of the other ideas floating around your brain. I love seeing how the design evolves from a few key words, ideas and images.

So here's the brief from the client - she is throwing a birthday party for her two-year-old in May. She wants an invitation around a dolls/tea party theme. At first she wanted a primary color scheme but after thinking about it she decided she'd rather go with a pink/white/silver combo. 

After doing a little bit of research and thinking - I threw together this inspiration board to help get the creative juices flowing.

1. Here's the color scheme the client wanted - a few shades of pink combined with white and a very light shade of grey.

2. I found this photo of a cute rag doll that I used as a base for creating my own vector graphic. I use Photoshop to create all my graphics, although I suppose someday I should really learn Illustrator as I think it has a few more tools that could be useful to me.  

3. I thought a cute little picket fence would be a sweet addition to the invitation - sticking with a simple shape and the white color it was very easy to create in Photoshop. 

4. This was one of the first images I came across and I fell in love with the idea of multiple dolls with letters on their dresses. You'll see in the final product how this idea was developed. 

5. Nothing says party like a sweet pennant banner with cute patterned flags. Not sure if she will have anything like this at the actual party but it sure adds an interesting element to the invitation. 

6. Here are a few tea cups and tea pots which were part of my "collecting" - in the end I went for a simpler and more subtle graphic to tie this element into the invitation. 

7. In order not to overwhelm the invitation with too much pink, I wanted to incorporate another pattern and color to add interest and balance. I can just imagine the dolls having their tea party on green gingham grass. 

I started with the doll graphic as I knew it would take the most time and patience. I drew every shape that makes up the doll and now it is completely customizable - I can change the skin, hair, eyes, mouth, clothing, shoes to fit any color scheme. 

Here is my collection of dolls. 

I fiddled around with the background for a long time. I am realizing it's very hard to actually describe the whole design process and why things end up a certain way. It is a lot of experimenting with colors, gradients, shapes, fonts and effects. 

After a couple of hours I was pretty happy with the design and sent it off to the client for her approval. She loved it! 

*details have been changed

This design will be up on my Etsy store soon - and more coordinating items are currently in progress.