Category Archives: design

our save the dates: a labor of LOVE.

our save the dates were a labor of some serious love involving my all-time favorite combination of design + media.  i’ve been obsessed with filming/editing videos since elementary school so it was only appropriate that reis and i made a video to send out to our guests.  our good friend jon helped us film one sunday on the north shore and i edited our footage down to a short little film.  then i got to designing the packaging of it all (so much fun!).  i ordered kraft dvd cases from washington and sent them to louisiana to be letterpressed with my design (i am so obsessed with anything and everything lettepressed!).  then came the fun part of individually(!) burning 130+ copies of the finalized dvd.  i designed the “details” insert and sent them out to be printed in california.  then i designed the dvd label, ordered blank glossy labels online, printed them on my printer, and stamped a label on each dvd.  the address labels i printed on vellum and spray glued them on to bubble wrap mailers (for the record, spray glue and vellum are my worst enemies…lots of stickiness, lots of trial and error, and lots of worrying that the labels would fall off in transit, leaving the packages to be forever lost in usps land).  finally i wrapped up the kraft cases with some baker’s twine and off they went!  this whole process was my ideal project and it was SO much fun seeing it come to life after being a vision inside of my head for months.

*check back tomorrow because i’ll be sharing our video!

a message in a bottle.

now that all of my future bridesmaids have received their “message in a bottle,”  i can share with you how i asked my best friends to be my beloved b-maids!  since all of my bffs live in three different states on the mainland — and i live on an island in the pacific ocean — i knew i wasn’t going to be able to ask them in person.  so i found it very fitting to ask them via a message in a bottle seeing as i’m across the sea.  (nevermind the fact that i did see two of them in person a few weeks ago on my sponatenous trip to LA, but by that time, i had already thought of this master plan of mine and really wanted to ask each of my friends the same way!).  i printed out a little poem i made up on brown paper lunch sacks, tied them with some twine (from olive manna), filled the tiny bottles (from third shift) with sand, made each girl a special card telling them why i love them so dang much, and shipped ’em off.  and thankfully, they all said yes!  i had a lot of fun making them and am so excited to have my amazing friends stand next to me on our special day.

one year.

today marks jayAdore’s ONE YEAR anniversary!  what the heck?  i honestly can’t believe it has been one whole year since i started blogging!  a part of me feels like so much has happened in the past year and the other part of me feels like i started this thing a month ago.  bizarre.

anyways, lately i have been thinking A LOT (and i mean a lot) about my future and my passions in life.  i have such HUGE dreams that i want to pursue and i have this notebook with all of my goals i want to attain by the time i am 30.  this blog is a big part of it, too.  i kind of feel like i’m in a “blog mid-life crisis” right now because i feel like it needs a little bit more direction.  i am so random when it comes to when and what i post and i would love to be more consistent and blog about cooler things than copying celebrity’s outfits (although that is kinda fun too!).   i also want to do more design features because it’s something i really LOVE and the main reason i started this blog!  i’m scheming up ideas and i’m really excited for what’s to come!  to those of you who read my little corner of the interwebs, thank you so very much!  it really does mean a lot.  stay tuned! xx

2012 calendar.

i make reis’ parents a calendar every year for christmas.  and every year, i don’t have time to make it until after the holiday craziness.  by the time i give it to them, it is mid to late january.  well this year i got smart.  knowing that i have a tendency to [without fail] be tardy with this thing, i made them a february 2012-january 2013 calendar.  genius, i tell you.  when designing this year’s cal, i went with a minimalist theme because i’m digging simple layouts, simple fonts, and the whole “less is more” movement.  here are a few of my favorite months.

thank you cards.

after long and tiring days at work, designing is one of the ways i like to relax and i find it to be really therapeutic.  after being in the office all day dealing with taxes and the ever growing laundry list of regulations from the IRS, i love how design virtually has no real “rules.”  i can put shapes wherever i want to and use whatever font suits my fancy that night.  it’s awesome.  these are some thank you cards i designed the other night to send out my [better-late-than-never] christmas thanks!

family new year’s card.

these are the new year’s cards i designed these for my mama and i had fun making it a little bit different than a typical group shot christmas card!

and for the record, no, reis and i did not break up …mom just says you can’t go on the front of the fam christmas card until you are an “official” part of the fam :)