2011 Valentine Cards

I finally got my new Valentine cards in the shop. I know I'm a week or two behind. But that's what you can come to expect from someone doing this on the side for fun. I always do two kinds of cards, one you can give to just about anyone and another that's more for that special someone. I choose to do "XO" this year because it reminds me of my grandmother. No matter what the occasion, in a card or letter, she would always sign off my putting lots of x's and o's. So I've picked up that tradition with the cards I give to my family members. It's a sweet way of remembering her. The XO is made up of floral elements. I love it when designers and artists incorporate illustration with typography, and it inspired me with the design of this card.

My second card is a print and is fairly simple. It kind of came to me on a whim. It states "you are my one and only." I found a nice big chunky number one that I could fit this message into. The words are hand drawn by myself and printed with black ink onto an off white matte card stock. Both of the cards are 5"x7" and come with a craft brown envelope. You can purchase these cards as well as two of my previous cards from last year in my Etsy shop. There is free shipping within the U.S. from now until Valentine's Day.

Appeal Magazine

Back in the middle of August, I got asked by a fellow local blogger if I'd be interested in illustrating for her column in our local magazine Appeal. I was unsure at first because I had not seen the magazine and I am not too keen on the local magazines I see around town. So I picked up a copy and was pleasantly surprised by the printed quality and the quality of the content. Yes, it's still a Texarkana local magazine, but it is by far the most well executed one in town. You can read it online here.

Robot Dance Party

My friend Sarah contacted me in July asking me to design a birthday party invitation for her son who was turning three. At that point I was pretty excited because my favorite kind of invitations to design are for birthday parties. But then she proceeded to tell me that she wants to throw him a robot dance party and wanted to have "emo-bots" drawn on the invitation. Haha! This was one of the coolest birthday party ideas, I'd ever heard. And I was loving the idea of giving robots some emo flare. I wanted to pull from some of the design elements of classic vintage robots from the 1950's and 60's. So below is how the invitation turned out, along with some pictures she took from the party. I was blown away to find out she had the cake designed from the invitation with the little emo-bot sporting the mustache. She did a great job making the party come to live.

august update!

I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. I guess July was more jam packed that I thought it was. July was filled with celebrating Kelly's 28th birthday, and our 3rd wedding anniversary. I also taught private art lessons in my home for two weeks, as well as, getting an early start back to school with some inservice and classroom preparation.

For the next three months I won't be taking any mint&honey custom orders. I want to focus on helping my husband finish our updates on our house so we can get everything in place and actually relax and have normal evening at home. So I will be welcoming orders again starting in November, just in time for those custom designed christmas cards.

Here's a recent prayer card I created for a lady that's going to be spending the next year in the Congo teaching. It has a watercolor background with hand drawn designs.

Grocery List & Recipe Cards

In case you didn't know I'm a little obsessed with maps. I decorate with them and like using them whenever I can with my art. I've used a vintage map of the Swiss Alps in the design of this grocery list. It's 4.25"x5.5" 50 sheet pad.

These double sided recipe cards have a hand painted damask design. They are 4"x6" cards, sold in sets of 12 for $10.

These all would make great gifts!

papernstitch

Mint&honey has been accepted to be apart of Papernstitch's newest exhibition that will run until July 25th. The items available on papernstitch will link buyers directly back to my Etsy shop where they can purchase my paper goods or services. This will hopefully bring more traffic to my Etsy shop and bring more awareness to mint&honey. I'm really excited about it! I will be adding more items to the shop throughout the exhibition. I will also be offering free shipping with any order if you mention papernstitch!

Merci, Grazie and Thank You

I'm finally taking advantage of my summer and getting some more items in my Etsy shop. These thank you cards were all illustrated by myself. Each design says thank you in either english, french or italian. All three cards are sold together in a set of 6 and come with a pastel gray A2 envelope.

I've also added some recipe cards that have a painted design on them and I will be adding a grocery list notepad very soon!

Trying my hand at Watercolors....

This was my first attempt at joining mint&honey with watercolors. I can say I'm definitely liking where this is going. I haven't played around with watercolors since college and have forgotten how much I love them.

My friend Jill, who is having a girl and due in 3 weeks, is doing an owl theme in her nursery. This is no surprise to me because this girl has loved owls since I don't know when. My friend Mel is making her bedding from this super cute Alexander Henry fabric, long with an owl mobile inspired from the owls on the fabric! I can't wait to see the finished product.

Since summer has begun I've been having somewhat of an artist block. So once this cloud that is killing my creativity lifts I will begin on my 2010 calendar.

First Hand Painted Invitation

I've always admired Anna Bond and Katie Lombardo and their hand painted invitations and papergoods. Maybe that's why I was inspired to get my paints out while creating this invitations for a baby shower. I'm definitely going to be experimenting more with my watercolors and acrylic paint the next time I do invitations. I love how this turned out and I was just playing around with it and didn't expect for it to be my final copy. I'm working on painting some stationary and mother's day cards (for me to give, not to sell.)

Tea Party, Don't Be Late

So when my friend Mel asked me to make invitations to her daughters nineth birthday, I happily agreed. Then she proceeded to tell me it would be a tea party. I got pretty pumped. I immediately wanted to make it inspired by Alice in Wonderland. Even though I knew this would be typical considering the movie was coming out and all. I knew it would still be fun for her daughter and definitely fun for me to illustrate.

At the beginning of Lewis Carroll's book, Alice is doing her studies and it quite bored because there are no pictures to admire. That's why I decided to have an invitation like a book with something interesting look at. My vision was to illustrate the forest joining in on the tea party, along with the March Hare who in the book joins the Mad Hatter and the dormouse for tea. This invitation turned out exactly how I wanted it to; I am so happy with it!

mint&honey papergoods custom design/illustration for birthday invitations: $40

M&H Business Cards

In case you weren't aware, mint&honey does offer custom design for business collateral. Here are some examples of business cards I have designed recently. I'm working on two more, one for my mother and one for my mother-in-law. The charge for custom design on a business card is the same for all other non-wedding related services, just $40. The cost of printing is separate.

mint&honey valentines

These Valentine goods along with the "Beat Faster" card in the previous post will be in my Etsy shop on Tuesday! So excited to finally get them in there.

"Altogether Beautiful" 8"x10" Print - $8.00

"Love" Folded Card, Blank Inside, 5"x7", Light Gray Envelope - $3.00

"Be Mine" 5"x7" Flat Card, Light Gray Envelope - $3.00

"How Beautiful" 5"x7" Folded Card, Craft Paper Envelope - $3.00

Have a great week!

Valentine Preview

I love maps, like really love maps. Sometimes I think I get carried away with it because I have stacks of old vintage national geographic maps, calendars of maps, pictures hanging on my wall of maps, in my blog banner, books about them and so on. I just think they are great and beautiful. I love the lines on them and how they mimic a blueprint of God's creation.

Anyway, you will see them in many of my designs, just warning you.

The valentine's that I am working on are inspired by the book of Song of Solomon. I found many lovely quotes from Solomon to his bride in the book as I was reading through it earlier this week. Here is just one example.

recipe cards

These are two recipe cards I created for my sister for a Christmas present. She was the first out of all of us to attempt to boil water and go on to master basic breakfast foods. Since, she will probably be married soon and have her own kitchen, she can now start saving recipes. I was forever looking for a cute recipe binder to hold these cards and the only one's I could find were "country kitchen" style with chickens and things on the cover. As I was browsing through Target being disgusted that they too only had "country kitchen" recipe binders I noticed across the aisle were the photo albums which has the exact same function as a recipe binder except aesthetically more pleasing to look at..... and there were cheaper! It worked perfectly holding the 4"x6" recipe cards they only difference is there were no dividers, but I could live with that.

christmas papergoods by mint&honey

Here's a look at some of the Christmas paper goods that came from mint&honey this year. I will show more later. These were all so fun to make; like always. And each one personalized to each person's interests.

2009 Christmas Card

Finish our Christmas card during Thanksgiving Break... check!

Photo by: Micah Dorsey

Hand drawn by: Me!

birth announcement

Being poor when you're an artist is not always a bad thing when it comes to gift giving. You can always create things for friends and family. In this case, my good friend Mindy was having her first baby and I thought it would be special if I created a custom birth announcement for her to hang in her nursery. I wanted all the words to be hand lettered in different styles. I used a bird and twig on the announcement because it will compliment her bedding. It was so fun, hand lettering is one of my favorite things to do! Here is the finished product!

pumpkin carving party

I love creating invitations for special parties. As much as I love pumpkins, you know I highly enjoyed creating this one. I was inspired by all the mums and pumpkins the grocery store have out this time of year. The purple mums were the perfect color combo for the bright orange pumpkins piled high in the bins!

Open House // Etsy

mint&honey has been asked to participate in an Open House. An interior designer in town is opening up her house to give her clients an update on what services she has available to them. Since I was already designing the invitation for the event, she thought it would be a great idea if I could sell some of my papergoods there as well. Since I was in the process of opening my Etsy shop I thought it would be a good opportunity to put myself out there a little more. I am going to have thank you cards, note cards and hopefully some Christmas cards available there. I'm really excited about it and will post pictures soon after.

In other news, mint&honey's etsy shop is finally open but only has the bare basics right now. I'm in the process of adding more items to it. But you should add me to your favorites and check back later this month!

I hope you have been enjoying the Fall! I've been making almost every dessert under the sun that could possibly have pumpkin in it! Scones, cookies, brownies, cinnamon rolls, pancakes, bread and for my sister's birthday a pumpkin cheesecake.

Have a great week!

The days are not long enough!

safari bday
Originally uploaded by mint&honey

Do things ever slow down? And if they did, would I like it? Maybe just for a day or two. I don't have too much to share or blog about for right now. Even though I feel like I have a ton of stuff going on. I don't want to show too much of what I'm working on, because a lot of it will be for my Etsy shop that I plan I having up and running by the end of October. ::crossing my fingers::

Here is a birthday invitation commission, safari themed. Children's invitations and announcement are always more fun to work on for me. It reminds me of doodling in math class on the back of my notebook or bookcover.