happy tuesday all!
for tonight’s before bedtime doodle, i somehow ended up drawing a 12-pack of weird little girl heads. i started by the loop for the head shape, then big eyes, some weird long noses, followed with the little mouths. after the doodles were done, i brought them into photoshop to add some bright colours to the hair. that’s it, that’s all.
hope they don’t make you think of some weird creepy doll heads.
sweet dreams.
turns out i missed the memo on spring cleaning for 2015, so a summer tidy it is; and that includes technology. looking back, i found some of my iphone photos from my cousin kaitlin’s wedding last september, so here they are.
this was a really fun project for me, because i loved kaitlin’s vision right off the bat- her colour palette, vibe, and her desire for some illustration and hand-lettering had me sold.
we thought through every detail for the designs. i made three placecard templates so kaitlin could input the names at her end. we had an icon for each of the dinner options: a chicken, if that was your order, a cow for beef, and one with a carrot for the vegetarians.
my design got to touch some really cool pieces:
– custom-designed stamps for the invitations printed through canada post
– my lettering & illustrations were used on the railway city brewing co. iron spike copper ale we drank at the reception
– customizing the wine labels for the quai du vin wine that was served
about some of the other pieces:
– kaitlin ordered all the paper and envelopes online from envelopments (positive experience!)
– the envelope liner is cut up wrapping paper she bought at homesense
check out some of my pics below.
choo choo!
hello spring!
with mother’s day coming up this weekend, it was the perfect time for trove to send out their 2015 spring lookbook. take a peek at some of the spring goodies they have in store and check out any one of their three locations here in toronto.
to mix it up this season, i’ve added some of my handlettering into the design.
happy spring and happy mothers day to all the mamas out there!
xo.
laura.
i forgot i had this site…. yikes! glad i remembered so i can share this lovely little song by james bay.
thanks to my friend meghan for sharing this with me!
enjoy.
last friday i wrapped up the design for the 2014 trove gift guide. it’s 5 pages of gift ideas for her: jewellery, canadian-designed, eco-friendly gear, and even stocking stuffers.
this year for the cover i wanted to try an illustration of their flagship store in bloor west village. using flat, cheery colours, along with the trove green, the storefront makes for a fresh and fun cover for this year’s gift guide.
if you’re in toronto, stop by one of trove’s 3 locations for unexpected fashion finds, or visit them online to order some goodies.
this year, say hello to your neighbours and #shoplocal !
only 15 sleeps until christmas!
a few weeks ago i was at my local salvation army thrift store and picked up 3 over-the-rail planters for my balcony. i saw the original ikea tag on one of them, but for only 99 cents a piece, they were coming home with me. once i got them cleaned up, i showed them to their new balcony hangout. i picked up 3 pots of mums from the loblaws garden centre to complete my little reading nook.
once they were all set up, i obviously had to instagram them! this is the photo i took:
after the post was up, it was liked by the apartment guide blog who asked if they could use my photo for an upcoming post. i of course said yes, and a couple of weeks later i was up on their blog for their post what’s trending: inspiring apartment patio & balcony gardens. go read the full post and check out their other posts on all things apartment.
happy balcony planting!
oh and don’t forget…
after posting my snail mail to emma, today i’m sharing my mail for gracie.
gracie had asked for a picture of a person making cookies. i immediately thought i would do a french baker and have a little story for him. i named him monsieur gaston and his story is that he’s a baker in paris who has to make beacoup de cookies, cupcakes and cakes for a big fashion designer’s 50th birthday party. he’s writing to gracie to ask for her help to do some of the baking.
i made 2 cutouts on this card for some extra fun- the top cupboard door opened to show what’s inside, as well as the oven door, to see the cookies baking inside.
have a look below. that’s all for now.
my mommy cousin, kristy, recently told me how her girls needed some practice with their writing. i decided to make them each a little story card on a topic they had requested in passing last time i saw them.
emma, the cooky kid she is, asked for a picture of a desert. i’m guessing she has learned something in school, or on tv about deserts so her imagination is running wild.
as plain as deserts are, this was quite the challenge for me. as you’ll see below, drawing camels isn’t really my thing. i used 2 sheets of cardstock from michaels, my favourite black ink pens from dollarama, and plenty of pencil crayons. i started off with getting the basic shapes down and slowly filling them in with colour and some extra detail.
i wrote a little story about my camel, who i named clara. after having drawn her with 2 humps, i did some research and found out that the 2 hump camels apparently only live in china and mongolia, so i worked that in to the story. i had clara the camel go on a little adventure with her donkey friend into the mountains; i made sure to look up the animals who live in the area to be accurate (not that an 8 year old would know). this was just meant to be a starting point to get emma thinking about a kind of story she could write.
once the pieces were done, i stapled them together, licked the envelope shut and sealed it with a stamp. now i’m waiting to get some snail mail back from emma.
stay tuned for my snail mail to gracie!
happy fathers day to my main man dean. thanks for always being good for a laugh, and teaching me what’s important in life- like beer.
cheers to many more bevies with my bud!
camping in 1986. that’s my cousin heather at his shoe!
my cousin kaitlin is getting married this september and she asked me to do the design work for her big day. she came to me for something hand-lettered, fun and floral. she knew she wanted to work the colour navy into the design, but everything else was pretty much decided as we went.
step 1 was hand-lettering, and lots of it. i always start my sketching with a black ink pen in my sketchbook, then photograph the sketch with my iPhone, send it to myself and photoshop the sketch. once i clean it up to my liking, i take it in to illustrator and make it a vector image so it’s scaleable. from here, it’s time to play with colour, layout and adding actual fonts to get the design down.
below are just some of the doodles i worked on while sketching out the concept. stay tuned to see the final product.
corkboardcreative.com 