Art Direction & Design: Aesthetic Movement

My featured designs

More designs that are mucho bueno

Designer: Hatch Design, San Francisco, CA

Designer: Rome & Gold Creative

Designer: Shauna Cross Design

The Process.

After cutting and scoring the paper I traced over the lettering with a glue pen — you can only do a small section at a time before the glue will start to dry, making the glitter hard to apply.

Sprinkle.

Let dry for a few seconds…tap off excess…violá!

The Materials.

Here’s the goods:

• Embossing Powder
• The rubber stamp from our gift boxes was recycled for the envelopes by dabbing only the Alan + Jill section with a cloth wet with ink.
• Bone Folder Tool for hand-scoring the paper
• Quickie Glue Ppen to trace the lettering before applying the glitter
• X-acto knife for cutting the paper

Epson Hot Press was used specifically for the reason of it being the thickest paper I could feed through my Epson R2880 (I only needed to produce around 10 of these)…that is until it proceeded to jack my printer heads. Long story, but I did get a replacement. To produce the last round of prints I sourced out Curtis Bailey, a photographer in the area (check the website — some great stuff on there) that happens to have a Epson Stylus Pro 9900 that could take care of printing them without problems — thanks again Curtis.

Published.

Watch for this card in the upcoming book “1000 More Greetings” by Rockport Publishing hitting the book stores everywhere Fall 2010.

Questions?

Feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have. I really enjoyed making these, so if you’re looking or know someone needing printed materials for their wedding I’d love to quote the job out Hope you’ve enjoyed this, take care.

Raisin was on quality control duty as I rubber stamped the flap of these kraft boxes purchased from Uline

I wanted some text on the flap that sealed the box and Jill wanted some sort of  ”love vibe” somewhere so I knew pulling lyrics from a well-known Elvis song would do the trick — and it did indeed.

Poster paint was used once again on the inside of the box and was applied with a sponge brush to eliminate any streaking that occurs from using a normal paint brush. Originally I was going to fill the inside of the boxes with just red shredded paper but I felt it really needed a big pop of color & contrast when the guest opened the box up for the first time — so painting the inside it was.

The production line of completed boxes.

The cards that would be placed on the top of the box were printed on my Epson R2880 after I burned the edges in Photoshop to give them subtle texture. I had two rubber stamps made (one for “24″ and one for “Alan + Jill 10   09″) that needed to be lined up manually because of the two different colors we used — it was a bit tricky to line them up, but if they were off a bit it added to the handmade feel.

After all the cards were rubber stamped Jill then hole punched them so we could thread them to match the sewn-on style that the Save the Dates had — I thought this was a good way to tie the two projects together.

Red hemp jewelry cord from Michaels was used for attaching and threading the cards onto the box. Most people tend to use bakers twine but it seems to only come in striped colors and liked the texture of this cord better.

…Hand threading…one by one…hole by hole….

Jill wanted a small bag of candy inside the box so we headed over to Powells Sweet Shoppe in Belmont Shore to fill up on Jelly Bellys.

Jelly Bellys were mixed in, wrapped up and tied with red hemp jewelry cord as well.

1/16th” kraft chipboard was purchased once again and cut down to 5″ x 2″ rectangles so gambling chips could be affixed to them via fugitive glue. The tagline “Take a Gamble” was rubber stamped onto the chipboard next to the gambling chip. Homie on the left cut down all the chipboard — he works at Lyon Art Supply in downtown Long Beach — homie on the right is Jeff from Jeff’s Press in Huntington Beach who made all the rubber stamps for me — thanks guys

The sides were painted with a Sharpee Poster Paint Pen to yet again tie in with the Save the Dates.

Although I enjoyed playing Martha Stewart for a few weeks, I’m fine with not going into a craft store for a while…

Each guest received a $5 chip they could gamble with after the amazing dinner we had at Border Grill inside Mandalay Bay — awesome place to eat FYI + a  place for group events, highly recommended (Thanks Katie!! We got into the club later too ). Our friends Jared & Lauren bet both of their chips on “24″ at the roulette table after dinner and won $340!!! Now that’s a way to start off the night!!!

Elvis shades were purchased from a costume store in Belmont Shores — we wiped out their inventory in 1 minute LOL!!! At dinner we had the Photographer take portraits of everybody wearing the shades — needless to say they were nothing short of AMAZING!!! The more people drank, the better they got!!! More on the photos in another post…

This is what guests saw when they opened up the box.

And there you have it, my design process for our Love Me Tender Boxes (only 17 made). These boxes, just like the Save the Dates were a blast to do and it was very interesting going through the trial and error phase to see what works and what doesn’t. Although I enjoyed playing Martha Stewart for a few weeks, I’m fine with not going into a craft store for a while LOL Take care.

Update:

Watch for this Save the Date in the upcoming book “1000 More Greetings” by Rockport Publishing hitting the book stores everywhere Fall 2010.

To start off I took the above two photos and composited them together in Photoshop. The photo of us was taken with my Canon 40D being remotely triggered using OnOne Software’s DLSR Remote iPhone App, I simply held my iPhone in hand and fired off a few shots. I wasn’t really that concerned with focus & exposure because I planned on tweaking the colors and blurring us out in the end anyways.

The photo of us was taken with my Canon 40D being remotely triggered by OnOne Software’s DLSR Remote iPhone App…

Here’s what the final composited image looks like — cloning, blurring and color balance was used to achieve the final effect. I did all the prints at home using my Epson R2880 Printer, I originally wanted to use Premium Presentation Epson Paper because of the nice dull / uncoated finish it has but I found that when they were stitched to the chipboard (see below), the prints were being indented & scratched so I ended up using Premium Luster Epson Paper instead — that seemed to hide any scratches and indentations that the prints were receiving from the sewing machine.I purchased some duplex chipboard (around 1/16th”) from a local art supply store and had them cut to a 5.5″ square before having them printed. I tried rubber stamping first to be more cost-effective but found that the chipboard tends to bleed if you try to stamp them, so that wasn’t going to work. After figuring out that screen-printing was my only option I headed over to HB Products to get these puppies printed — Jorge, Bob & Angel hooked it up for me. I sat with Angel and helped him dry each pass by hand, usually you would run it through these huge dryers that they use for t-shirts but the intense heat just ended up warping the chipboard so I had to use this crazy hot industrial blow dryer to cure each pass instead

Angel was stoked. Nice job buddy — hope you enjoyed your Cerveza!

Next I sourced a local alteration shop to sew the photos onto the chipboard — they were reluctant about doing the job until they saw how easy it was for their needles to pierce through it. They ended up using a heavy-duty leather sewing machine because of concerns about the internal stress it may or may have not put on one of their regular machines.

Although it presented numerous challenges along the way, It was so refreshing to walk away from the computer and design this project with my hands.

The photo sewn on the front created a nice frame for the details & logo that was screen-printed on the back. Being that we had a Vegas theme I thought using Roulette style numbers for the date was appropriate. All type was set in Clarendon.

The sides were set off by painting them red with a Sharpee Poster Paint Pen to add that last little touch. I Hope you enjoyed this peek into my design process for these, I’ll be posting up our favor / gift box design process shortly too. Stay tuned…..