Have a drink on us

I remember the first time I designed custom drink tickets. The coordinator had suggested it during the consultation and the couple and I were both delightfully surprised at the suggestion. It kind of went like this:

Coordinator: "Oh, how about custom drink tickets for your guests!"

Couple: "Huh?"

Me: "Huh?"

Followed by a half-second of silence, then:

Couple: "I love that idea!"

Me: "Awesome sauce! I can make little cards that coordinate with the design and color scheme of the invitation! I can even make double cards with a perforation across the middle! They will be so pretty that your guests won't want to turn them in for a drink! Can you possibly understand how excited I am to be designing this new and fantastic piece of stationery??!!"

At least, that's what I thought in my head. I'm sure I said something more along the lines of, "That would be lovely. I can definitely design something like that for you."

Sometimes the paper dork comes out in me...which is essential, I think, in making my clients happy.

Hair today, gone tomorrow

I recently purchased this:

It's a large sheet of paper with various styles of mustaches printed on it. I bought five sheets of it. Yup, five sheets of mustache paper. I haven't decided what to do with it yet, but I'm going to just let the mustaches speak to me. I'm confident that something wonderful - and hairy - will emerge.

A couple months back, my husband and I were in California and we happened into a random shop filled with quirky + trendy things. We saw a bunch of items with mustaches on them and after noticing the puzzled look on my husband's face, I knew it was my duty to school him on the mustache trend. Little did I know that he would use this knowledge against me. To this day, every time we see a mustached something or other, he points to it and says, "Hey, it's a mustache. Did you know those are hot right now?" I'm counting the days until mustaches are groomed from our retail landscape forever! Well, not really. I still dig them and hope they stick around for a little while longer, especially since I just designed this holiday greeting card (my ode to the mustache):

Emi Ink holiday cards are on sale now at The Wedding Cafe.

Right around the corner

I'll be honest, I've been freaked out about the impending holidays ever since I spotted Halloween candies and costumes in the store...in early September. My first instinct was to curl up in a ball and hide under my bed until the first of the year. If not for the lure of fun-size Raisinets and Kit-Kat bars, that's where I would be right now. Instead, I decided to face my fears head on. The first beast I had to slay? My 2013 calendar.

I designed my first calendar last November and have delighted in people thanking me all year for the little bit of sunshine that sits on their desks. (Is it strange that I don't keep one of my own calendars out on display?)

So, onto the 2013 calendar. I spent two months tweaking designs, changing colors, rearranging the order. If the holiday shopping season weren't right around the corner, I could easily spend another two months working on it. That's how it goes when I'm designing something for myself...I'm my own worst client!

I'll have a limited supply of these beauties on sale at The Wedding Cafe in Ward Warehouse, and will also be selling them direct on my new website (that's the second beast I had to slay...more on that later). The calendars are wee little ones that sit on your desk (roughly 3.5" wide by 3.75" tall) and will go for $12.00 each. So, $1.00 per month...pretty good deal, right?