"HUGS"

This is the most recent design I printed and will paint tonight:

The letters are for a daycare's playroom and match the Sherwin Williams "Adorable Animals" palette, part of their Fisher-Price line of colors. The room is so cute with the walls alternating in these three colors. They look a little flat onscreen, so I'm attaching a screen capture of the link to the Sherwin Williams site so you can better see how they look.

Can't wait to see the final product hanging on those walls!

Rave Review and a Giveaway!

This Blogger Makes Fun of Stuff is an amazing blog that reviews products. Not in a paid-advertising kind of way, but real, honest, true opinions. I love it. The women who run it are amazing! When I opened my Etsy shop, Alex immediately offered to have Makes Fun do a review for me. I was thrilled! And a little nervous - they are tough critics. What if they didn't like them?

Well, the results are in! Jaborandi Grove received a rave review. In addition to that, Makes Fun is hosting a giveaway for a letter, including shipping! And since I'm the kinda gal who enters contests where the odds are in my favor and I STILL don't win, I included a little something extra for everyone. If you don't win the giveaway, you can get a special discount for ordering with the coupon code they listed on the review. So stop by and enter today!!

The Creative Process

So how does this whole letter thing work? In a perfect world, I would have photos of this same idea all the way through to the finished product, but I'm going to mix it up a bit and show you different items at each of the stages.

To start, usually I think of something I want to do and just start designing. But sometimes I think of things when I'm not at my computer, so they end up on random scraps of paper, like this:

And then I work on it in Illustrator til it looks like this:

Then I print them out on high-quality paper.

I mix the paint colors to match:

And then handpaint the edges of the wooden plaques.

Finally, I adhere the printouts to the plaques, trim them, add the hangers and any extra bling, and voila!

"Crazy" Poster

So my friend KLZ, who blogs at Taming Insanity, told me she wanted to have a poster made with a quote from her husband. I told her I could help her out. I think the final product is pretty cute, don't you?

Sibling Rooms

Several people have asked me about designing letters for rooms that siblings share. With two of the same sex, it's pretty simple to do a theme that coordinates as I did with the Pirate themed items. But what about when you have a girl and a boy?

In conjunction with my client's suggestions, the latest designs I've been working on have been able to supercede the sexes. I love how they turned out. They will look even cooler once I add the rhinestones to the final product. What do you think?

Seasonal Sets

I'm excited to announce the newest option available in the shop - Seasonal Sets! Autumn's design is available now, and "winter," "spring," and "summer" are coming soon. All sets are 6 letters each, so switching them out is a breeze! Since these are a standard format, they are discounted in price a bit as well. As always, customization is available, so please contact me for details!

Arrggh, Matey!

Yo, ho, ho, it's a pirate's life for me! Well, at least it has been this week! I got my first order from a blogging/Twitter friend - yay!!! She needed two sets of letters, one for each of her sons, in a pirate theme.

Since I was planning to add a pirate theme to the collection anyway, I was thrilled to get started on them. First, she let me know which colors she needed. Then I asked if she wanted the same designs on both names or if she wanted all individual ones. I was happy to do 10 different ones, but having two daughters of my own, I know that they say they want their own thing, but then end up wanting the same thing. Ha! She agreed and just asked me to mix up the order a bit. So I did!

I think they turned out really cute. If only my camera could capture them better. I'm on a mission to get better lighting. I think that will fix things. I did get our spare bedroom set up with a set of hooks for me to do displays on. I didn't think the blue/orange and red/blue pirate letters would look too great on a pink wall. :) Baby steps!