The Creative Process

Sometimes you start on a project and go with what you know only to discover you've tripped down an unintended path. I had to share this funny moment with you all.

I have a client who saw my recent product of a Bible verse posted here on my Facebook samples page, and requested that I do one for her nephew and his soon-to-be-bride as a wedding gift. Based on the green kitchen towel on their registry and her knowledge of the living room having white walls with light brown carpet, she decided she'd like the plaque to be green, so it would be able to go in either the living room or kitchen. I put this together for her to review:

And this was her reply:

It's funny, but although I liked the plaque when I first looked at it, thinking only that I might want the background just a bit lighter & the words just a bit darker, plus maybe some watermarks like the crosses you put on [the other Bible verse] plaque, I looked at it again just now & had a strange impression. The plaque looks almost like a dinner plate, which is okay for displaying in the kitchen, but then the Bible verse makes it kind of funny. If it's a dinner plate, then "we will serve the Lord" takes on an unintended meaning! 

Ha ha! Back to the drawing board.

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!