Inspiration: Daily Drop Cap

o I am completely in love with this project from designer Jessica Hische. I am so jealous of designers that are really good with letterforms. I am sadly not one of those designers, however, I will keep trying!

I just had to use this drop cap, it was so beautiful. I suggest you check out more of Jessica's letters at the Daily Drop Cap!

Julie Morawski Photography

I am so excited to finally share this project!

Julie from Julie Morawski Photography wanted a logo that spoke both to her personality and classic photographic style. Julie was a wonderful client! She was involved from the moment we started and kept her enthusiasm throughout the entire process. The logo I created for her is by far one of my favorite projects. I am a huge fan of her photography and I was so pleased that she loves the logo as much as I do.

I made up a quick comp of possible uses for her logo. I really hope I can make a set for her! I adore this logo as much as I adore her work. Make sure you check out Julie's photos on her flickr page! You can contact Julie through her webpage.

July Update

It's officially the middle of July and I have so much going on! It's really exciting, maybe too exciting as I have been feeling a bit under the weather as of late.

I have been continuing work on Julie of Julie Morawski Photography's logo. She's in love with it as much as I am and that's always a good feeling. I have a few minor tweaks and it should be ready!

A good friend of the family is throwing a surprise 60th birthday party for his mother and I was asked to create the invitations. I am very excited about the design I came up with! It's very elegant and bright, I love it. I should be hearing back in the next couple of days of any edits they may have. I hope they enjoy it!

The last piece of news involves the elusive secret I have referenced in my previous posts. It still has to remain a secret for now, BUT I am going somewhere this weekend that should enable me to share things with you in a week or two. Wish me luck!

Photography Logos

I can't show you yet, but I'm working on some really great logos for an up and coming Wedding Photographer. Her work is stunning and I wanted to make her an equally beautiful logo.

She loves the first set of proofs and hopefully I'll be able to share more soon!

An Inkling Design is Online!

An Inkling Design has been redesigned and is now live!

The exciting news I hinted at in my previous post will have to remain a secret for now. I finished the site quicker than I anticipated and it's not quite ready to share yet. 

I had come up with a very quick beta site a month or so back to just have something online since I had more clients and they needed a place to see my work. The past three weeks I have been spending every last spare minute re-imagining my brand and my goals. Redesign is always a challenging project. You have to look at what you do, your aesthetic and feel, what your brand says about you; and dare to imagine something completely different. 

I think the redesign accomplished the goals I have set for myself and where I want the company to go from here. Visit aninkling.com and let me know what you think.

Change is coming

In the next couple of weeks I'll be rolling out completely new branding. You can already see hints of it in this blog's header image!

I'm working on the redesign of my site at the moment and it's nearly complete. With that redesign will be some other really exciting changes and offerings that I can't wait to share with everyone, but you'll need to wait until the site is live to find out!

Until then!

Jungle Love Invitations

Alexi is going to be having a Welcoming Ceremony to show her off to friends and family. Mom, Brooke, wanted to send out an invitation inspired by Alexi's crib sheets. I took elements from the sheets and quilt and was able to come up with this adorable invite. Hopefully Mom and Alexi will have as much fun at the Welcoming that I had designing this!

Russ & Alexa's Wedding

I finished work on Russ & Alexa's invitations. Since these were a wedding gift to the couple and I didn't want to come to the wedding empty handed, I framed some of the pieces. I love how this came out and I will be making one for my own invitations I made almost 4 years ago now, wow.

Baby Turtle Shower Invitations

I'm so excited to share these new invitations I designed with you. I haven't been able to be too creative in the past couple of months because I was being pulled in every which direction. The next couple of weeks will give me some much needed me time and I'm very excited about that.

My sister-in-law is having a baby. I'm going to be an auntie! This is a very exciting time for my husband's family as Baby Prisco will be the first baby in the family in over 20 years. I volunteered to do Lauren's Shower Invites. I love doing it and designing for family makes it that more special.

Lauren is having a baby boy, but wanted to stay away from so much blue. I decided to go with green. It's one of her favorite colors and I was able to incorporate one of her favorite pets, a turtle!

I really love how these came out and I'm inspired to make a whole line of baby invitations. Hopefully those will be out soon, for now enjoy the Baby Turtle invitations.

I <3 Ikea

This past weekend my husband was in GA for business. Since I had the whole weekend to myself with nothing to do, no distractions, and no prior commitments, I decided it was going to be a productive weekend!

I have been itching to start An Inkling Designs for awhile now. Doing invitations on the side for friends and co-workers is good for building a portfolio and flexing creative muscles, but it doesn't really bring in an income. I have wanted to build up my etsy shop with customizable prints and invitations, cards, etc. but the time was never really there and even if I had time, my office area was cluttered, disorganized and just not a very creative inducing environment. My husband was always reminding me that the office needed to be cleaned and I just couldn't do it. That changed that this weekend. A day trip to Ikea with my sister and 2 long days building, throwing away junk, organizing, and I now have what I hope to be the successful start of my business.

I have invitations I'm doing as a wedding present to our former best man (now that he's tying the knot too) so that will be the test run of my new office space. I'm going to be printing and assembling their save-the-dates over the next couple of weeks, so I'll have give an update on how that goes.

Busy times

I've been very very busy the past couple of months with work and personal life, so much so that I haven't been able to do an Illustration Friday since before Christmas!

So what am I up to? Well, I'm working on a former co-workers wedding invitations and will definitely be posting photos once they're complete. I also have a couple of party invitations in the works that will be pretty fun projects.

I'm working on my personal site for my portfolio, sarahbella.net. I came up with a new version of my logo (photo, right) that I really like. It's much simpler and I would like to think more classic.

I also edited that blog. It looked very much like the standard "blog template" that's pretty boring and not as "me" as I think the current look and feel is. I use that for all my work designs and I'm able to update that much more frequently than I would a portfolio site. I think it works well as a portfolio site. There's not as many photos since all my work is animated or interactive, but maybe I'll start sticking a couple of screenshots in, just to make it pop. I really need to redesign this blog at some point.

The only thing I did for myself last month was to finally draw a baroque style damask illustration. I've always wanted to make one because I think they're so pretty and classic. This can also be used in wedding invitations or home decorative ways. I'm not entirely happy with the larger "leaves" on the bottom, but for my first attempt, I think this came out fairly nice.

Happy Holidays

November was a really busy month at work and so I didn't have too much time to spend on myself and my other interests. Luckily it's the holidays and I needed to make my cards. Last year I made a moose and used a sage green. This year I've made a penguin with blues. We have family that celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, so they have to be pretty wide open theme-wise. Instead of focusing on one holiday or all the holidays together, I focus on the winter season. It may still be Autumn on the calendar, but here in New England, it's snowing. Today is the 4th or 5th day of snow we've had and it's great! I love the start of the winter season. The snow is much more of the "pretty" kind and not quite so "messy" yet. Who likes snow more than penguins? I don't think anything, so that's why I made the little guy above. (click on the image for more detail)

When I checked Illustration Friday's theme this week, I was so excited to see "Little Things" because penguins and snow are indeed, little things. I haven't been able to post for IF for awhile, so this is a nice way of getting back on track.

In other news, I'm working on another co-workers wedding invitations. Doris is very excited. It should be really fun. I'll write about that in another post though.

.....AND, I also opened an Etsy shop. If you don't know about etsy.com, I suggest you take a look. It's a site for craftspeople to sell all their homemade crafty goodness. I've known about the site for awhile, I just never set up a shop for myself. Now I have a shop, but nothing to sell... yet. I bought some materials to make a few things that I'll hopefully be selling come January. Look for another post when the shop is stocked and ready for customers.

Illustration Friday: Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!

I'm late this week. I'm just so happy I was able to get something done. I love the giraffe as a ghost. It doesn't make much sense, but he's cute enough for me to want to give some candy to. Especially when I don't know what's brewing in his cauldron. Better be safe than sorry! Click on the image to see more detail.

Illustration Friday Topic: Grow

This is my first entry into Illustration Friday. I haven't really ever done anything like this. I'm an interactive designer for sales and marketing, which means I don't really get a chance to just sit and illustrate. In my daily grind, it's get the graphics and animations out as fast as you can because there's a ton of new projects waiting in your inbox. Be sure to click on the image above for more detail.

I have always loved ducks. I think they're cute and being from New England, we have a ton of mallards up here. They're everywhere and I always thought they would make a good subject of an illustration. When I saw the topic for "grow," I immediately thought of a daddy mallard looking at one of his eggs, finally grown enough to break out of its shell and become a duckling.

I'm really excited that I got to work with texture in this piece. I'm usually a keep it simple kind of person because of the nature of my job. I take photos or simple illustrations, bring them into flash and make an ad for a news media site. I know that this is my first time illustrating in this manner. Since it is my first time trying it out, I know it's not what it could be, but I'm happy with it nonetheless.

I hope to explore this side of my design more in the future. Especially since I don't want to be making ads all my life.

Jenn's Business Card

My husband's boss, Jenn, is a makeup artist. She's a web programmer by day, makeup artist by night. She sent me a request to design her business' branding and site in the near future. In the meantime, she wanted to register her business with a large makeup company and needed a business card for that to happen. To get an idea of what I could do, I asked her about some of her favorite things. She's obviously into makeup, likes the mythological Phoenix and also the color crimson. Put all that together and you have the logo I came up with. The logo is part eye, with an extreme cat-eye makeup look, and part Phoenix engulfed in its fire. The color crimson plays nicely with the fire imagery. Jenn seems to really like the design. I'm excited to start work on the rest of the branding/site. I plan on incorporating similar themes.