cottonwoodwhispers.com

I found the most wonderful, creative way to tell my husband I love him this year for Valentine’s day and I just have to share. I wish I could take all the credit, but I was inspired by this post on the Dating Diva’s website.

In a nutshell, I came up with a scratch-off lottery ticket, one for each day, with a special treat for each day. (Actually, three different ones for each day.) Some days it’s a thing I’ll do for him, some days it’s something I’m buying for him, and other days it’s decadent treats – I’d reveal them to you but since we are only on day 2 of February as I write this, he hasn’t scratched all the days yet and I don’t want to ruin the surprise.

First, I printed out the template (I created it over my lunch break (on Feb. 1st) and printed it out on a heavyweight cardstock. Then, when I got home, I filled in all the boxes and covered each with clear packing tape. Then, I mixed up the silver acrylic paint and the dish soap. Gloppy stuff!

I wanted to give these to him as soon as he got home from work. I had about 3 hours to get them completely done – which I did, but they had to dry. I set the wet sheet up in front of a space heater to speed up the process. It took about a half hour for them to dry. I rotated them every 5 minutes or so as to not pucker the plastic tape underneath them with too much heat.

When he got home, I showed him my handiwork and told him we should wait till after dinner for the first lottery love ticket. (I wanted to make sure they were dry) The smile on his face was worth all the work and he seems to love it!

If anyone wants the blank template here’s a link to download it! It is a 3-page PDF

This is one of my favorite customers to see upload a job at HCP. The work I get to do for them is refreshing and fun and really gets my creativity flowing. This is a full-spread of the 2012 Plant Wishbook cover, inside and out. They designate the cover photo and I pretty much take it from there!

The Kansas Catholic Conference is producing a series of reflections by some of it’s members and needed to put them into a format that they could send out to their parishioners via e-mail and also print. Since there is more than one, they needed a good format that could carry over to all of them and make them look like a series. They provided me with a few logos, samples from previous years and the copy. I encouraged a one-page, non-folding format to save the secretaries at each church the time of folding them all by hand.  This is the final result. As the others are complete, I’ll add them too.

They will print out well on the average desktop or laser printer. The points are made clear and easy for those who are going to scan it. The layout is easily expanded for future letters which may or may not be longer than the first one. There are interesting visual element too without overpowering the overall professional, seriousness of the information.

This customer came to me while working Hall’s. They wanted a re-work on their business card and I came up with two concepts for them – the back was a match for either one. They went with the honeybees, which was my favorite too.

Isn’t he just adorable? If you want one too (a personalized photo card, not a baby) there’s still a little bit of time left where can pull something together for this Christmas season. Just shoot me an e-mail if you’re interested.

Custom created and tailored just for this customer. They printed them off themselves to mail and e-mailed the remainders. Of course the specifics have been changed.

www.oldemillauction.com

Check it out! Olde Mill Auction has a brand new website with linkable auctions and a calendar that makes great sense! They have auctions every Wednesday and Saturday and the meals are just $3.50! Never been to an auction before? This is a great place to learn the ropes!

It’s hunting season!

I didn’t think I’d be able to come up with a wedding banner with hunter green and pumpkin orange as the dominant colors… challenges are always fun! This is an eclectic mix of colors and elements but I don’t know the couple, and the mom loved it – I believe it’s going to be used at the reception.

This is the third year I’ve created a calendar for this Arab Shrine fundraiser. I did a very different look for the calendar grid part of the calendar this year. I love it. (So does the customer, which is always nice when you try something new!) It looks clean and neat and it’s easy to read from a distance with plenty of room to write in.

I have to admit though, with out the calendar script from Scott Selberg I would have never been able to do it. I took the basic generated calendar (with all my dates added pre-processing) and modified the heck out of it. A thorough knowledge of character, paragraph and table styles is required to make this work, but wow. It’s amazing. And totally worth the effort for the end product!

If I get a chance to photo them once they’re printed, I’ll add one of those to this post too. If you want to see what the whole thing looks like, download the (low-resolution) PDF from this link here.