Sam Allen Creates : January and February 2015

This blog has totally fallen to the wayside as I have been trying to maintain all these various projects. Monday Musings and Friday Footnotes have been non existent for some time but I hope to bring those back soon along with a monthly, or bi-monthly feature of the miscellaneous projects I’ve been working on.

Between my friends and Etsy clients, there’s a lot of random projects that cross my desk that don’t really have a place in my Etsy listings quite yet as they are too unique or custom and then other smaller projects for friends that don’t quite need a full blog post. Or of course, an Etsy project that when photographed, hide amongst the nearly 150 listings in my shop.

Either way, I just wanted to share a few of the fun things I’ve had a chance to work on, through my shop and on the side. If I haven’t said it a thousand times already, I love my work. Love love love it.

 

---

 

January

This was the most insane month of my life, work-wise. My full time job kept me quite busy with TONS of overtime working on a catalog so lots of early early mornings, late nights, and weekends were used to make up the time that my shop was in desperate need of as January was also my record breaking month in amount of orders. God is funny like that. Just when I expected it to slow down after Christmas, it sped up to an ultrasonic speed. Thank you Lord, I get the point, my shop is here to stay.

Some of these images are just going to be the sneakiest of peeks because I hope to follow them up with full blog posts…

While I pushed a lot of January projects to the next month, one little man needed to be formally announced right away. Here’s my handsome little nephew Hudson Ryan. Will be posting more of his photos very very soon…

In addition to Hudson’s announcement, I worked on a bachelorette party invitation… which will be coming to the shop soon.

The more and more I create projects that feature my handwriting, the more and more I felt the need to create a lookbook that I could easily send to new clients for them to pick a writing style. I have an early draft I’ve been using that gets the job done but I’m working on a second version that will feature the writing style names in watercolor.

Speaking of watercolor… this is my new love. So much so, I’ve already been able to work on some fun new logo projects featuring the technique.

And one more photographer’s logo… such a sweet photo of her little one.

Another logo project from January was for Sparkle and Twine, a fellow Etsy shop! Love how she stamped her muslin bags to package up her orders. These tags can be found in her shop here.

While logos were a big part of January, it truly was the transition month from Christmas gifts to wedding cards and favors. While I’ve just posted about my bridesmaid invitations, let’s look at some other wedding related items…

These menus and table cards will be for the guests at an Australian wedding this May. The menu was printed on Kraft paper and the white headlines were embossed, using the same technique as the bridesmaid invites.

A new wedding favor stamp was created too, for those camping and outdoorsy brides!

And of course some name tags, white tags with gold writing. One of my favorite combinations.

After working with these brides on their weddings, I hope we can work together again creating a handwritten keepsake of their vows! These were created as a Valentine’s Day gift from the bride to her groom.

And finally, I spent some time developing and adding more to my product line for godparents! After creating “godparent invitations” at the very end of December, I created a matching all handwritten printable of a poem we used last year. I’ll definitely be posting more about these soon.

---

 

February

Once I survived January, February was catch up month. It was time to catch up on all the little projects that I had added to my to-do list over the course of the crazy Nov-Dec-January time period. February was very very fun to work through.

I finally got to sit down and work on this print for my wonderful friend Trisha’s baby girl’s nursery… Painted with GOLD watercolor. Pretty much one of my favorite things to do now is paint with gold. It’s just such a beautiful effect.

But I think one of my favorite February projects was wrapping up the invitations for my family friend, Taylor’s wedding. I can’t wait to do a full post on the suite so for now this is just a tiny little peek.

And while working on her wedding invitations, we also got one of her shower invitations designed as well! Each of those little blossoms were hand drawn, I just adore how it came out!

Back on Etsy… another January project that wrapped up in February was the personalization of these GIANT screen printed heart posters for a mother in New York for her daughters’ bedrooms.

I also got to work with Kellie Parry on the logo for her photography studio.

And create some fun artwork with song lyrics and wedding vows.

As weddings are my main market on Etsy, I got to work on a custom stamp for a wedding invitation insert and I just launched a line of printed tags that feature some of my more popular stamp sayings.

And finally, I got to customize my glitter cards for a special birthday greeting and letter tent cards for a beachside birthday celebration (which of course took place in California so they wouldn’t freeze!).

---

 

Whew… okay now on to March! I had actually planned this post for last week but before I knew it I had my 2,000th sale so I switched it up and held a giveaway last week to celebrate. I still can’t believe that in just 4 months my total sales doubled. But then while working on this post and looking back on the work from the past couple months, it’s not that hard to believe either. But if you would have told me any of this just 2 years ago, no way would I have believed it. I can’t be more thankful for all these opportunities to do what I love and share it with my friends and people all over the world.