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Etsy
Etsy
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Over the years as I've posted a few dozen invitation designs, and all the while quite a few people encouraged me to open an Etsy shop. And I finally did! Back in February, on a night my husband was out of town, I sat down and stocked a few invites and opened a shop. Just printables, nothing printed. Calling the shop "Your New Friend Sam"—a name I had been wanting to establish here on my blog but never felt enough confidence to do. Then while working with my best friend on her wedding stationery, starting with her save the dates, I created a return address stamp with a mix of handwritten and digital type. And from there, my little shop grew from invites only, to also include rubber stamps. And that's when things got interesting. As of August, I still hadn't sold over 20 orders through my shop, but in this past month my sales have almost doubled! And that doesn't even include friends and family that have been keeping things consistent along the way. As a perfectionist, I kept delaying an official post on my shop until I felt like I truly had it figured it out

 
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design, Etsy, Graphic Design, holidays, Lettering, Photography, portfolio
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Christmas is closing in on us yet again! I still can't believe this year has came and went so so fast. And what a year it was! One of the joys of Christmas that I always look forward to is receiving Christmas cards in the mail! Here are a few designs I helped my friends create last year along with our very own Christmas card design (for whatever reason they never made it on here last year!). Each of these 3 designs are listed in my Etsy shop so head on over there if any of these would suit your needs this year. All you have to do is provide me some photographs and your desired wording/verses and I can customize your card for you! You will then get a file back to order your cards through whatever service you'd like! I have a few to recommend too! P.S. Here's a sneak peek into the hand lettering of our 2013 card

 
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baby, design, Etsy, friends, Graphic Design, invitations, portfolio
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Jess mentioned in her post that she LOVED how this invite turned out, and I would have to agree! I think it must have been the excitement in the air from finally having a baby girl coming to our group (who lives locally)! Quite often, Jess chooses the theme and colors from the baby-to-be's nursery. Trisha did such a darling job with Molly's nursery! With teal walls and pink chevron set by Trisha, Jess introduced the hot air balloons for the shower. All that to say, the shower was picture perfect and I have finally listed the invite in my Etsy shop! And it comes with a bonus item: a Thank You note printable! See a few more of the photos from the shower on Jess' blog

 
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design, Etsy, Graphic Design, invitations, photography, Photography, portfolio, shower
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Oh man have I been excited to post about Kathleen's amazing shower. Down to the smallest detail, I loved every little bit of it! And it was quite a combination of decorations starting with quite a few DIYs, Amie's upcoming wedding (thanks again Amie!), my travel themed living room, the Rooftop BBQ trailer (recognize that chalkboard above?), and even a potato sack from Lauren's Central Park shower (see that "coffee bean" sack above?)! Let's start with the invitation though, shall we? While driving home from the hospital on the day Parker was born, Lauren (Kathleen's wonderful matron of honor) and I were brainstorming about shower decoration possibilities. We had long ago settled on a travel cafe theme and with the spark of the idea of a muffin and coffee mug sitting on top of a suitcase, the invitation came to be. Funnily enough, when talking with the bride about her wedding invitations, we went with the tall and slender business size for those as well! And speaking of the bride

 
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baby, design, Etsy, Graphic Design, invitations, Lettering, portfolio
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Now that you've seen Rachel's maternity photos, the next glimpse into the shower would be the baby shower invitations! I drew inspiration from Mary Blair's work on the credits from Cinderella and then applied Rachel's nursery's color palette with its pinks, peaches, and mint greens. The "Once Upon A Time" mark was handwritten as well as Rachel's name, then a combination of two other typefaces, a modern serif and a medieval display text completed the invite. This really was a work of love, and definitely one of my favorite invitations yet! In addition to the invitation, I created a bookmark with Rachel's favorite verse, Jeremiah 29:11, as the shower favors. Along with a print to go along with it for the nursery as well. All of these pieces of the invitation can be bought in my Etsy shop: Your New Friend Sam. In addition to the invite pieces—and to go along with the storybook theme—I created a custom bookplate stamp for Amelia's baby books. Also available in my Etsy shop. So many fun projects were created and designed for Rachel's shower! I can not wait to show you rest of the photos from the day of

 
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design, Etsy, Graphic Design, invitations, Lettering, portfolio, wedding
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Can I just say that I love my job as Amie's matron of honor and wedding designer? Seriously, this year I think I've seen my best friend more than the last couple year's combined. While I am so happy that her and Matt are getting married, I am also selfishly happy because now I get to buy a new dress (or two or three for showers and such :)) and have a blast crafting away with Amie! One of our latest projects is compiling her Save the Dates. Her amazingly talented wedding photographer took their engagement photos in March (see more photos here) so we got to include those in the Save the Date as well. It was another scrapping night for Amie and me but they came out so beyond adorable! First off we created a monogram and did most the writing by hand which we then ordered custom rubber stamps of the final design. We really wanted to keep the handmade look we achieved in the engagement party invites so we rubber stamped the edges and then used decorative tape to hold the photo in place. For the front, we waited for the photos to be taken to be able to design around whichever

 
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