Tea with a Duchess Invitations

I met Laura at the Bridal show last month.  She just opened a Tea Room here in Augusta called “Tea with a Duchess”.  It’s a giftshop during the week and a venue for tea parties on the weekends.  It’s exciting to see someone with a vision just go out and open a business.  What’s more- she’s going to sell my work in her shop!

I am making invitations that her customers (who mostly little girls and their mothers) can use for their tea parties.  Here are the first two of many to come…

I’d certainly have tea with these little lovelies.

I’ll print in the banners on the cards to customize for the recipients.

I wish I liked tea.  I’m afraid I’m not very refined in my beverage tastes.  All I can handle right now is chai with lots of honey, but that’s a step in the right direction.

Now tea cakes?  That’s more my style.

My Valentine

Eric got me the BEST Valentine’s gift ever:  The complete DVD set of Boy Meets World, which along with Family Matters, shaped my childhood.  I am completely psyched.  This is true love.

I made Eric a papercut valentine gift.  I tried to find a meaningful love quote, but nothing seemed to fit, so it says “We will keep on waking, warm in our fox den everyday and forever.”  Certain parts are hard to read, but I’m happy with the over all result.  I am thrilled at the possibilities.

It’s like making paper lace!  I started by penciling the design on regular sketch paper, then I cut that out with an X-acto knife.  You can see all my pencil marks, so I burned the image onto a screen with the papercut I’d just made, and then made some prints.

I’m REALLY a fan of these colors below; I’ll probably use the color scheme elsewhere.

To achieve the final cut (the first picture) I printed the image backwards and cut it out with the X-acto so the ink is not visible on the front (and forwards) side.

I’m really excited about this new method of working.  I can see miles of possibilities.

Love Bug Valentines

Listen all you people, you’d better beware!

Love’s an epidemic, and if you don’t care…

It’s the thing that getcha, even though you’re very smart!

So take some good advice go out an vaccinate your heart!

Cause the love bug’ll getcha if you don’t watch out!

Here is a whole stack of love bug Valentines for you to choose from.  I was inspired by a version of the Jimmy Dorsey song, Love Bug, which I first heard on an old Little Rascals episode when I was ten….

I got carried away drawing this little guy.  He certainly is a smooth little bugger.

Watch out…you may get bit.

We Love Cupcakes

This delicious chocolate cupcake features dark chocolate-caramel frosting,  salted caramel filling and a sprinkling of sea-salt.

This is not the dyed-pink, make-your-teeth-hurt-sweet cupcake of your childhood, this is the deep, multi-faceted, welcome-to-adulthood, chocolate covered pretzel-esque cupcake of your next party or event.

Choose flags or banners for your cakes in any color with words, phrases, initials, pictures, etc.

For regular-size cupcakes, chose Swirled Peak frosting style (above) or Rose frosting style (below).

For a complete list of flavors and prices, please see the Bakeshop page.

Kaleidoscope Journal Print

I got this sweet new copper ink by Jacquard in Charleston two weeks ago when I attended a girls weekend with my new family-in-law.  I used it to christen my new lined moleskine journal with a dutch-folk art inspired kaleidoscope design.

I took a million pictures to try to show off the pretty shimmer, but I’m not sure the photos do it justice.

Need a journal personalized?  Shoot me an email.  I think it’s a shame to have something so personal looking generic.

New Business Cards

This business card business is quite a fiasco…I only got my cards 30 min after the bridal show on Saturday started, thanks only to my husband Eric’s heroic efforts.  That was 30 minutes of “Oh, thanks I’m so glad you like my work!  Ummm…I can write down my website for you…if you want….”

And when I finally received them I was so relieved that I didn’t even care that they were badly cut and on regular cardstock…not the shiny new professional look I’d imagined all week.

Someday soon I will have lovely colored semi-gloss business cards and postcards.   Or I guess I could just print them myself.  I mean…that’s what I do, right?