New Weekly Themed Posts

I've been hard at work creating lots of samples for the upcoming Brides-to-Be show (and because, let's face it, my website needs some upgrading), and I've finally decided on the best way to share them on this blog.

Every Sunday (starting next week) I plan to feature one of my new samples on here with several photographs, as well as descriptions of the idea and/or creation process. That way, you'll be able to select the "Sunday Sample Spotlight" tag to look at only the posts that feature in-depth looks at some of my favorite invitation samples. Of course, you'll always be able to browse all of the samples on invitesbyandrea.com (that is, once I update the website sometime in the next couple of weeks), but not in the same in-depth way that these new blog posts will show - otherwise it would take my website ages to load all of the thousands of images!

Furthermore, I have a lot of patterns that I've designed in Illustrator that I also want to feature two of these patterns every Friday - one that's more "fancy" and one that's more "funky". To view all of the posts that show off my patterns, you'll be able to select the "Fancy/Funky Friday" tag. I just love creating fun designs with various fonts, and I have more than a hundred of these patterns created already, with more made each month.

Even though it's not Friday, how about a sneak peak, just to give you some idea of my process? ;)

First, I find a cool looking font and select one or more characters from the font. Here's an "x" and a "v".

Then I decide how to connect the characters so that they form an interesting design.

Then I start reflecting or rotating the "mini-unit" I've made to form larger "units".

I get to a point where I'm really happy with the larger "unit" and group all of the characters together to make replicating the unit easier.

I decide how I want to connect the units to each other to create a larger pattern.

And I duplicate the unit until I have a large block of the pattern. :) Finally, I give it a name. Meet "Pattern Verity."

I can tell what you're thinking - sure, they're fun to create, but how are they actually useful? First of all, as you may have guessed, I've used several of these patterns in various invitation and stationery designs, many of which you'll see in my "Sunday Sample Spotlight" posts.

But I also like to incorporate my patterns into my watercolor paintings. Since I've created them all, I can use them in my own artwork without worrying about breaking any copyright laws. It's also easy to make several different patterns with the same font family, meaning I can include several different patterns in a watercolor that all have a similar feel, but are a little different. Plus, the variety in the patterns I've already made far exceeds any stock pattern images I could find online for such purposes, and since they're all vector drawings in Illustrator, I can blow the pattern up to as large (or small) as I need to trace on my watercolor paper without things getting too muddled by pixelation problems. Really, these patterns have been super helpful to me in painting some pretty successful watercolors (in my honest and usually harsh opinion).

"Melange Modele" (Watercolor, May 2011, 22" x 30")

"Melange Modele" - Close-up

So, get excited for a guaranteed two posts per week - one "Sunday Sample Spotlight," and one "Fancy Friday" pattern post. I'll also still update this blog with any recent current projects and any design or event planning ideas I want to share. In summary, get ready for a lot more posts! :)