Valentine's Day Color Combo #2 - Cherry Red & Aqua

I've featured a red and aqua inspiration board on this blog before - and I've even featured a red and aqua stationery set for a "Sunday Sample Spotlight" post - but the color scheme is so versatile and exciting that it bears repeating.

Today's inspiration board is different from the one I posted last March because it specifically focuses on Valentine's Day decor:

I love the idea of scrapbook-paper "fortune cookies" (the first three pictures on the left of the first row), as well as the fabric patchwork-like banner that spells out l-o-v-e in different red and aqua fabrics. Valentine's Day is the perfect time to emphasize cute, so don't be afraid to don a fun aqua dress dotted with bright red cherries - or keep things romantic and simple by decorating a two-person "sweetheart" table with a centerpiece of classic red roses tucked into aqua-blue glass jars and bottles.

Just like yesterday's Valentine's Day color scheme of ballet pink and black, red and aqua also makes a great color combo for birthdays, children's bedrooms, or nurseries!


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Shameless Plug Time: Love this color combination? Looking for custom stationery made to match these colors (or whatever other color combinations you're using for your event)? Visit Invites by Andrea to view more samples, download a catalogue pdf, or fill out a design request form. Or shoot me an email to ask me your questions or learn more information.

Valentine's Day Color Combo #1 - Ballet Pink & Black

Pale pink and black is a classic color scheme for Valentine's Day because it's become associated with two very romantic things - the unitards and tutus of ballet costumes, and the City of Love, Paris. (Just try to find a cutesy notebook adorned with the Eiffel tower and French poodles that doesn't use this color scheme - I dare you!)

This color combo brings out the little girl in all of us, reminding us of our childish dreams of becoming a ballerina (or princess) when we "grew-up." Play up this nostalgia with feather boas, flowers, bows, and polka-dots - or take this color scheme into a new, grown-up level of sophistication with sexy black lace, damask patterns, or forever-stylish "French bistro" white and black stripes, and then inject calculated doses of hot pink to liven the mood.

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Shameless Plug Time: Love this color combination? Looking for custom stationery made to match these colors (or whatever other color combinations you're using for your event)? Visit Invites by Andrea to view more samples, download a catalogue pdf, or fill out a design request form. Or shoot me an email to ask me your questions or learn more information.

Sunday Sample Spotlight: "The Art Teacher"

I had a lot of fun with color and simulating paint splatter in Adobe Illustrator to create this invitation design.

"The Art Teacher" Invitation

The text blends into the paint splatter so much that at first glance it's a little bit like "Where's Waldo" - but it's easy enough to read as long as the text is minimal. In this design, not much information needs to be given since there is a website guests can visit for more details and to reply online, so the crazy text is perfect.

Artsy and playful, this design would be great for a creative venue (such as a rehearsal dinner or holiday cocktail party at a modern art museum), a more casual affair (like a child's birthday party boasting lots of arts-and-crafts activities), or a baby announcement or shower invitation.

Next week's Sunday Sample Spotlight: "Florentine Brown"


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Shameless Plug Time: Love this invitation (or others featured on this blog)? Want something similar (or something completely custom) designed for your event? Visit Invites by Andrea to view more samples, download a catalogue pdf, or fill out a design request form. Or shoot me an email to ask me your questions or learn more information.

Fancy/Funky Friday: Patterns Carlotta & Laney

Both of today's featured patterns boast thin lines - but how are they different? Read on to find out!

First, the "fancy": Pattern Carlotta

Why it's "fancy": Thin lines form loops, elegant X's, and modified diamond shapes; altogether, the pattern harkens to classic preppy prints like argyle and plaid.

Why it's great: I love the play of positive and negative space. You can choose to focus on the large circles (which are really more like 12-sided polygons), the two X's within each figure-eight, or the starburst/diamond shapes.


And now, the "funky": Pattern Laney

 Why it's "funky": Though the ribbon-like lines are thin, elegant, and loopy, they connect to each other in unique ways, creating an optical illusion. Because each "stripe" of pattern faces the opposite way, the diagonals play tricks on our eyes - stare at the pattern for two long and the lines look like they're moving!

Why it's great: This entire pattern was created just from a cursive-inspired font's capital L character!

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Shameless plug time: Love my patterns? I incorporate them into a lot of the artwork I create, from stationery for Invites by Andrea to the watercolors I paint. Check out Invites by Andrea's website to see examples of these patterns in use or drop me a line at andrea@invitesbyandrea.com to let me know what you think!

Floral Quilted Wall Hangings

This past holiday season I hand-sewed three different "wall hangings" to give out as gifts to my mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother. 

Buy these floral fabrics here: http://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/ideasbyandrea

All of the fabric swatches (except for the solid light green around the edges) were printed at Spoonflower - a website that allows you to upload your own designs to be printed on fabric! The images you see are photographs of flowers that I've taken in the last several years (including pictures of roses and bouquets purchased at supermarkets, the flora around my grandmother's house, and professionally-designed gardens and landscapes in Barcelona, Paris, Southern Italy, Croatia, and Upstate New York). Many of the photographs were slightly altered/desaturated in Photoshop to give them a slightly vintage/aged/faded look. 

All of the photographs have a similar color scheme (shades of light greens, pinks, yellows, whites, purples, and oranges), and are intended to work together as a collection, making them great fabric choices for patchwork projects like these quilt-inspired wall hangings! 

There's no shortage of photographs of the finished project, so keep scrolling down!! :)
 
 

Shameless plug time: Love these wall hangings? Head over to Spoonflower to purchase my fabrics! :)
 

Sunday Sample Spotlight: "Heart of Steel"

Pink and gray is a classic color combo that works almost any time of the year - but especially in the winter and spring, or for Valentine's Day!

"Heart of Steel" Invitation Duo (invite & reply card)

For this stationery design, I kept the design crisp and clean with a pure white background, a simple, smooth pink petal envelope (no metallic shine, scrapbook paper embellishment, or texture here!), and a touch of gray in a textured cardstock border.

If the pattern looks familiar, it may because I talked about it in great length in a Fancy/Funky Friday post from more than a year ago. This is the first pattern I ever created - I initially used it to accent my personal business card and resume back in 2009, but I've used it on many different projects since then. :)

I love how simple the pattern is - it acts as a great blank palette you can add almost anything to. It can be "dressed up" with elegant, cursive fonts, and embellishments like vellum and other layers of fancy paper, or it can be "dressed down" with sans-serif Helvetica. It's even easy to change the colors around - as you can see in this stationery set, I alternated pink and gray within the pattern, but it works just as well if all parts of the pattern are the same color.

Next week's Sunday Sample Spotlight: Fun with paint splatter!


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Shameless Plug Time: Love this invitation (or others featured on this blog)? Want something similar (or something completely custom) designed for your event? Visit Invites by Andrea to view more samples, download a catalogue pdf, or fill out a design request form. Or shoot me an email to ask me your questions or learn more information.

Fancy/Funky Friday: Patterns Roya & Aylin

Happy February! It's the shortest month of the year, so don't miss out on a single Fancy/Funky Friday post! ;)

First, the "fancy": Pattern Roya

Why it's "fancy": Elegant diamonds paired with loop-decorated wavy banners

Why it's great: Unlike many argyle-inspired diamond patterns, these diamond shapes don't overlap with each other, leaving lots of negative space "breathing room" between the pattern units.



And now, the "funky": Pattern Aylin

 Why it's "funky": Though the curvy lines create X's that hint at argyle, the lines are thick, bold, and graphic, making them too "funky" to be "fancy."

Why it's great: The character used to create this pattern was the ampersand of a fun, graphic font!

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Shameless plug time: Love my patterns? I incorporate them into a lot of the artwork I create, from stationery for Invites by Andrea to the watercolors I paint. Check out Invites by Andrea's website to see examples of these patterns in use or drop me a line at andrea@invitesbyandrea.com to let me know what you think!