Tag: date

Graphic Design

Significant Dates

Jessica Smith

Mushy post alert!!

Ew, mush. I know. Just suck it up haha. This one’s quick!

I’ve seen this cute graphic design art floating around Pinterest for some time now that lists a couples’ most significant dates in their lives together. I made one a while ago but completely forgot about it. Then I opened it up and realized I didn’t like it. The white background was boring and the fonts were sorta lame-o.

This is a great inDesign project for any beginners because it is simply manipulating text boxes and choosing fonts. Nothing too crazy. I picked out our dates (I made one up because I’m not really sure when it was haha) and placed each date in its own text box. I pulled the text box edges to match the edges of the paper, then centered everything.

Then, in a smaller font, I labeled what each date was. I dragged the edges again to the outside of the frame and centered the text.

In a second layer, I added some scrolly embellishments in the corners and along the sides, fading the transparency to 20 percent.

And finally, on a third later, I added a color to the background (same as the accent text and scrolls) and faded it to 10 percent transparency.

See, doesn’t that sound easy?

Significant Dates

I definitely want to frame this one for our house. It’s simple and elegant, and it’s a eye-catching way to remind ourselves of our most special dates in our lives together. Speaking of which, 2014 will be a whole decade for us! Holy smokes.

If I find a fancy frame, I might just print it on a white background, minus the swooshiness. Here’s how that looks.

Lovey dates white

Fonts used: Baskerville (date), Albemarle Swash (explanation), Soft Ornaments Eights (swooshes)

TGIF.

Christmas, Craft Projects, Holiday

Christmas Tree craft

Jessica Smith

IMG_2480

I got the best Christmas present ever when my dad called me on Dec. 23 to ask if I wanted to do a Christmas craft on Christmas Eve morning before all of our festivities began. I said yes (duh) and dad went out hunting for supplies. When he was younger, his mom made Christmas trees out of mixed nuts that she decorated and hung on a wall in their home. He wanted to make one just like it for his home and for mine.

For this project we used:

  • Thin sheets of wood
  • Hot glue
  • Nuts in their shells (three or four bags)
  • Pinecones
  • Metallic spray paint
  • Small ornaments
  • Fabric
  • Batting
  • Drill
  • Jigsaw
  • Wire
  • Felt

Step 1: Bake pinecones to kill any critters that may be living inside. Bake for 25 minutes at 200 degrees. That should do the trick. We gathered ours outside of our gym at 6:30 a.m. … in the dark. I’m sure we looked wayyy creepy.

Step 2: Sketch out a tree shape onto a piece of wood. We drew a triangle for the tree, a small rectangle for the stump and a trapezoid for the base.

Step 3: Cut out your tree using a jigsaw (or a hand saw if you prefer).

IMG_2394

Step 4: If you want to make more than one, use your cutout tree as a stencil and trace it onto the first sheet of wood.

Tree stencil

Step 5: Drill a hole in the top of the tree and string wire through to make it easy to hang later on.

IMG_2398

Step 6: Start gluing on your nuts and pinecones. I used a pine cone for the top of my tree. Dad used a prickly seed from a sweet gum tree as his topper.

IMG_2399

It is OK to have gaps in your nuts and pine cones because you’ll be filling it in with ornaments later on.

IMG_2402

Step 7: Spray paint the top of the tree using a metallic spray paint of your choice. Dad went with a bronze metallic.

IMG_2401

I chose a metallic silver for mine.

IMG_2403

Step 8: Once your tree is painted, it is time to create the trunk. I clipped edged of pinecones and glued them onto the trunk.

IMG_2404

Dad went with thin twigs. If you’d like your trunk to be the same color as your tree, do this step right after gluing on your nuts.

IMG_2405

Step 9: Glue your ornaments onto the tree.

Step 10: Cover the base of the tree in batting. Then, cover with fabric. Our wood wasn’t thick enough for staples, so we hot glued all of our fabric and batting directly to the wood.

IMG_2408

IMG_2407

Step 11: If you see the need, which we did, glue felt to the back of your tree (small circles will do) to spots of the tree that might rub against the door or wall you will hang it on. You don’t want to scuff your walls, and small circles of felt in the corners and around the wire will help.

Step 12: You are done! Hang your tree up for the holiday season and admire.

This was definitely best part of my holiday break, which is saying a lot because I had an amazing holiday break. I loved doing such a fun and sentimental project with my dad. We have one more base for next year. Dad’s got grand plans for how to make our next trees even better.

meanddad

Thanks for the great idea, Dad 🙂 Love you.

IMG_2479

One last thing…. happy birthday to my awesome mother-in-law, Robin!

Graphic Design

Smith Family Tree

Jessica Smith

Are you ready for the most adorable thing ever? Are you really ready? OK, here goes. LOOKATTHEADORABLEFAMILYTREEIDESIGNEDFORMEANDHUBS!!!!! *breath*

I am so very pleased with how this project turned out. In fact, it might be my favorite thing that I’ve ever designed. EVER. (EVAAAAAARRRRRR, right sisters?)

*drumrollllllllllll*

Welcome to our “family tree!” It’s not a real family tree because those follow some sort of genealogy structure, but I love it just the same.

I designed this print in InDesign using five different fonts (the hearts are a font!) and three different colors (brown, green and pink in different transparencies). InDesign has this great feature where you can draw a line and then make your text curve to the line, so I used that to get some of the names in our tree to curve like tree branches.

The Fonts:

I only did our immediate families because once you get past that we get wayyyyyyy to crazy. Already we have three sets of parents! I had to contain our crazy somehow 🙂 Our parents are in brown and paired with one another and a small pink heart. The dark green names are those of my siblings. The hubby has none, so they are all mine *evil laugh.* Then the lighter green font are the various last names of our family. I am a Bauer turned Smith. My older sister is a Rivera. My dad is a Bauer and my mom a Rowicki-turned-Brown. Tierney is my mother-in-law’s maiden (and now middle) name, and Shaffer is my step mom’s maiden (now middle) name. The date is our wedding date, when our families became one big happy family (our one-year anniversary is coming up so soon! Holy cow.).

I absolutely love how well this print turned out. This might be the first of my designs I have professionally printed for us. It is just perfect.

Do you have a family tree in your home?