I’ve designed illustrated portraits for a couple of projects lately. I’ve been having a lot of fun creating them, so I thought I’d open up a digital shop for the holidays!
Christmas is just around the corner! These vector portraits make great Christmas cards or gifts!
If you’re interested in a custom portrait, please check out www.happilyvectorafter.com or message me at happilyvectorafter {at} gmail {dot} com.
We’re an aunt and uncle again! Our nephew Jonah got a new sister January 8. Congrats, Joe and Brittany!
We can’t wait to meet baby Claire this summer! 🙂
Isn’t she beautiful?!
This is my second time teaching a semester-long Graphic Design elective to high school students. I have a much smaller class this year with only 12 students.
As part of our typography unit, I showed this video by Ji Lee on Type as Image (I edited out some of it). After that, I had the students create their own Type as Image vectors in Inkscape. They had a little less than five class periods to create their words. I had them present their top three designs.
I’ve been very impressed with how quickly this group picked up vector design. Here are a few of their Type as Image creations:
The students will make refinements based on my suggestions before adding the project to their portfolios.
Which word was your favorite?
(You can see a photo of the Type as Image projects from last year in this post.)
Vicki and I met in seventh grade. She has been one of my dearest, most precious friends ever since. We were locker partners in high school. She drove all the way to Arkansas to visit me in college. She introduced me to David. We were in each other’s weddings. Vicki is the type of friend who would do anything for you – and she does. She loves fiercely and gives so much of herself to everyone in her life.
Vicki and Rusty had their first baby this summer. We were so excited to first meet Kenley! Vicki asked if I’d take a few photos. Kenley was only 4 days old for our photo shoot. I can’t get over how beautiful she is! My heart is so full of happiness and love for this sweet little girl.
Vicki’s mom made this quilt for Kenley. It matches the curtains in her room:
I love this family!
Our best friends Vicki and Rusty had their baby! We couldn’t be more thrilled for them! Their daughter arrived early Wednesday morning and they named her Kenley Elizabeth Harris. We got to meet her yesterday. She is absolutely beautiful:
She is so tiny! We met her when she was just two days old. It’s been a while since I held a newborn. I was nervous I was going to break her. David, on the other hand, was a natural:
I designed birth stats for Kenley with the same owl themed graphics I used for Vicki’s shower invitations:
Baby, mom, and dad are doing great. Such a beautiful family!
Vicki and Rusty did a fantastic job with her nursery. Vicki went with gray, coral, and owls for the theme. I got to help with a few things!
I designed two prints of prayers. One was a prayer Vicki’s dad said with her at night. The other she found on Pinterest. Again, these were based on the same graphics as the shower invitation:
Here’s a close up of one of them:
We’re so glad she arrived before we head back to Turkey. Congrats, Rusty and Vicki! Kenley is the luckiest little girl in the world to have you two as her parents! We are so excited to watch her grow.
A couple of weeks ago I read an article by Sarah K Byrne Photography about in-camera double exposure. According to her blog:
Double exposure is a technique that originated with film photography where you would expose the same frame of film twice (or more). Film can only be exposed to light so much before it will stop recording information. So the part of the film that was darker after first exposure will be most receptive to the light from the second click.
I thought her photos were beautiful, and David and I made a few attempts in our apartment with our Nikon D5100. The lighting was never really great and the results just looked like two layered photos with lowered opacities. It was a super sunny on our day off last month and we decided to give it another try.
Our camera doesn’t have all of the options the photographer talked about in her video tutorial, but it is still a fun tool to experiment with.
The basic steps for multiple exposure with a Nikon 5100:
A few notes about using a Nikon 5100 for multiple exposure:
Hopefully we can have some more fun with in-camera double exposure. I’d love to try it with the fall colors in Michigan sometime!
Babies have taken over my news feeds, and there are many more on the way! I was so excited when I found out earlier this year that my best friend was pregnant! Vicki and I have been friends since junior high, and she claims responsibility for matchmaking David and me.
It looks like timing will be perfect and her baby girl will be born while we’re still in the States this summer. I can’t wait! Vicki is the most adorable pregnant lady. We’ve kept up through Skype and she posts weekly bump photos. She and her husband Rusty had a gender reveal party not too long ago. I so wish I could have been there:
I’ve had the honor of designing wedding invitations for several of my friends. Now that I think about it, Vicki was the first person to ask me to design wedding invites. And now she gets the first baby shower invitations!
Vicki’s been loving owls lately. She also told me she plans to use the fabric she used for her sash in my wedding for something in the nursery. When her sister asked if I’d design the invitations, I was reminded of a cute illustration I purchased off of iStockphoto. I made some color adjustments, added in some pretty type, and ta da!
{Please note that I changed the date and address so I could post it on the web!}
This will be such a fun summer!