New to the shop: Bridal Gift Tags

This weekend while everyone was out of town for the long holiday weekend (Columbus Day; who knew it was such travel weekend! My friends went everywhere from DC and Pennsylvania to Long Island and Miami!) I however was home, busy finishing orders and adding items to the shop.

A while back I sold all of my bridal gift tags so I thought it was time to make some more. This time I've made them in sets of 8, featuring more of my favorite bridal illustrations.

Vegas Bride

It's so fun to see a bride who thinks out of the box! For Beth's Vegas nuptials she did just that by choosing this adorable Topshop strapless white bustier dress in a red lipstick kiss print. It was such a fun illustration to work on, and I love how it came out. There's something about Beth's smirk and silky long hair makes this bridal illustration look very Disney princess to me. (If only there was a Disney princess who skipped the yacht wedding at sunset and headed to Sin City!)

Retail Therapy: Glass Dish

Last week the ladies over at Material Girls had a post about the fabulousness of Home Goods. Home Goods is a store I love and over the years have found some fantastic finds at, both for my home and for countless photoshoots I've styled. Being that I live in Manhattan, which is lacking a Home Goods, I don't get to go there too often anymore. After reading their post I decided I was due a trip out there. My little find of the day was this little glass and silver dish. It was actually in the bath area, and I is meant to be a soap dish but I love it on my dresser as a jewelry catchall. You can't tell from the photo's but it has about a 3/4" pedestal, a smoked silver rim, weighs a ton and was only $6.99!

I also treated myself to some flowers. I was craving a yellow bouquet to split up and put around the apartment but the pink ones were half the price, so pink it is. ;)

New to the shop: Catherine

When I began this drawing I had no intentions of drawing a blond or making the dress white. I draw so much bridal that I like to steer clear of white in my Etsy shop when it's not wedding related, but when it came time to color that just seemed the way to go for her.

I really like how she came out, very polished and poised. I've never had a close friend named Catherine, but the name just seems to fit her.

Press!

Ever since I started my illustration business I've gotten some fantastic press. I thought it was time to put it together and post them together in one spot. I've created a facebook photo album here on my facebook fan page with some of my favorite features from magazines and blogs.

New Jersey Bride was the first magazine to feature me and one of my illustrations. It was such a trill to see my name in print next to my work! I had had illustrations printed before but it was always illustrations done for clients or my former company and I would never actually receive any credit. I think I actually gasped while I stood in line in a Barnes & Noble in Jersey and first saw this page with my feature.

The next time I felt this trill was with this feature in New Jersey Life Weddings. (I'm a born a raised New Yorker but New Jersey's really shown me some love huh!) The way that this feature came about was through a previous job. I was assigned to style a 2 day photoshoot in Pennsylvania for Country Living and I worked very closely with one of their senior editors, Jennifer Vreeland McDermott. On the long car ride back to NYC we talked about our interests and hobbies and I mentioned my budding bridal illustration business. About a month or two later I learned Jennifer was moving on from Country Living to become the new Editor in Chief of New Jersey Life! I sent her a congratulatory note and told her if she ever needed any sketches done that I would love to work with her again and share my portfolio. Soon after I received an email asking me to send some examples over. The rest is history, here is the tear from their premiere wedding issue.

This last image is from Design This Design That, a online art magazine. It was my first time being interviewed about my work and my process. I really love the look of the spread with my shop name over my Lily print and the text of the article overlapping one of my brides. You can read the interview by clicking here, and "turning" to page 107.

Project We Do

For the past 2 months I've been involved in an exciting new project called Project We Do (I actually came up with the name that the committee ended up choosing as the one!) What we're doing is bringing the community together to throw a wedding for very deserving couple who couldn't otherwise afford to have one. The Rabbi says that it's the biggest mitzvah (good deed) you could do, helping to bring a couple to the chuppah (wedding canopy).

For the site I illustrated a bride, groom, and chuppah which the website designer applied to the page as an animated element using flash. I also drew these fun little icons to be used on each page of the site. It's been a really successful collaboration working on designing this website and from the way things are going, and all the donations rolling in, it looks as if this wedding will be a memorable one.

We're still working on the site and will be adding to it daily. Just this past thursday we shot the first "webisode" to document our planning. As one of the head planners I'm co-writing the Planner Blog, so you can check in to read about our progress (here) and even weigh in by voting on different elements of the wedding. As I'm single, and haven't actually planned a wedding for myself yet, I'm really enjoying this project!