It's raining gemstones!

But mostly it's just raining. A lot. It seems to do nothing but, whenever it's my day off. My plan was to photograph clothes for Etsy and maybe even take some outfit photos, but noooo. It was sunny yesterday and the day before -_-

I'll happily keep making these prints, though. I carved the stamps myself! It's my favorite sit-down activity right now. They're up for grabs on my Etsy shop along with a few other cards and things I've made. My co-worker and best customer, Lorea, has already bought two. She always loves everything I make, and I love her for that. Or it just means we have the exact same taste in everything.

One last thing! There's just one day left to enter to win this little heart necklace from Aicee Jewelry. Quick, go enter!

♠

Second Annual 29th Birthday

I've been "planning" for it all year, and now it's come and gone. My 30th birthday, that is. Bye, bye twenties! It's been swell!

 The whole theme was rocks and dinosaurs.You know, old stuff. I was first inspired by these cupcakes and eventually ended up sending out these geode invitations.

 I didn't feel like tracking down rock candy for my cupcakes (plus, it doesn't seem like it'd be too pleasant to eat a whole cupcake coated in the stuff). Instead, I spray painted little plastic dinosaurs! I found everything at Fred Meyers! Even the little star sprinkles are from the baking section. What flavors you ask? The yellow cupcakes are apricot and the mauve ones are fig-blackberry. Not my most impressive, but still pretty delicious.

I had high hopes of finding a table, but who knew people like to go to the beach on Sundays in the summertime?

The hexagonal plates are from Paper Source. I've been waiting like 3 months for a reason to buy them.

 My mom and sister came up, and of course, my niece, Tilly. She helped me get dressed! I would try things on and she would tell me either "Umm, no, not special enough" or "Yes, that's special!" The dress she's wearing is actually one of mine. So is the bracelet.

Such a perfect place to celebrate being alive.

♠

Geode Birthday Invitations

Working at Paper Source is really starting to get to me. The other night I came home and decided to make some invites for my birthday party. These came out.

Honestly, I had a bit of inspiration, but they turned out even better than I'd imagined. I'm really proud of them and had so much fun assembling all the pieces.

I decided to go with 3 different Paper Source colors and black. The invite itself is printed on Rhubarb, which is being discontinued. It's on clearance on the Paper Source website! The other colors are Coral & Lake, and I subbed Fig envelopes (not shown) for Rhubarb, since they aren't available anymore.

When you're creating an invitation suite, accents are where it really starts to get fun. They can be as intricate or as simple as you like.The border is done with a gold paint pen. For the sashes, I found a crystal pattern on Google images. That was a little trickier, because I had to mess around with the size so it wouldn't print all blurry.

I made gold-spotted black seals to finish off the envelopes. If you'd like your own set of custom seals, you can order them through my Etsy shop.

♠