Custom Invitations

Whenever a friend tells me they are getting married, I first say, “Congratulations!”, then I ask if they’ll let me do their wedding invitations. I love doing them and making them unique for each couple. I started with doing my own for my wedding. We wanted to blend traditional with modern and add in an organic touch. Actually the “organic” touch was my husband’s only request, so I found some beautiful hand made banana paper and incorporated it into the invite. For the traditional part I wanted to use a Letterpress Printer – this is where the metal plates are actually pressed into the paper creating a texture. I found a printer in Brooklyn who still did letterpress by hand with machines from the 1850s, they even let me try it out. So cool. The modern part was in the text and font and the story. My husband and I told the story of how we met from each of our perspectives on two different folds of the invitation. I folded them by hand and weaved in a shear ribbon. Phew, it sounds like a lot of work now looking back on it. I’ll be honest, the ones I’ve done for friends haven’t been near that complicated, but I think they’ve all been as beautiful and reflective of the couple. And usually much more cost effective .

To Scrapbook? Or not to Scrapbook?

Like any good parent, I try to preserve my kids childhood and share it with family and friends. This mostly means taking pictures with my digital camera when I remember to, uploading pics onto Shutterfly some 2 months later and sending a link to family/friends in my email address book. And like any good parent, I sometimes feel guilty I’m not doing enough to cherish and save each moment of their childhood – what if my son comes to me one day in the far off future of his adulthood and asks me what he was for Halloween when he was 4? What if I have no picture/scrapbook/holiday card proving he was Batman? But I’m not exactly the scrapbook type and the money and time it sucks up is definitely not something I can afford. Yet when I hear of a friend of a friend who scrapbooks everything or wander around the local Scrapbook Nook, I get that pang of regret, that creative spark in me of what could be. Soooo, I found something online called Digital Scrapbooking that looks fun and doable for me – maybe even something I could get good at and then offer as a service to others. So I’m going to look into it, if you know anything about it and are already doing it and love it, send me a note and tell me about it.

allymac designs new website launches!

After many stops and starts, I’ve finally finished updating my website. Seems typical that the last project you get to is your own. I changed the design last year from my original Flash based site launched in 2001. Wow, 2001! But never got around to putting up a complete portfolio of my work. Now the trick will be to continue updating and putting samples of more recent work online. To that end I’ve started this blog too, thinking perhaps a twice weekly posting will force me to think about my website and how I can add to it/change it and make it better. That’s the plan anyway, unfortunately sometimes, life intrudes …