A new etsy!

Well, the same etsy, just prettier and with new things.

I'm so excited to finally have my wedding invitations up and running. It's just the beginning and I have a lot of work to do yet, but it's really fun and I'm happy to be sharing that process with you.

Oh, and I have a new blog banner too.

AND! I have a clean studio. After filling at least 4 garbage bags full of all sorts of stuff I never needed.

Living and working in the same space can be a challenge, but it works!

emruth.com

A new year, a new project!

Hello all!

I’ve got a super exciting new project coming soon! Several months ago I started working on a line of wedding invitation templates and they’re just about ready to launch on my etsy.

I love letterpress printing, foil embossing, die cuts and fancy folding probably more than than next guy, but not everyone can afford to do that. And certainly no one NEEDS to do that. In a country where the average wedding cost is $25,000, we need some options that are elegant, beautifully designed, and completely affordable.

My goal is to provide a low cost option that is beautifully designed and really easy to customize to any wedding. They are all grayscale designs - which adapt to just about any color palette, and make the printing costs essentially nothing. I’ve worked hard to make the text and graphics integrated and strong enough to stand on their own without any fussing, but color and texture can be added with paper, lace, ribbons, bows or any number of things this wonderfully DIY crazy world can come up with!

Over the last couple of years, I have had the privilege of designing wedding invitations for some family and friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends. I totally fell in love with the process and the product. Basically, I love making pretty things, and what could be a better excuse to make pretty things than a wedding?

Being able to hold an actual crafted object or printed piece of paper is a wonderful feeling of accomplishment - you worked hard, and look! here’s a finished thing to prove it.  Wedding invitations have that feeling for me. They are small projects, but they result in a perfect stack of beautiful printed cards that actually mean a lot to someone. They announce a new beginning in the lives of two people and mark a celebration to be shared with family and friends. I think there is something wonderful and lasting about that!

So here are a few of my designs with some of my crafting ideas - look for them soon on my about to be updated etsy store!   emruth.com

all the best in this exciting new year!

e

Holiday Making

Christmas is such a pretty time of year - and the perfect pretty crafting excuse.

I happened to be at my parents house when they bought their tree this year, so I snagged one of the extra branches - perfect for my tiny apartment. And then decorated it with all three of my christmas ornaments that i own. Maybe not a christmas tree, but a Christmas branch is festive enough for me!

One of my favorite christmas activities is wrapping presents. Ok, it's one of my favorite anytime activities. merry christmas, family!

that tiny box in the middle?  animal butt magnets!

:)

And I made this cute bag.

Matt and I had christmas this past sunday, so I made a fancy dinner and decorated my table with all the christmas-y ish things I could find in my house. I think that was mostly a procrastination method from work I should have actually been doing, but it turned out nice! 

On an unrelated note, my etsy shop reached 100 sales before new years!  Here are 3 packages ready to ship to Singapore, Israel, and Norway! It's fun to know I have my work all over the world.

Here's to a wonderful new year full of making!

'Tis the season! (for snowflakes)

My one claim to fame in this world is that I can cut paper snowflakes better than anyone I know. Please don't prove me wrong, I'd be devastated. Just kidding! Although I do owe some of this talent to my father, who perfected his skills while working nights in peds icu and then passed on the tradition on to his children. So, thanks dad!

Last year I made a little book of snowflake patterns, which you can find on my etsy. This year I also added printable PDF versions of them if you want to try your hand at these guys for cheap.

I know it's just about snowflake season because my snowflakes have made it into 2 pretty snowflake treasuries on etsy in the last 2 days. Aren't they lovely?

number one

number two

Laszlo

Exciting news from the studio (also known as my apartment) - I gained a new helper!

Meet Laszlo, a tiny ball of fur and crazy. This is kind of big deal, I may have been known to be a bit of a cat disliker in my past.

And he is never far away when I have work to do. I've got some super exciting new projects coming soon, and Laszlo is doing an excellent job of quality control. So be excited!

Lurking.

Being quality control apparently gets pretty boring. 

If you don't think cats belong on every blog, take that up with MelissaPeterson. Just look at that face! He's a keeper.

A Garden Wedding

Jon and Christine's wedding took place at the Garfield Park Conservatory, Chicago's semi secret botanical paradise. They were a really fun couple to work with, we had a lot of back forth with great suggestions from both sides. We collaborated on something that neither one of us would have come up with on our own, and ended up with beautiful invitations that everyone is super happy with!

Invite detail - hand drawn type

Invite

RSVP (super pretty Luxe Cream paper from PaperSource)

Lovely!
Expect to see these flowers again. And the vines - in a different project.

A Farm Wedding

This was for a wedding at farm that housed (among other things) a kookaburra and a bobcat. They got a little shout out on the rsvp, because who else gets to claim that? I was super excited when the bride and groom asked me to design these, they were very open to ideas and we have similar styles so I got to go a little crazy and design a wedding invitation suite entirely with hand drawn custom type. LOVE.

How awesome are those vintage stamps??
 I can't take credit for that one, but i have the guy's name if you're interested!

Cannot get over this lovely combination of color and texture!

calendar card/rsvp info

invitation

dessert rsvp

type detail