Save the Date

While checking Design Sponge yesterday (I do this everyday) came across this brilliant stop motion "Save the Date" video that a couple made for their wedding. I can't get over how awesomely brilliant this is! Such a clever way to get the word out.

Save the Date_9/26/09 from Jason Harmon on Vimeo.

Invitations

One of my very good friends from high school will be getting married in October of this year. As one of her bridesmaids I've been helping her with some of the planning and I took on the task of designing the invitations. I jumped at the opportunity to create something awesome and unique (perhaps a little too enthusiastically actually). The theme of the wedding is "Enchanted Forest" so my friend and I discussed giving the invitation and aged fairy tale feel without going overly feminine and Disney looking.

Around the same time I discovered this wonderful product:



A Pazzles Inspiration Creative Cutter! With this machine you can cut just about anything straight from your computer! It's designed for scrapbookers and hobbyists but the more I read about this machine, the more uses I saw for it. What I would give to have had one of these in art school!

Of course, it retails for about $600 off the shelf (a little expensive for my tastes) but after shopping around a little bit, I found a great deal on one on ebay.

My friend's invitations seemed like a great opportunity to see what this creative cutter was made of. I begin sketching forest inspired designs and we ordered the paper.

An unfortunate feature about the Pazzle is it is not made to work with a Mac, which was a big hurdle for me. After a lot of trial and error however, I was able to get a version of Windows to work on my Mac so that I can run the program for the creative cutter. It's a little time consuming to have to restart the computer in Windows every time I want to use the product, but it was worth it for the result.





It took a little time to cut out each invitation individually, and we had to enlist several other friends to help man the machine while we folded and cut the corresponding reception and RSVP cards, but it is still a miracle to me that we were able achieve this quality without shelling out lots of money to pay for custom die cuts or risking loosing a finger cutting out 150 of these with an xacto knife.

I'm looking forward to hearing how they are received after my friend sends them out.

For the Love of Nikon

I recently purchased a Nikon D90 and several lenses to feed my developing photography addiction. My beloved Konica Minolta Dimage Z6 finally bit the dust and I'd been wanting to upgrade to an SLR for quite some time. This may just be the best purchase I have ever made! Since acquiring it I've taken 3000 something photos and I'm loving learning about how to get different effects and play with the focus on it. Shots that I used to have to set up a tripod for I can now take as regular snap shots!

Since Adam and I are moving in together this month, we thought it would be nice to take some "family" photos.

The "parents" with the furry spoiled baby.



A closeup portrait


And a romance shot.



I also got the camera just in time for Adam's sister's wedding last weekend. Nothing like a wedding to act as an opportunity for you to learn how to use your camera!