The Craft Begins

These wedding invites by Promise Tangeman are simply amazing.  They’ve got such texture and depth, they look like mixed media pieces but it’s all just graphic design.  I love the colors and the mix of different fonts and decorative elements.  This talented designer made the above for a friend, but below are the invites for her wedding that are even more unique.

My favorite part of these is the clear envelopes that house all of the rest of the elements.  Not that I don’t love letterpress, but I always enjoy seeing invitations that are a little more unique and personalized.

Found via Once Wed.

As a follow up to my post on how much I dig moss, I present green graffiti:

A Brooklyn-based artist places installations of moss and other living plants in the shape of natural forms all over the city, notably in construction sites and other areas that might be considered blighted.  They are intended to provoke dialogue and a consideration of how rarely the typical urban-dweller interacts with the natural world.  This is the kind of graffiti I could totally get behind!  Find more information here.

Thanks to the lovely Amanda for pointing this out to me!

I won’t be blogging for the next couple of days, as I’m headed off to San Diego!  Well only for a day or two, but the beach is the beach!

Hope everyone is enjoying their midweek.  Here’s a nice picture for you in the meantime.

See you on Friday!

Oh, how I would have loved to take part in this!  A group of very talented designers all got together to throw a “fake” wedding to practice all of their skills in one place, and then ended up making it into a free wedding that someone could win in a contest!  All of the details are simply divine, and there are a lot of great ideas for anyone who’s planning a wedding or party.

The photography, of course, is amazing, thanks to the talented Our Labor of Love.  I just can’t get over how much fun it looks like everyone had.

I’d love to post all of the images for everyone here, but it would take up way too much space (and I couldn’t decide on which ones to post).  Find more pictures and details here, on Once Wed.

The packaging design on these new first-aid staples is amazing.

So much more restrained and simple than all of the obnoxious, garish packaging that fills the store shelves today.  It’s also recyclable/biodegradable, which I think is great as hopefully it will set an industry standard once people realize that it can be done.  As an added bonus, the website is also fantastic.  There’s all sorts of fun games to play, and a “help” section that helps you if you’re bored, or lazy, or don’t know what to wear.

Found via Twig and Thistle.

I always envy those creative types to seem to have turned their work areas into an expression of their artwork.  It’s funny, there’s a group of artists out there that seem to be really organized or OCD but I sure haven’t met any of them personally.

This space is so inspiring to me.  Lots of space and storage, and it’s so organized!  I think I would like a studio that looked like this, but I also think that I’d like everything in it.  You can see more pictures here.  The blog is in French, but the pictures speak a universal language!

I always love seeing pictures of studios.  Do you have a great space you’d like to share?  I’d love to see pictures (and maybe show them off here!).  Email me at thecraftbegins[at]gmail.com if you’d like to participate.

Combining vintage European postcards and modern friendly invading robots?  Pure genius.

There’s something about these that is simply charming.  Find more at illustrator Franco Brambilla’s website.

Are you sick of mowing your lawn?  Does your backyard seem incapable of growing anything other than weeds?  Moss might be the answer for you.  It can grow on anything, since it gets its nutrients from the air.  It survives in alkaline soils, meaning that it grows where grass and weeds cannot.  And it never needs mowing, always looks green and can survive with very little water for long periods of time.

And I just can’t get enough of the way it looks.  Very English countryside and a little bit secret garden.  I especially dig the walls covered in green.

Moss Acres is the to-go-to resource for everything moss related.  The man who runs it has had a moss-free backyard for 40 years!  The pictures alone are inspiring enough.  And you may just want to turn your backyard into a grass-free zone.

This line of jewelry would be great for someone who doesn’t wear very much jewelry, or finds one thing and then wears it forever.  You can pick any number, letter or symbol.  My favorite is the {.  It’s a  nice twist on the monogram necklaces for someone who doesn’t necessarily want to wear their initial around their neck.  You can find the whole collection here.

One key to taking really great photos (at least digitally) is to edit them afterward.  The industry standard for this is probably photoshop, but the software is expensive and somewhat hard to learn.  There are some other programs out there that let you do a little bit of editing (picassa, picnik, etc) but they really don’t stack up when compared to photoshop.

I downloaded a trial copy of Adobe Lightroom yesterday to give it a test run, and I’m in love.  It doesn’t really do anything that photoshop doesn’t do, per se, but it just puts all of those tweaks in a convenient and easy to use package.  I think that it would be really great for someone who doesn’t want to shell out for photoshop but still wants to have some professional-level editing  capabilities.

(don’t worry, it doesn’t make all of your photos this washed out, it was just an effect I was playing with)

It’s pretty easy to use, it’s a lot of fun to play around with and the price is right (especially if you know a student).  Student copies go for just $99 and for everyone else it’s $299.  I know that seems like a lot of money, but your pictures will thank you.  You download a trial here and see if you like it.

What software do you use to edit your photos?

I will say this much for Arizona: you just can’t beat the sunsets.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll shell out for a nice camera and then be reluctant to dive into the technical manuals to learn how to actually use it.  I have a hard time learning that way.  I prefer to experiment and see what happens, but then I also get really frustrated by certain things that are hard to figure out.  The best learning experience for me is one that is hands-on and a little more casual.  This is the brilliance of the Pioneer Woman.

She has the same learning style (experimentation) but also has the patience to sit down and teach all of the rest of us out there how to use our cameras.  There’s lots of before-and-after shots as well, so that the more visually inclined among us can get an idea of what is actually happening along the way.  She’s friendly, she’s accessible, and most of all, she takes beautiful photographs.

Stop by her blog for great tutorials on a number of photography subjects.  The photoshop tutorials are especially great if you have limited experience with the software (and great even if you supposedly know what you’re doing).   There’s also great recipes and lots of other lovely finds.
Start taking better pictures today!  She will show you how.

(all images from Pioneer Woman).