Recent Design Work: Wood Family Sign and a Hand-lettered Art Print

As part of my shop, I've really been enjoying doing design work the past few months and have had lots of great opportunities to do some awesome custom projects. Today, I'm sharing two of those projects that involve hand-lettering:  two very special custom designed gifts.

The first is this Wood Family Sign constructed within a shadow box frame for my cousin Lauren in honor of her birthday this week. I really wanted to give her something meaningful beyond the traditional Target gift card and I wanted it to be something she'd love and keep for a long time.

Knowing the style of her home, I created this Pottery Barn-esque project after being inspired by a Wedding table number sign from Pinterest that leveraged a wood plaque and white writing. The work is all hand-done but the lettering is an experiment in transferring fonts.

I used chalk to transfer a design I created in Adobe Illustrator to the wood itself, then traced using a white paint pen. I love the look of the white on wood and am looking for more great ways to use white instead of black in typography to make things really stand out.

The second project today is another hand lettering experiment. My friend Laura asked me to design something for her based on a prayer that her Bible Study leader had given to her. She wanted to be able to gift her a copy of the prayer in a frame.

With those simple instructions, I took the prayer and hand-lettered the entire thing on a white sheet of paper. I then scanned my writing into the computer and edited it with Adobe Illustrator. The program allowed me to smooth out a few letters, erase any smudges, and easily resize letters or the entire prayer as needed.

It also allowed me the opportunity to turn it into two different styles of an 8.5 x 11" Art Print - easily interchanging the backgrounds between a brilliant pink orange watercolor and a more neutral stripe.

Laura printed both versions, one for herself and one for her Bible Study Leader. She even took extra copies of the print to her larger prayer group. It was a great opportunity to be part of a very meaningful gift.

Doing custom work and creating meaningful gifts are two things that truly fire me up. Feel free to contact me if you're interested in a custom design project.

In addition what's currently listed  in my shop, I always love a new creative challenge and making something that will really matter to someone else- something that will touch their heart and that they will keep with them forever. That's just... the jam.