San Kelly

My Disney themed bridesmaid gifts!

It's been a while since I last updated, but during that time away many exciting things have happened (which I hope to blog about next week!)... One of the biggest highlights is: I got engaged! <3 I'll talk about that a bit more in another post, but today I wanted to share with you some of the wedding crafting I've been doing for my bridesmaid's gifts. I had so much fun with this project!!

This was the hardest secret to keep for the past two weeks as I worked on it... I felt like such a secret little fairy godmother crafting these up! lol 

The gift boxes were designed to look like the dress Cinderella's animal friends make for her in the Disney film, and on the bows it says "The right shoe can change a girl's life... Or at least make it more magical!"

I bought the boxes at Target and made the bows in photoshop by altering this tutorial. 

Inside the boxes the first thing you see is a mini Little Golden Book I handmade! The cover is from the original 1950 story of Cinderella and I edited it in photoshop to remove the title and add my own. The back and spine image were taken from what Little Golden Books are still using currently. 

The covers are made with cardstock wrapped in the printed image, and the inside pages are just regular paper, so it gives a nice real book feel to it overall! It was a little challenging to assemble but the final product was so worth it.

View of the inside cover and first page... I didn't take too many photos of the pages since they reveal our plans but the next page tells the girls that we will be going to Disney World for my bachelorette trip!!

So exciting!!

An example of what the inside pages looked like. (There is the dress the boxes were modeled after!) I could have printed on the pages and then folded/stapled/trimmed, but after doing some tests I realized my basic home printer just wasn't going to do the job well... so to get around that I decided to make it look more crafted/homemade and glue all the info on blank pages. I doodled the frames around the pictures in photoshop and scribbled on top of the printed version with a reflective gold gel pen. For the page text I pasted it the book however I felt was best for each page. I really like how it turned out!! <3

The last page and the inside back cover! The part that says "open me" is typically where a list of other Little Golden Book titles would be, but I decided to put this instead... When you open the envelope it says inside, "I hope you say YES! Email me your response ASAP!" hehehe

Underneath the little book was a shoe for each girl!! This ties back into the phrase on the box's bow since these shoes will be taking them on a magical adventure to Disney World sorta! ;) I picked the shoes based on each girl's favorite princess or character. 

Here are the first 3 shoes that arrived! These are actually ornaments - you can buy some of the series from the Disney online store but I chose to use Amazon since a few shoes I wanted were sold out on the Disney site.

Minnie for Sarah, Rapunzel for Molly, and Mulan for Katie. The 4th shoe I had some issues obtaining at first because it was from Frozen and the merchandise for that seems to be really popular!! 

The final shoe, Elsa's from Frozen! It was difficult to get but well worth the wait - it was really pretty!!

I've had a few people ask if I could do a tutorial on how I made the books - If I am able to squeeze in the time I will try my best to post it up here! <3

So that was my first big wedding craft!! I'm now getting ready to think about if I'll be making decorations and invitations, and if so - how! I most likely wont be sharing anymore details about our wedding until after the big event in September due to timing and to help keep a little mystery. ;)

Hope you enjoyed the pictures - Let me know what you think!

Drawings and life update

I'm sure those who follow my blog are wondering why I haven't made my Friday Japan updates yet. I wanted to let you all know they are still coming - I just had a few things pop up that have kept me from working on my blog recently. Our friend's father passed away recently and we spent one weekend going to visit for his funeral, and this past week I was snowed/iced in at my mom's. There has been some crazy weather going on in Atlanta lately... What's even more nuts is it's warm this week!! Above is a photo of my mom's backyard and below is my neice and her dog playing outside in the snow.

I chose to stay at my mom's during the ice storm since the news was predicting many homes in Atlanta would lose power and I didn't have a fireplace to keep me warm if that happened. (I wasn't sure where I'd go with my dog to stay warm!!) She lives an hour south of Atlanta, and has two fireplaces and plenty of room for guests - so she invited me to come stay with her and work remotely. Plus, Chris was out of town in California so it would be a nice way to be in company of other's during what would be a long, cold and possibly lonely week for me. How could I say no?!

The power never did go out at her house thankfully, but it was really nice to be together with my family and her husband's family during the wintery weather. I worked remotely while I was there (I'm very busy with moving the company into a new building!), and in the evenings I ate meals with everyone, worked on drawings (I'm experimenting with watercolor right now!) and started re-reading the manga, "Nana", by Ai Yazawa on my kindle. I was so inspired I decided to draw some of my favorite clothing items from the manga that Nana Osaki wears. I remember thinking Nana was so cool when I first read this in college many years ago, but now that I'm older I realize I have more in common with Hachi personality and style-wise. I still admire Nana's cool Vivienne Westwood clothes though!

I also drew some of my favorite items from the new Kate Spade spring collection. It's travel inspired and so cute! My favorite items are the French themed pieces - I really hope to get the bow coat, purse and hat when they go on sale eventually. Gotta save up!

 

So that's why there haven't been posts the past two weeks. I'm hoping to get back on track next week since I have my first day in Kyoto almost ready to share. (It's been hard to decided how to split up the posts!!) My only obstacles in the way of posting right now is finding spare time between work's big moving project, running (I started couch to 5k last month!), reading/relaxing and drawing for the blog. Seems like spare time is hard to come by these days but I promise to post! :) So please stay tuned <3

Have a good weekend everyone!

Record Store Girl comic #1

I think its safe to share comic #1 here now that its no longer in print...! I just wrapped up comic #3, so when that is published I'll share #2! :D Enjoy!

And if you missed my intro post about this, you can go here to read more about my comic in Magnet magazine! The plot is about local record store girl, Lillian (who is real and works at Criminal Records!) and her adventures with the record stores she interacts with at work. I do the writing and illustrating, and the concepts are drafted up by the lovely folks at Criminal Records. It's an interesting project so far!

You can pick up a copy for yourself at your local record shop <3

More coming later on the comic!

Giveaway winner!

Here is the winner from my comic giveaway that ended yesterday:

Congrats Cristal!!

I'd love to have teleporting powers too! :) <3

BIG NEWS: My comic in Magnet magazine + win a copy!!!

So I've had a little secret I've been dying to share since September... For the next 6 months I'll be writing and illustrating a comic strip called "The adventures of Record Store Girl" for music magazine Magnet!!

The comic is about Lillian, a record store shop girl, who accidentally discovers a magical object that gives her super powers! But what will she do with those powers...? Fight to save record stores from big-box chains taking over, become a music vigilante or just decline her new abilities for a normal life? You'll have to read the strips to find out!

Lillian also happens to be a real person - she's my good friend who actually works at Criminal Records here in Atlanta! I got the idea to write about her as magical girl because she does so many things for her store and local community in Atlanta that it's almost super human! 

I'm so excited about Record Store Girl because I've always wanted to write a cutesy magical girl story and this was the perfect opportunity! I can't wait to see how it all evolves! I might even try to weave it into my personal comic I've been working on.

 

 

Comic #1 went on sale at the beginning of November with the above cover, but I wasn't able to blog about it right away due to work and personal stuff... But! It will be for sale until the 28th so you can still hurry if you want to get a copy!!

 

If you'd like to buy a copy, you can find it at either your local independent record shop or one of the fabulous stores listed above! Annnd comic #2 will be available for purchase on November 29th!! Since I know that is a bit of a time crunch to get the first comic, I thought I'd do something fun for you guys:

I'm giving away a free signed copy of
Magnet magazine with "The adventures of Record Store Girl" #1 inside!

Want to win a copy of the magazine?

• Leave a comment stating what sort of magical super hero abilities you wish you had, along with your name and email!
• If you reblog about this, that can count as an extra entry as long as you link where you mentioned the comic in a separate comment! (So it counts as an extra entry! <3)

I'll use a random number generator to select a winner from the comments on November 28th and send out your issue just in time to read before comic #2!

 

Wheee! So glad I can finally post about this!! 
I hope you guys are as excited as I am! <3