Just checking in...

It's 6:56 AM and I have been up for an hour or so already. I still need to flip on the light to make it comfortably down the stairs (It's THAT dark outside).


This is nothing new as I'm up this early usually to put together Mike's lunch and pat his bum on the way out the door :), but most importantly, to let our sweet pup out to relieve himself. But this morning was different, I was woken not by the sound of the alarm or Mike swearing that he's slept through it again, but with my mental filing system. I was woken by my mind doing crazy organizing of my current projects. And with all that going on up there, I realized that Christmas is just around the corner (exactly a month today).

**Cue panic**

Cripes! I've neglected my Christmas promotion. (BARF). But it's never too late. Like myself, I'm sure there are many many last minute shoppers/card senders out there. I'll post some of the goodies in a bit.

Despite how quiet it's been on the Miss Thio designs blog, I'm excited to have acquired new and exciting corporate and small business projects. Some more complicated than others, but all very important to me nonetheless.


I've started booking for wedding and birthday client orders for 2011. Feel free to drop me a line at pixels(at)missthio.com  if you wish to discuss your project!

Sipping on English Breakfast tea in one of my favourite mugs.
(Although the mug is pictured in front of my laptop, it was only for photographic purposes.
Please see why I don't drink ANYTHING while I am working in front of my macbook)

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BLOGGED: Wedding Design - Diana and Elson

As mentioned in a previous blog, I had the pleasure of working with an amazing couple on their upcoming nuptials. Their wedding was unique, fun and so... them. :)

Their wedding day was recently featured on the amazing wedding blog, Style Me Pretty.

Here are a few pictures from the blog of some of Miss Thio Designs... designs. :)

(Photography by Zach Hertzman)

The RSVP cards: The Bride and Groom posted the AdLib RSVP cards from their guests

The guest favours: Cigars for the men and Scarves for the ladies

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Miss Thio Designs: Website Launch delay

The original launch date for the Miss Thio Designs website was May 20th, but the demands at my day job has left me with little time to concentrate on Michael's and my upcoming nuptials, the website and my lovely lovely clients' requests.

The result: Me constantly dressed in cranky-pants as well as my refusal to ingest chill pills and Michael hanging on a very frayed fibre at the end of his nerves.

As the wedding is coming up real soon, I have been forced to prioritize and the mister has so nicely suggested that I put a halt on all Miss Thio designs activities until mid-July. I would normally fight this "demand", but gaddamit, he's so good to me, the least I can do is let him have a pleasant lady love to deal with for the next few weeks (No promises after that date... ;p).

So... hang tight, folks, Miss Thio Designs will be back and in full force this summer! Looking forward to working on more whimsical ideas and designs!

xoxo

Talk soon!

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Random: Norman Rockwell Painting

The Marriage License (1955) - Norman Rockwell

The Marriage License (2010) - Mike and Sharon

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Wedding Design - Childhood Inspiration

I had known from the beginning, this was going to be my favourite part of the whole preparation for this wedding - the invitation design (Well, of course, it would be!). There was no doubt it was going to be something quirky, ultra cool and lounge-y.

My inspiration came from the things that were a big part of my childhood: My father's collection of comic books from his younger days and the music we'd hear coming from the stereo in his study room: Playing the tunes from musical artists like Andy Williams, Connie Francis, Vic Damone and Mel Tormé to name a few.

Mike and I had spent an afternoon at a Starbucks downtown with our laptops (one of our afternoons sans "Our child" - aka: the pup) and I was listening to  Andy Williams et al when the idea came to me. It was something that I felt was a fun reflection of Mike and me.

Mike, who is always so supportive and confident in my ideas and designs (Thanks, sweetheart!), was still pleasantly surprised when I showed him the rough draft.

The turnaround time was fast. It only took one printed rough  proof, some minor adjustments and it was a couple of evenings with my bestest folding, gluing, cutting and drinking lots of wine putting together these invitations. The things girls talk about when they're slightly happy off of wine... definitely not suitable for sober ears. But then again, that's always been me and Carina (That will have to be for another post... AND another blog! HA!)

Here's Carina after she happily discovered the cornering tool. I "LET" her corner away all 4 corners of the 120 (x2) inserts. Let's see... that's...960 corners!!! She twisted my rubber arm.

The invitations have been sent so now we wait...

The exciting part is receiving the responses in the mail. Mike and I are like kids on Christmas morning. Just this past week I was upset when I got to the mailbox and discovered he had already gone to pick up the mail.

We are so touched by the little sentiments written at the bottom of the RSVP postcard from our guests.

We can't wait to see all of you! xoxo

More to come on my website (Launch date May 20, 2010) 

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Wedding Design to Baby Shower Design: Tabitha

Last year, I was contacted by a lovely, lovely bride-to-be from Ottawa, Ontario about designing her invitations. The idea for her invites came from her quick synopsis of where she met her husband-to-be: English class

She told me he was a Shakespeare buff and they wanted to incorporate this quote from As You Like It into the design:

No sooner met but they looked; No sooner looked but they loved; No sooner loved but they sighed; No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason; No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy; And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage.
~William Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act V, Scene II)~

I loved this bride already.

I'm not a huge fan of old Billy S (my sister is), but it reminds me so much of my dear grandmother who was an English Literature teacher at Fairfield Methodist School in Singapore that I felt a personal attachment to this design.

The bride was organized and knew what she wanted, but she also trusted me to design based on our email correspondence.

Fast forward to April 2010: A friend of hers sends me an email to request BABY SHOWER invitations for the previously mentioned lovely bride-to-be. I was, of course, thrilled to design for the next exciting step in their lives. Congratulations Tabitha and Amir!

More to come on my website (Launch date May 20, 2010)

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An unfortunate fortunate accident. RIP MacBook, bonjour MacBook Pro.

Have you ever looked back at a situation and thought you could've done something different to prevent the negative outcome? 

I have.

Last week I thought I would sit quietly at the dining table with a tasty mug of English Breakfast tea while I worked on a few client projects. I was home alone and the pup was not bothering me to play with him. He was, in fact, napping under the table on his back draped across my feet. What a perfect evening... or so I thought.

I was thinking to myself that I would back-up my laptop as soon as I finished this part of the illustration on this project as I hadn't done so in a few days because God forbid anything should happen to these projects.

Talk about foreshadowing.

I took the teaspoon out of the mug and dripped a few drops of tea on the table. I stood up to get a paper towel to wipe, but as luck would have it, my hip decided it would do the bump with the table and in slow motion, I saw the content of my mug swirl and rock.

At this point, my heart was in my throat as I reached out to stop the tilting mug. The life of my MacBook flashed before me and before I could let out a gasp, the mug tipped over and... SPLASH.

The single sheet of paper towel at this point would have been no use. 

I did what any designer whose hard work had just gone to waste would do. I cried.

I brought my laptop to the Apple store and the fella at the Genius Bar pointed out the damage to the motherboard caused by the heat and the sugar in my tea and quoted me the price for the part. 

$900 (sans labour). And this is IF everything else hadn't been damaged by my delicious drink.

I nearly vomitted. 

I made the decision to buy a new MacBook as I needed it to complete my pending projects.

I also made sure I contacted my clients who were expecting drafts and proofs on the weekend to let them know that I hit a little snag. They were all understanding (Thank you!).

Three things I learned from this experience: 

1. NO FOOD OR DRINKS around the laptop.
2. If the beginning of a night seems perfect, it probably won't be, seconds after you have that thought. 
3. If you ever think that you will do something later, DON'T. Do it right then and there.

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It's my turn!

I'm getting married in 2 months!!! Woo hoo!!! (2 months and 1 day to be exact). I am finally my own client. And quite frankly, on some days, I'm not a fan of me. I am constantly changing my mind and overwhelming myself with design ideas.

Aside from my pending marriage to an amazing fella, the big excitement of this event , as I mentioned, is that I get to do a giant art project with him. We have the same ideas and we get a kick out of sitting in front of our Macs playing around with new designs - that is usually "Date Night" for us.

We wanted to have a small wedding at first and even jokingly considered having it in his parents' lovely backyard. But he has a large extended family, all of whom are really special to us; we couldn't possibly fit all of them in the backyard and we also couldn't imagine not having them there. So we caved and got a hall.

The day he proposed I started working on ideas for the invitations and all the little details of how we want the day to be. Because we are paying for the wedding, we were very strict about how or where we were spending our money. I'll admit we're spending a little more than we'd like, but I'm keeping track of where the monies are going (I have a spreadsheet. I'm a little intense like that ;p). 

I've finally printed off a draft of the invites (Rest easy anyone out there who  is slapping their forehead and freaking out that the invites should already be on its way to our guests, it will be fine. They will be making their way out this week) and in my humble opinion, I think it's AWESOME!!!! It's very much our style. We're not very conventional and we don't like too many frou-frou, pretty things. We just want something that is a good representation of us as a couple. So if anyone is expecting a "pretty" card, I'm sorry, it won't be. It's slightly wacky and I had a blast illustrating and laying out the card.

I can't post any pictures of the wedding invitations now only because it hasn't gone out to our guests, but here are pictures of my bridal shower invite. I had to include our pup, Dexter. It just wouldn't be natural if I didn't. :)

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Wedding designs: Diana and Elson

I had the pleasure of recently working with a very fun and creative bride. The moment she discussed her vision for her unconventional wedding, I knew this was going to give me the opportunity to present her with some whimsical ideas and digital illustrations. Basically, she let me go wild! :)

We worked with a couple of ideas and finally settled on this: Z-fold, custom illustrated invitation with tear-away RSVP postcard.
Here are a few pictures of the final product:

I am currently working on their reception menu and "guest book".
Will post more pictures soon...

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You are only seeing this blog now because...

... I haven't been fond of my blog layout hence not posting much OR "releasing" my blog.

Even with my lack of exposure into the cyberworld, I've been surprisingly busy and have acquired quite a few clients. Their blind faith in me melts my heart. (God bless all of you). :)

So I decided I would take that few extra seconds to put a little bit of thought and sass into this blog and now I like it. So here we are... The Miss Thio designs blog debut.

Keep checking back for more updates.

You can check me out on my FACEBOOK fan page too.

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Logo design: The Firecrackers

I was recently asked to create a logo for a local Burlesque Troupe called "The Firecrackers". They wanted something a little cheeky and fun.

Check out the logo. It's a saucy-looking lady with flaming red hair (Literally) with lots of curves riding a firecracker that resembles a vibrator.

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