So! I was making up a sign for the new Webkinz on sale at work today, and realized I was all by my lonesome in the back office, with some spare time. I pulled up my recent favorite things I've made for work, and saved jpgs, so I can show them off to everyone here finally. :) *bounces!*


What really got me started on this sleek, professional but pretty kind of look, was the labels I did for some plastic champagne glasses. Chad wanted something similar to the rather simple but somewhat elegant labels on some plastic silverware we had around, so I followed the general idea for the layout, but, more colorful. :) The product shot on the company's website had this odd but rather nice green background, so I ran with that.

Not long after, I got to make the paper labels that I was spazzing about on here awhile ago. Again, Chad had an example of the style he had in mind, simple and clear. The line near the bottom is for us to write whatever type of paper it is on there, Natural Parchment or Gamma Green Astrobright or what have you. I played around with borders of some of Corel's default textures, but, they're really pretty awful, and I realized I knew what I really wanted. I ran out to psdtuts <3, and found some free brushes of pretty swirly things. 'Bout two minutes in Photoshop, and I was good to go.

Aaand my latest assignment from Basil's. It looks rather dark and the text doesn't stand out well on screen - the colors are set up to work happily with our giant printer, and the light tan outlines on the lettering doesn't show up in the reduced size (this sucker's really 24"x36"). I really can make way awesomer paper than that, ditto on the nails, but Chad gets annoyed with me if I spend more than half an hour on any one project. Which I understand - something like this is plenty enough for what the customer wanted. Damn am I happy with the fonts, I lucked out, we had a couple of really good Western fonts on the system.

We sell coffee at the store - but the company we've dealt with for basically forever has gone steadily downhill lately. They discontinued half to three-quarters of the coffees we carried, and turnaround time on orders was awful, customer service went to hell when they got bought out... so there were an awful lot of black scribbles over our old coffee list. Also, it was printed in a largely illegible curly font, very small, probably five years ago or more. On neon green paper. It kind of hurt. So! Since the number of types of coffees had gotten drastically cut, I had room to play a bit. I am really happy with this, it's simple and clean yet has personality to it. (It's the font the coffees are listed in that I'm happiest about, for some reason. Cambria I think?)

Aaaaand, because I can't resist: my piñata sign. It is so ridiculously bright - though, again, the colors were set to make the printer happy. "All Piñatas" is actually basically magenta on the banner - which wound up being about 18" x 24", I think? Given that they wound up hanging from the ceiling pipes in the basement, it could have stood to be a bit larger, but that's what Ann suggested I do. Anyway! The photos on the piñata company's site were FREAKING TINY, and not the best quality, so I knew I was going to have to be creative. Thus, the confetti, and the (vague) appearance of it being smashed open. I am in love with this font for this banner, first time I've ever actually used it. First time I used that perspective effect too, I think. Could've done a much better job with the piñata itself, had I been on my own computer and taken more time, but as is I think I spent about an hour on this one. (Chad wasn't around. ;) Did I mention I giggled for five minutes straight when I finished this thing? I seriously did.