Very excited about Minted's expanded home decor line, which includes lamp shades, curtains, pillows, table linens, and fabric by the yard. These new designs are currently in voting (ends tomorrow, Tues. 10/6).

Geo-Triangles Fabric

All the stores may already look like it's Christmas time, but let's not rush past Thanksgiving! For you early birds out there who already have family photos marked for holiday cards, consider sending a Thanksgiving card to beat the holiday rush. 

This festive "Top 3 Blessings" photo card features plenty of room for photos, and a spot for the top three reasons you're giving thanks this year, available exclusively at Minted.

Celebrate an Autumn baby with these fun birth announcements, available at Zazzle:

Decorate your home/table with some of Minted's NEW(!) fabric offerings. I love the autumn-to-winter colors of this Nature Walk fabric by oscar & emma. 

This beautiful Midnight Florals fabric by alethea and ruth would look wonderful as a table runner. Fabrics are available in classic cotton canvas or linen-cotten blend. 

These Valentine printables are simple, easy, and cute!

Materials:
Color Printer
Paper Trimmer or scissors
Stapler
Clear treat bags 3" wide by however long you'd like (I used 3"x4" Wilton bags)
Pretzels of choice (regular-sized pretzels or sticks, fancied up however you'd like)
Plastic food glove

Step 1:
Choose your printable and print it out, and trim/cut along dotted gray lines. 

• Option 1: Let's "knot" ever stop being friends! (use with knot-style pretzels)
  
• Option 2: Let's "stick" together, friend! (use with stick-style pretzels)
  

Step 2: 
Have/help your child write his/her name in the from section

Step 3:
Put on the plastic glove, fill up the treat bags and staple! Mine are for 3-year-olds who get hyper off of air, so I only put in three regular-sized pretzels. I stapled the label down lower, but you could definitely fit many more and staple it higher. 

A few weeks ago, Michael Schwartz of Czar Press in Irvine graciously allowed some Socal Minties to invade his printing studio for a tour and letterpress demo. Usually, Mintie meetups are already awesome, but this was double-the-awesomeness because we got to meet at this amazing place! Let's just say there was a lot of designer drool happening, and not just because of the rose-shaped chocolate pumpkin bread Eric's wife made, or the tasty cheese gougeres Christine brought. I'm sure we all left wishing our next projects would have unlimited budgets for letterpress, foil printing, die cuts and edge painting (yes, Czar Press offers all this AND digital flat printing as well!).

This save-the-date minibook was inspired by vintage book spines and suites the minibook format down to a T. Have fun customizing with your own titles, and enjoy this inspiration board I created for it (don't you just love that boutonniere? they were designed by friend Hannah Koo of Milieu Florals)

A couple weeks ago, a bride who wanted to order the "Striped Sweet Nothings" Wedding Invitation on minted.com contacted me to see if a matching website was available for purchase. After doing some research for the bride, I learned that Minted has a partnership with mywedding.com, and I as so happy to be able to give the bride some happy news! Inspired by the bride's description of her beach/garden nuptials, I created this inspiration board to enter in the Minted Inspiration Board Challenge. If you love creating mood boards too, enter to potentially win some fabulous prizes!

P.S. If you like my inspiration board, please follow the link and click the heart/like icon so I too can potentially win some fabulous prizes! :)

Last summer, HP approached me with a unique opportunity to provide artwork for a new product called "HP Giving Cards", a personalizable gift-card/greeting card combo that you can print from home. The idea really resonated with me personally because we are always picking up last-minute gift cards and greeting cards from the market before heading to a party/wedding, etc. Sometimes you really want to bring something tangible to the event instead of telling them you've sent an e-card. These are perfect!

The site is still in pilot/beta, so some features like a designer landing page or search function are not in place yet, and more merchants will be added in the future. In the meantime, please feel free to check out the designs I do have – I tried to do some legwork for you, and below you will see thumbnails, title, category and page number (unfortunately, the web interface makes linking the below images to a specific page impossible). On the top right of the webpage where the page numbers are, you can enter in a page number and hit "go" to navigate directly to the page where one of my designs lives.

As you can see, there are all types of categories from holiday to housewarming, and one thing I wasn't able to do was put cross-categories in (for example, "Hip Hip Hooray" could easily be either a children's birthday or a generic congratulations or graduation card).

Here's to making life a little bit easier – enjoy!

Before Cyber Monday ends, take advantage of these great deals:

Cyber Monday Only! 15% off + free shipping on holiday cards (CYBER2012), 25% off everything else (CYBER25)

Click here to see my work on minted.com

Up to 80% off at MyPublisher with code CYBERSALE at checkout. Expires 11/27/12.

Cyber Monday at Snapfish
55% off site-wide
Coupon Code: JINGLE
Expires: November 26, 2012

Holiday collections have launched for both Frooted Design and Peng & Paper! Below are some updates, but feel free to bypass and go straight to the "Shop" Menu :)

Frooted Design at Minted
"Warmest Wishes" (above) placed top 40 out of 2,658 entries in this year's Joy to the World Holiday Challenge! Check out this blog post on the Minted, where two of my designs are featured for special awards, one a winner and one a runner-up! Other noteworthy additions to the 2012 Holiday Collection include some New Year's Photo Cards for those of you who are a little slower at getting those cards out.

While you're at the site, feel free to check out the other items for sale that would make great gifts (journals, art prints, etc.). Items that are in the process of being launched for this holiday season include four great journal designs, a personal stationery card set, and a typographic art print (previews below).

This year, I'll also be to self-launch non-customizable items at Minted like stationery and art prints. I'm adding to this section slowly, but the "Rejoice-O-Matic" Non-Photo Card to the right is an example of a retro-inspired Christmas card that features lyrics from "Joy to the World" and a spot to fill in a personal, hand-written message and signatures. Please contact me if you have any custom requests you would like fulfilled in this way (same great Minted quality and service!).

Frooted Design at Snapfish
The collection was updated with holiday as well as some non-holiday stationery goods (birthday, bridal shower, thank you).

If you like a Snapfish design but would like some sort of customization (i.e. # of photos, colors, fonts, etc.), please contact me directly and I can provide some alternative options.

50% Code Sitewide, ends today: NOEL2012


Peng & Paper at MyPublisher (NEW!)
This year, I was very excited to launch a new holiday stationery collection under the name "Peng & Paper" with MyPublisher. There are custom backer options available with each design. Not all my cards have launched, but I thought I'd give you a sneak peek.

Since I'm all about killing two birds with one stone, and I'm always TRYING to finish Christmas shopping before Christmas Eve, a great way to shop is to shop philanthropically and online. We've all heard of and probably own a pair of TOMS by now, but here are a few places that are near and dear to my heart that you can check out for the holidays:

Designers Care – Stamped Cards for a Cause
Beautifully designed stationery for an even better cause: Hurricane Sandy Relief Aid. Thank you cards, Note Cards, Inspirational art prints, and gift tags are available, and all the profits aside from shipping and transaction fees go to the American Red Cross.

If you love baking or cooking with butter, check out the gifts tags I designed for a great finishing touch to homemade holiday gifts or even lunch box notes:

Krochet Kids – "buy a hat, change a life"
I used to work at the Apple Store with Stewart Ramsey, one of the co-founders of Krochet Kids, and I'm not surprised at what an amazing company this is because he was such a likable fellow. This company was started by GUYS who crocheted and wanted to empower people to rise above poverty, so they started by passing on these skills to a group of women ... and now, over 150 people in Uganda and Peru are working, receiving education, and being mentored toward a brighter future. You can buy a hand-crocheted item and then personally thank the woman who crocheted it (the label on the inside shows who made it).

Beloved International – Belong. Build. Believe

It's been a privilege for me to occasionally help out Beloved when they need some graphic design work done. Two of the founders attend my church, and this non-profit Christian organization is currently working to create a self-sustaining home for orphans where the orphans are actually adopted into the home by two loving parents. The Beloved Rehoboth Children's Home in Kenya is currently in need of a kitchen and dining hall for the family, and it's their goal to raise enough money by Christmas. Make a donation on behalf of a friend, or visit their small shop to buy t-shirts or a hand-crafted "beloved" bracelet.