Sneak Peek: Pink and Blue Airplane Party

My daughter is OBSESSED with airplanes. So much so that we are going to do our best to give her an airplane party for her upcoming second birthday. In order to make it a little more girly, I've added some fluffy clouds and pink into the mix. Stay tuned for more as we plan and create for this upcoming event.

Need kids party invitations? We can work with you to design invitations that encompass all your want your party to be!

Essence of the Holidays

The Holidays are approaching quickly, contact us today for your custom holiday cards, party invitations, baby announcements, or thank you notes!

Bloom recently collaborated with Essence Photography from Redding, California on a new endeavor. We created a custom template set for holiday cards. These templates will be used by Essence Photography to offer beautiful custom photo holiday cards to her clients. Each template can be color, texture and photo customized. If you don't live in Northern California and Essence Photography isn't available to you, we hope to adjust these designs for sale on Etsy soon! Let your family photographer know that you're interested in these designs and have them contact us. Each card is designed according to Miller's Lab Professional Imaging specs. Millers Lab is only available to professional Photography businesses, but each template can be adjusted for your personal card orders as well.

Want one of these designs adjusted for you this holiday season? Just Ask! We will do what we can to help you out!

Mural Update

Several years ago I painted an airplane mural for our friends/neighbors. They asked if I could update it. Their boys have moved in to the same room together, so we changed the name on the banner to include both boys names.

Picture Circus UPDATE

The Georgetown Library with the help of Nick Ramos, of Graphisimo design — who coordinated the event, put on the first ever Picture Circus festival to celebrate Día de los Niños/Dia los Libros. The festival focused on illustrators of children’s books. It was a great event, with a great turn out. I was lucky enough to participate, with my table for Santa’s North Pole After Christmas Elves. I didn’t sell as much as I had hoped, but it was great seeing all the families enjoying the event, and meeting other local illustrators. Many people also took the book information with them, rather than buying it right then and there.
I hope to have the opportunity to participate again next year!





My daughter and husband were able to come to the festival for a bit and visit. Claire even had her first “face painting” experience, a butterfly on her arm!

Prints are still available, please contact me for more info. Books can be purchased here or on Amazon.

Picture Circus

This weekend is Picture Circus in Georgetown. I've been preparing this week for the festival put on by the Georgetown library, in honor of El Dia de los Ninos. I'll be there 10am - 4pm, selling and signing books, selling prints and talking about the illustration process. For more info on the festival, go here.

1st Birthday

It's incredible how time flies! My daughter turned one a few weeks ago, and we of course threw her a birthday party. A party of all parties. I had been scoping out ideas for months. We decided on a duck themed

party since that was her first word and she was mildly obsessed with ducks for months. With that theme I began to think of color schemes and after finding an image on another blog using olive green, persimmon, orange and yellow, I decided to use that scheme but change out the olive green for a bright pink. I ran with it!

I created invitations, favor tags, cake topper circles with a special one for hers, a banner, and a first birthday hat. For activities we had decorate your own ducks (found at orientaltrading.com), and a duck matching game floating her little baby pool (also found at orientaltrading.com). For favors I found little window boxes at the container store and filled them with a birthday rubber duck (orientaltrading.com), a bag of snack bunnies in varying flavors, and duck beak noise makers (hobby lobby).

The cake my husband and I made the night before. He had found a rainbow layered cake on tastespotting.com a while back and decided thats what he wanted to do for her party. It was a fun project, especially for an art major. We used 5 colors of professional bakers gel dye (available at craft stores or baking stores) and mixed them indifferent concentrations to get the colors. Of course we only had 6 baking pans so it took 3 batches in the oven, refrigerating the others in the meantime. The next day I iced it with store bought vanilla icing and placed it on a cake board that I wrapped with decorative paper matching the banner and birthday hat, then covered the whole thing in saran wrap.

Take a look, and let me know what you think. All of these pieces are available for your next kids party!

Cindy Lou Who

My daughter made such a cute Cindy Lou Who for Halloween that we couldn't help but use a picture of her for our Holiday Cards this year. I even found a Dr.Seuss font and made our wording rhyme. We did just a flat card and included our personal blog site (blurred out for our privacy). Including a personal blog is a great way to let people see what you've done through the past year.

Family Holiday Cards

My mother in law sent me a picture this year that she wanted to incorporate into her holiday card. None of us in the photo liked how we looked, but alas it was the only picture of all of us taken together this year. So I came up with a more flattering solution. Having done an illustrated card for a client this season, I took the same concept for the photo that she wanted to include. Im pretty happy with the result. The whole family has commented on them and seems to really like the end product. What do you think?

The North Pole A.C.E.s are FLYING!

NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!
Remember the sneak peek post about what I had been working on back in July... I can now officially share with you, that the North Pole A.C.E.s are flying!

Santa's North Pole After Christmas Elves written by Diane Longo and Ron Marullo and Illustrated by none other than... ME! is now available for sale through CreateSpace.com, and is coming soon to Amazon and other retailers. This is a really fun book -- a year and a half in the making.

"The After Christmas Elves (ACEs) have begun working on next year's Christmas List and fly their planes to show a young boy named Donnie the importance of being good" (from the CreateSpace summary).

Ron and Diane put their faith in me to illustrate this project so close to their hearts. Its been so fun and gratifying to work on this project with them. Take a look and buy a copy for a kid you know this Christmas! Or buy one for yourself, its only $9.99!

All image rights are the property of North Pole ACES, LLC. Not to be printed or reproduced. North Pole ACES, LLC.©2010

Children's Book Sneak Peek.

I am really excited to show this tiny little preview of a project Ive been busily working on the past few months. I've been working with a couple of local Austin area authors to illustrate this fantastic christmas story. We hope to have it available for purchase this holiday season. For now, this is all I can share with you. More to come...


All image rights are the property of North Pole ACES, LLC. Not to be printed or reproduced. North Pole ACES, LLC.©2010

Safari Baby Shower

This invitation was a request by a client for a baby shower invite that wasnt too masculine but with a green and brown safari theme. I really had fun creating the baby safari animals. I based them off of the owl that I had created previously for a baby announcement. I think these turned out great! Printed on Premium Matte 5"x7" and A7 solar white envelopes.



Info blurred out at clients request.

Owl Baby Announcements

A client asked for baby announcements with a retro feel owl, using brown and green. I created the vector owl and kept the design simple. They were printed on epson white matte and we used white envelopes. I think they turned out pretty cute. Feedback welcome!





















































I printed another sample using fictitious names to protect the client privacy but so the details can be seen in the images.

Bloom Favorite- Birthday Parties

(Click on image to enlarge)

When I was searching around for some Turtle Party Inspiration, I came across so many creative and exciting birthday party themes. It made me want to plan Claire's 1st birthday today! However, I must restrain myself, being as we still have 9 months until that party rolls around. But how cute are these ideas! The color palettes are all so vibrant, the details are fabulous, and the kids -- absolutely adorable. Cupcakes are in right now with cupcake toppers galore. Ribbons, streamers, favors. Its amazing what talented and creative people can do when throwing such beautiful parties for their kids. Think of all the print related items you we could create together for your child's next party!

Photo and Creative credits due:
1. Cupcake Party- TheTomKatStudio.com
2. Fairy Party-The TomKatStudio.com
3. Pinwheel Party- hostessblog.com
4. Wild Rumpus- hostessblog.com
5. Curious George Inspired- hostessblog.com
6. Lillipop Birthday- TheTomKatStudio.com
7. AirplaneParty- Amyatlas.com
8. Boys Pinwheel Party- mylifemyloves..blogspot.com

Grady's 1st Birthday!

Our neighbors and friends asked me to create a Turtle themed 1st Birthday Party Invitation for them. Their son Grady has often been seen wearing a shirt that has a graphic turtle on it that says Speedy. I used this turtle for inspiration, as well as a simple, bright, layout and color scheme.



Some information blurred at the clients request.

Shark Party!

This client wanted a short run of custom invitations for her son's first birthday party. Her husband and daughter had already decided that not only was it going to be an under the sea theme but a Shark Party! She wanted a friendly looking shark and the blue/green color scheme, other than that she didn't have any specific style or design guidelines. Heres the final product we came up with, what do you think?
Some info blurred on images for client privacy.