urban bliss design

Twitter Pretty

2009-02-21T20:12:00.000-08:00

We just changed our Twitter background. We love green, but are feeling a bit more earthy brown these days. Ok, we're feeling more chocolate these days (mmm...chocolate...), but nevertheless, wanted to change things up. What do you think?

Don't follow us yet on Twitter? We're under @designmama, and you can also follow Alain @hipod.

Gearing Up for Austin

2009-02-20T08:26:00.000-08:00

Marlynn & Alain will be speaking at SXSW Interactive on March 15th, leading one of the Core Conversations: Your Personal Blog is Dead. With the growing popularity of Twitter, Facebook and other social media, is the personal blog a dying breed? Come join us for this lively debate! Click here to read more.

Personally, both of us couldn't be more excited for this opportunity. SXSW Interactive is part of the larger SXSW triad of festivals: Film, Music, Interactive. The Interactive section is from March 13-17 in Austin, TX and is packed with informative panels, tons of networking opportunities, and of course, the big sponsored parties at night. We'll be going to a few of those too. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our little world of designing for our clients and it's amazing (and necessary!) to step out, meet other folks who are doing the same thing, converse, share, commiserate, brainstorm. Then we always come back so refreshed and energized, ready to take on even more exciting design projects for YOU!

If you're going to SXSW Interactive, let us know! We'd love to meet you in person while we're in Austin.

Press: Calling Cards

2009-01-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the lovelies at Tutus and Turtles for featuring our Mama Calling Cards on their lovely blog! We appreciate it! If you haven't checked out Tutus and Turtles and you've got little ones at home, you simply must go check out the site now. I found myself getting lost for way too long checking out all of the awesome kid and mom products on their site!

Who's Your Mama Valentine's Day Giveaway!

2009-01-08T13:44:00.000-08:00

rban Bliss is giving away one set of 100 of our popular Mama Calling Cards to one lucky Urban Bliss Facebook Fan in honor of Valentine's Day! Husbands, this is a GREAT gift for your amazing wife! Mamas, what better way to send love to the best mama pal you know than a set of hip calling cards she can give out to friends, teachers, doctors, sitters...

Urban Bliss Mama Calling Cards have been featured in Parents magazine, Tot Trends Weekly,Chic Blvd, Portland Picks, Seattle Picks, Mommies with Style, Clever Parents, Outblush, Cool Mom Picks and much more! See the collection online here: http://www.urbanblissdesign.com/collections/mama-calling-cards

Enter before January 16th so we can get one deserving mom some cool calling cards in time for Valentine's Day!

Here's how to enter:
*post a short note to our Facebook page in reply to the Who's Your Mama topic nominating a mom you know to receive our Mama Calling Cards (self-nominations are not only welcome, they are encouraged!)
* be sure to state a little more about the mom you are nominating. What makes her unique? Why is she so deserving? Why would she enjoy receiving Urban Bliss Mama Calling Cards?

Giveaway Rules:
*You must be signed up as a Facebook Fan of Urban Bliss to be eligible to win (note: the person you are nominating to receive the cards does NOT need to be a fan, unless you are, of course, nominating yourself)
*You must post your entry as a reply to this topic no later than midnight, EST, Friday January 16, 2009.
*The winner must respond to Urban Bliss via email with the recipient's information and card design no later than 24 hours after being contacted by Urban Bliss.
*This giveaway applies only to existing Mama Calling Card designs shown on our website (http://www.urbanblissdesign.com/collections/mama-calling-cards) and does not apply to custom designs
*You may enter as many times as you wish, as long as you nominate a different person each time

Urban Bliss on Facebook!

2008-12-15T13:37:00.000-08:00

Please join Urban Bliss on Facebook!

We'll be having special contests and promotions just for our Facebook fans, so be sure to sign up as a fan in order to get the updates! We'll be having one special Valentine's Day promotion so stay tuned!

PR Client: Color Me House

2008-11-20T12:42:00.000-08:00

Urban Bliss was asked to help out with blog and social media outreach for Color Me House, a Portland, Oregon-based and family-owned business that creates fun, cool recyclable cardboard play houses. These products are awesome. We LOVE them! With two kids, and another business that focuses on supporting mom-owned businesses, we found the Color Me House to be a huge hit with kids who come to the Urban Bliss Studio for meetings, and we have the Color Me Rocket at home. What's great about both products is that they fold up easily, so we actually keep the Color Me Rocket folded up and stored behind our couch at home and then our kids get the fun of putting it back together to play with for their playdates. The blank walls invite kids to tap into their huge imaginations and go wild. They are sturdy, so believe me when I say that after having dozens upon dozens of kids color, draw on, paint, run in and out of, use as indoor forts, we were totally impressed that the products are still standing strong! Check them out and order them online at www.ColorMeHouse.com.

PR Client: Metro Parent's 2nd Annual FREE Education & Enrichment Fair

2008-11-12T13:30:00.000-08:00

Metro Parent's 2nd Annual FREE Education & Enrichment Fair
If you’re a parent, you know that navigating the halls of educational and enrichment programs for your child can be a daunting task in today’s world. There are more options than ever before, making it difficult and time-consuming to choose the right one for your children. Waldorf or Montessori? Language immersion or after-school language program? Music and movement or classical piano?

Metro Parent is helping parents make the research process easier by hosting its second annual Education & Enrichment Fair, on Wednesday, Nov. 19 from 3 to 7:30pm at the World Forestry Center's Miller and Cheatham Halls (4033 SW Canyon Road). Parents of children ages newborn through high school age will benefit from attending the fair. They can visit with approximately 40 local private and public schools, as well as businesses offering enrichment opportunities, such as music, language, athletics, tutoring and other programs. Attendees are also eligible to win a $500 “scholarship” to one of the exhibitors or a basket of toys, books and games.

The event is FREE to the public.

Felt Obsession

2008-10-22T08:05:00.000-07:00

I have a bit of an obsession with felt. I love its versatility, especially its ability to completely transform apparel. I've been playing around with adding felt appliques to kids clothing, but right now I'm just enjoying combining my felt obsession with my Etsy obsession. My latest favorite? Friendly Banter, a fun Etsy shop based in Houston.

I especially love this grey flower brooch and the little birds because they are similar to some new designs I'm working on for Urban Bliss.

2008 Holiday Cards are here!

2008-10-16T13:44:00.000-07:00

Check out the 2008 holiday cards on the Urban Bliss site! Now is the time to place your order! We'll be taking holiday orders through December 6th.

Above are just a few of the new designs we're excited to offer! All cards are 5 x 7, glossy cover, matte blank inside, with white envelopes. You can choose from custom photo holiday cards, non-photo custom holiday cards, and boxed sets of standard holiday cards. We also have matching round address labels! More label designs and card designs to be added over the next two weeks!

New Decor Bliss & Blogging for THE Ms. Martha

2008-09-11T11:30:00.000-07:00

The blog has been quiet for yet another month. Sssh. Do you hear that? That's the sound of Urban Bliss hard at work, but sadly neglecting the blog (again).

What have we been up to? We've been super busy lately getting our 4 yo prepped for back-to-school time, getting a new nanny for our youngest, moving into the new office, getting books from publishers and creating a calendar for the next few months for Mama Lit, starting groundwork for a PR launch for a FABULOUS new mama-made product (can't wait to share with everyone! stay tuned!) and prepping for the Makings of a Mamapreneur Conference (which is Sept 23 & 24!).

I've also had a lot of amazing media and writing opportunities lately, including the opportunity to guest blog for Martha Stewart Everyday Food blog as part of their Everyday Moms guest blog series. Can I just tell you how wonderful the ladies at Everyday Food are? I'd have them all over for dinner and cocktails, except that would be too much pressure, trying to entertain those who work for THE Ms. Martha, and my head would probably explode. It almost did when the incredibly sweet and talented Deb Puchalla asked me to guest blog. Please check it out and leave some comment love on my post if you wish! And be sure to add the Dinner Tonight blog to your feed reader. If you're a busy mama(preneur) like I am, you'll find it to be welcome sanity to what is likely your insane inbox. What an honor that experience has been, to be included among the ranks of some incredible mom bloggers .

During this past hectic month, I've also been working on some new designs for the Urban Bliss Online Boutique. Check out some of the new Decor Bliss designs I just added. Up next: the 2008 Holiday Bliss collection! Stay tuned!

Win Mama Calling Cards!

2008-08-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Peekaboo Picks for including Urban Bliss in their fabulous Summer of Swag giveaways! This week, you can enter to win 100 of our Mama Calling Cards! Click here and leave a comment on their blog stating which design you like the best, and you could win 100 FREE custom calling cards!

We've got to admit: we've been fans of Peekaboo Picks magazine for a while now. They always manage to choose the coolest baby/toddler/kid items. Products that we covet for our own little family and for our friends. If you haven't yet subscribed to Peekaboo Picks, do so today! They're also run by a mom and dad team :-) Go family-owned businesses!

Design on the Move

2008-08-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long lag in blog land. It's been quite the crazy busy ride this summer, and we've been especially busy the last two weeks turning this:

Into this (meeting area):

And this (kids play space):

That's right, Urban Bliss has a NEW studio space in NW Portland!

Our new digs:
1500 NW 18th Avenue, Suite 115
Portland, Oregon 97209
(corner of NW 17th & Quimby)
New phone: 503.219.9467

We share space with Mamapreneurs, Inc., a resource, support & networking organization for mom business owners. We just relaunched the new Mamapreneurs, Inc. website to allow for global membership as the organization expands beyond the great NW. Check it out, and join a great group of mamapreneurs!

So in addition to the usual workload, we've been busy schlepping furniture, putting together furniture, painting, painting, more painting, moving files and inventory, shopping, shopping, shopping (which normally we LOVE, but after a while, it really does become work!), and trying to set up the office while juggling the two little kiddos, who have had their own issues adjusting to mommy starting to work outside of the home office.

There's still more work to be done, but for now, we're getting used to calling the new space our second home. We love it! If you live in or are visiting the Portland area, give us a call and stop by. We'd love to share the new studio with you!

Urban Design Inspirations 6.27.08

2008-06-27T08:50:00.001-07:00

We've branded our entire little office with Urban Bliss greens + blues, and the colors have spilled over into our living quarters. I picked up these cool glasses at -- are you ready for this? -- the Dollar Store. The best part? Turns out they weren't $1 each, but $.50 each! A steal! They're just the right size, and I love the circles.

They remind me of our Jasmine calling cards, personal stationery and birth announcements

.

I ended up buying eight glasses. Now we have enough glasses for most brunches we host. Cheers!

Real Estate Promos

2008-06-19T15:42:00.001-07:00

Some say there's a housing slump, have you heard? But people are still moving, buying and selling homes. Those people need good brokers. Like Francesca Novak. She's sharp and she's able to help home sellers and buyers whether it's your first home or your fifth. We did some ads and a promo card for Francesca. She's great to work with, so give her a call if you are in the Portland metro area and are in need of a good real estate broker!

Promo card:

Black & White print ad:

New Look for SourcePDX

2008-05-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

Working with Libby Graf of SourcePDX is just like hanging out with an old friend. It's a good thing too, since you want to feel comfortable with a person who gives massages for a living! Libby is a licensed massage therapist and esthetician with SourcePDX, located at 1306 NW Hoyt Suite 407 in the Pearl District of Portland, OR.

Libby contacted us in search of a new look for her growing business. She wanted something that reflected the softness and calm that she brings to her clients but also modern and not too feminine (since men get massages too, after all!).

Above the logo design we came up with for Libby.

Then we took all three main soft blues, greens and sable browns and created three different business cards for her to use:

Urban Design Inspirations We Love #2

2008-05-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't love and get all inspired by the adorable designs on Swiss-based SIGG bottles? Here are a couple of our own kiddos' SIGGs.

Mother's Day Special: 15% off!

2008-04-15T13:14:00.001-07:00

Click here to see our NEW MAMA CALLING CARD designs! Just in time for Mother's Day! Order today and SAVE 15% off!

Urban Design Inspirations We Love, #1

2008-04-14T08:23:00.001-07:00

We are inspired by design of all kinds, every day. In a new feature, we'll be sharing with our readers our own personal design inspirations. There are so many incredibly fabulous modern urban designs out there. So many to feature, so little time!

Our first: this super cool kids' clothing tree from P'kolino. We love the color and shape, and being ultimate tree huggers (we do live in Portland, OR after all), we love that it's a modern, functional take on something organic. It could coordinate easily, we think, in almost any kids' decor. It certainly coordinates well with both of our kids' rooms!

Language of Parenting

2008-04-09T05:33:00.000-07:00

We have been fortunate to work with Janet Allison the past few months, both for PR and for design work. Janet moved to Portland last September and has been doing an amazing job building her business, The Language of Parenting, from the moment she arrived. She's warm, engaging, fun and is truly a joy to work with.

Check out her new website: www.languageofparenting.com. We finished it up recently, and will be adding more pages for her in the future as her business grows. Janet wanted something warm and inviting, soothing yet invigorating and inspirational, simple yet lovely. When she provided us with artwork from her daughter's Waldorf lesson books, we knew those lovely pieces would be the basis of the design. Each page takes a cue from the artwork on that page, from the top header bar to the strip of artwork beneath it to the text colors. We wanted to be able to convey Janet's great vivid and welcoming spirit through the site design.

If you are in Portland and you are a parent, consider taking one of her classes. She did a presentation for the February meeting of Portland Mamas Inc. and I walked away with some great new tips on communicating with my son!

New Retro Family Canvas Art

2008-03-30T16:32:00.000-07:00

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. Don't even think about copying this product! :)

We take a million family photos. Seriously, we take at least a hundred each month. While playing around with some photos for a personal art project, I came up with a technique that I really like. So guess what? It's a new product for Urban Bliss!

Check out our new Retro Family Canvas Art in our Home Decor section. You send us your favorite family photo(s) and we'll turn them into fabulously fun works of art! Perfect for your kids rooms, living rooms, home office - any room in the house. Images are printed onto 8" x 10" stretched canvas and arrive ready to hang.
$125 each.

Crafty tees

2008-03-18T00:02:00.001-07:00

With all of the identity work we've been doing lately, I've been feeling the itch to get back to my crafty, handmade roots. Thankfully, we have two kids that are always easy inspiration and opportunity for craftiness!

I've been a tad obsessed about making our daughter's first birthday shirt. I have no idea why, but the pull - nay, the need - to make her a super cute original design was boiling over in me. I lavished my brief time in a gorgeous little fabric boutique in NE Portland, and let my daughter pick out the fabric (i.e. choosing the fabric she grabbed and placed in her mouth; luckily she has great taste!). Here are the final results:

Super girly, right? Well, that's our daughter. More girly at almost age on than we could have ever imagined.

While this shirt was being completed, I dashed up two more designs:

These were so much fun to design! As you can see, I've carried over our lollipop tree design from our new logo to the tees. We'll be selling limited edition tees on our Etsy site in the future. If you are interested in buying one from us sooner, please email me for more info.

New logo unveiled!

2008-03-17T13:17:00.000-07:00

Piece by piece we are working on unleashing the new Urban Bliss! Check out our new logo at the top of the blog! Like it? We've been using these little lollipop trees on various designs for years so we worked it into our logo. Three trees for the three branches of Urban Bliss: stationery, graphic design and PR. We kept the colors the same for branding purposes.

More changes will be made to the Urban Bliss website soon. We anticipate the Event Bliss site will cease to exist and be redirected to the new UB site in about a month. Gotta work out some bugs and add a lot more products first!

New Name, New Website!

2008-03-06T22:16:00.000-08:00

We're getting close to launching not only our new website, but also our new name and new look! Event Bliss will be Urban Bliss Design. Our new site will be more in tune with our three main offerings: stationery, graphic & web design and PR, and also allow our business to grow organically. We're so excited! We'll be doing a soft launch next week, and perhaps a bigger whoop-dee-doo sometime around the end of the month.

Check us out in a couple of days! http://www.urbanblissdesign.com

Identity Design: JJ's Toy Shop

2008-02-01T13:52:00.000-08:00

Oh how fun it is to work with a toy company! We got to play with shapes and colors and fun fonts. Julie and Jason Barnes own JJ's Toy Shop and we just finished up their new business cards.

Business card front with rounded corners:
Business card back with rounded corners:

Copyright 2008 Event Bliss All Rights Reserved

Identity Design: Novak Piano

2008-01-27T09:06:00.000-08:00

We just adore working with fun, creative clients who are passionate about their own businesses, like Joy Novak of Novak Piano. Joy came to us looking for a whole new identity: new logo, new business cards, new letterhead, a promo card, and a brand spankin' new website at www.novakpiano.com. The result? A fresh new look that reflects her elegant, modern style and appeals to her target market.

New logo:New business card front:

New business card back:
New letterhead:

New website:

Identity Design: KPI Direct

2008-01-24T13:57:00.000-08:00

Whether you work in Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine, we can create an identity package for your growing business. When Portland, Maine-based KPI Direct President Scott Badger saw the business cards we designed for Radiance Communications (based in Portland, Oregon), he hired us to redesign his company logo, business cards and letterhead. The two businesses work together and have similar audiences, so the colors are similar, but KPI is more data driven, so we stuck with black and white for text and clean lines. Scott liked the main icon of his old logo, so we repositioned the icon and used a more modern font with a different layout.

Business card front with rounded corners:

Business card back with rounded corners:
Letterhead:

Identity Design: Radiance Communications

2008-01-20T13:19:00.000-08:00

We just love working with Radiance Communications, a new marketing firm in Portland, OR. Sunshine, the owner, is great to work with and always has a smile on her face. We launched her site a couple of months ago -- check it out at www.radiancecom.com. We also designed her logo and business cards.

Web design + development:

Business Card Front with rounded corners:

Business card back with rounded corners:

The Oregonian

2008-01-12T14:08:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Laura Gunderson with The Oregonian for doing a write up on me and Event Bliss (plus my other biz, Portland Mamas Inc.) on January 2, 2008. I'm featured in the Business Section's column, Coffee Break: a chat with an interesting, influential or innovative voice in Oregon Business. Hmm...I suppose this means I should now try to be interesting, influential or innovative...!

Click here to see the article.

tea towels from tikoli

2008-01-10T14:56:00.000-08:00

i am in love with these tea towels from tikoli. i've been a little obsessed lately about finding some tea towels with cool designs on them that don't cost a fortune and go with our kitchen & dining area. i was getting frustrated with what i was finding out there and was just about to go on trying to figure out how to design some event bliss tea towels because everything i saw was just homely and boring or cost way too much for tea towels. then i found these. these are perfect and are just $8.50 each! check them out at www.tikoli.com.

Portland Bride & Groom Magazine

2007-12-10T11:14:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the lovely folks at Portland Bride & Groom magazine for including our Elegant Simplicity wedding invitations in their current issue! This is one of several styles we will be adding to our onlilne wedding boutique in 2008, so we'll be making it even easier for our super busy wedding clients who may not have time for the full custom invitation experience but still want high style and custom options.

Ad Design: Peggy Barrington, Real Estate Broker

2007-12-02T15:47:00.000-08:00

Peggy is a seasoned painist who is venturing into the world of real estate. She came to us seeking ad design to introduce her to the world. We not only designed the color and black and white ads for Peggy below, we also did all of the copywriting.

Full color ad:
Black & White ad:

Identity Design: CityMama.com is reborn

2007-11-29T21:37:00.000-08:00

If you're a mama and/or a total foodie, than you have to check out www.citymama.com. Stefania is a former Portlander who returned (sniff sniff) to Cali with her adorable family, and I regret that she and I never had the chance to meet in person while she lived her. Her blogs are extremely popular, and I attribute that to her ability to be candid, witty and easy to relate to in her posts.

Alain and I had the pleasure of working with her to redesign her blog, or rather, blogs -- and combine the two into one. She was kind enough to include us in a recent post, and I must set the record straight: she is not, as she described herself, "fickle, indecisive, emotional, and finicky." On the contrary, she was a joy to work with! Alain did the total web work while I worked as the project manager, because sometimes having a very full production schedule on all fronts means we have to divide and conquer web projects (although I think secretly Alain is glad to have had the design for this project all to himself!).

Thanks for choosing us to do your website redesign/blog merge, Stefania! We hope it works well for you!
-Marlynn

Matchpoint & MyMomShops

2007-11-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Lisa and Laura at Matchpoint and also to Joanna at MyMomShops for writing us up! Click here to read the article on Matchpoint's latest newsletter. If you are a professional parent, especially one who either owns a business or works as an independent contractor in Portland, OR, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles or Atlanta, you should consider signing up for Matchpoint!

And click here to read the nice write up on MyMomShops. Glad you liked the cards you ordered, Joanna! The Amy design style is still the most popular Mama Calling Card (tm) style that is ordered.

Custom Handcrafted Announcements for Baby Nola

2007-11-28T22:47:00.001-08:00

When Event Bliss launched in Sept of 2005, we started out doing all handcrafted custom designs. All of our designs are still custom, but not all are handcrafted. So when we get a chance to get back to our roots, it's heaven.

Before repeat customer Julie of Seattle, WA gave birth to baby girl #2 at the end of October, she asked me to work with her again to create birth announcements for baby Nola. Back in early 2006, I created birth announcements for Julie's first baby girl, and I can't tell you how truly honored I was to work with her once again and to be entrusted with creating something so valuable as her second daughter's announcements.

For baby Nola, we created 100 pink and brown Tiny Feet handcrafted custom announcements. These are one of my favorite announcements. They're not announcements you can make overnight, even if there was a team of designers instead of just lil' ol' me, but they are a joy to make and the end product always makes me smile.

A lot of people may wonder why custom handcrafted work costs more, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that with handcrafted work, we're not just designing on the computer and printing. There are many more steps, many different elements to incorporate, and a lot more assembly. For these birth announcements, every single element is done by hand.

Here are all of the steps needed to make these announcements:

Layout of the text
Printing of the interior text cards
Cutting of interior text cards
Cutting of exterior brown cardstock
Scoring of exterior brown cardstock
Adhering the interior text cardstock to the exterior cardstock
Cutting of the white cardstock for the tiny feet base layer
Cutting of the pink cardstock for the tiny feet top layer
Die-cutting each of the pink cardstock top layers
Adhering the pink cardstock onto the white cardstock
Adhering the white cardstock onto the brown main shell cardstock
Cutting ribbon to size for each announcement
Transforming each piece of ribbon into a sticker
Adhering ribbon onto outer brown cardstock
Packaging carefully
Shipping with fingers crossed

That's the process in a nutshell, and most other custom handcrafted design that I do is very similar. Everything done by hand, with lots of love :).

Thank you so much Julie for giving Event Bliss the honor of creating baby Nola's birth announcements. It has been such a pleasure, and I hope you and your family enjoy them! Best wishes to you all!
-Marlynn

New Decor Bliss collection!

2007-11-20T11:54:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for that one-of-a-kind gift that shines at the next baby shower or holiday party, check out our new line of Decor Bliss canvas art pieces!

Each image can be personalized with a name, or any word(s) you like. The artwork is gallery wrapped so that the image stretches over the sides of the canvas, and it arrives ready to hang in a nursery, kids' room, office, living room - you name it! Here are some designs. We'll be adding more in 2008!

logos for cool companies

2007-10-14T09:31:00.000-07:00

we are very lucky to be doing a lot of identity design work right now. we're booked up with identity design work through next February right now, and we just love all of our great clients.

two awesome clients include Radiance Communications and Novak Piano. We're creating the logo, business cards and website for Radiance Communications, and the logo, business cards, letterhead, promo cards and website redesign for Novak Piano.

Radiance was looking for something warm and creative that conveyed experience and professionalism. We created this logo for them:

Novak Piano wanted something bold, fun and creative with a touch of sophistication. We created this logo for her:

We're working on the rest of their identity design packages now, and will reveal their websites once they are live.

Holiday Designs are coming!

2007-09-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

Tis the season! It's hard to believe the holidays are just around the corner. Where did this year go?!

Holiday designs are coming soon. Here's a sneak peek of one of the 2007 holiday designs. If you would like to order this 5" x 7" flat holiday card before it is available online, please email us.

Our new birth announcement lines are also coming soon online. We're just so busy right now designing other people's websites and creating fun personal stationery for others that we have little time to update our own website these days!

New lines

2007-08-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who stopped by and said hello to us in the Event Bliss booth at The Mom Shop on August 18th! It was a lot of fun and we were so excited to meet all of the nice folks that stopped by. If you are not yet on our mailing list, please sign up by clicking on this link. We'll be sending out a newsletter in the next couple of weeks with a special promo code that will save you 15% off your next online purchase!

Speaking of, we're starting to work on a web site redesign and will be adding the new birth announcement lines, canvas art lines and stationery lines within the next couple of months. Stay tuned!

mini inspirations

2007-07-21T13:14:00.001-07:00

i am in love with the mini coopers. love them. obsession is perhaps the word my husband would use. with two kids, perhaps this little dream of a zip around car is a ridiculous one, but i just think they look so cool. they're so cute! just like little jelly belly beans zipping around all over town with smiling people behind the wheel.

since i can't have my own mini right now i designed a birthday card for kids based on this little gem.

baby steps

2007-07-17T10:03:00.001-07:00

we're busy. busy busy busy. i'm really excited about the new baby bliss collection and new petite bebe collection we're designing and launching in august, as well as the wedding bliss collection we're designing and launching in late fall. we're totally redesigning our website as well to incorporate our public relations services, and hope to have the new site launched by the time we hit The Mom Shop on august 18th in beautiful portland, oregon.

here's a sneak peak at some new designs:

© copyright event bliss

© copyright event bliss

Scent-a-licious

2007-07-16T23:15:00.000-07:00

i purposefully wrote that silly title just for one of my clients, because i think she'd find it amusing. julie bennett owns bistro candles, a fellow mom-owned company based in beaverton, oregon. i'm doing the pr launch of her new nouveau bistro line this month. if you don't have one of her candles in your home, stop reading this now and go to her website for store locations to find the nearest retailer and then book it over there to grab one of the heavenly creations before they sell out. no, really. go. go now!

(pause. tapping my toes to the beat of coldplay, which is a slow beat so there's not too much tapping. i'd be whistling along if my daughter weren't sleeping right next to me, sweet baby).

ok. assuming you have run to your nearest store and purchased your bistro candles, just try to not fall in love with them once you've burned them in your home. you can't do it - i know you're hooked already. they are magical, lovely, and burn beautifully. i'm a candle nut, and these are truly the best in the world. i've been to paris. i sniffed their candles. bistro candles take you there -and to other heavenly locales - for under $30.

their new line, nouveau bistro, speaks to me. the packaging design is way cool. love the chocolate brown base (of course i do, have you seen all of the things i design?), and the bold colors that pop on the wrap arounds. they've all got little retro designs on the boxes that are embossed.

if you weren't able to find a store near you that carries them, then head to your favorite chic shop and demand that they carry bistro candles nouveau bistro line. what discerning shop owner wouldn't?

i'm smelling nectarine basil right now. yum.

entrance

2007-07-15T00:10:00.001-07:00

it is past midnight on a saturday, and here i am working (surprise!) and starting yet another blog. this will be my fifth or sixth one. but this one is different. this is the event bliss blog, and i'm super excited about everything we plan on posting here.

yes, this blog is to show you our latest designs and projects, invite you to special sales and events, yada yada. but really, it's also to share with you our own inspirations. this year, inspiration is coming at us like wildfire from all directions. pillows, dresses, dog collars, plants, our kids random ramblings and baby babble - you name it, we're inspired by it! we're loving what the design world has been up to lately, and we are so psyched just to be an itsy bitsy part of it. such an insane amount of inspiration coming in means we've got a lot of projects and new products (hopefully) coming out!

so as event bliss makes its entrance into the blogging world, i welcome you to come on in, take your shoes off, and stay a while. here's what our rug would look like in our virtual blog house. if anthropologie would like to send this and other rugs to our real office, we wouldn't object :)