This post is sponsored by Tai Pan Trading, where you can find outrageously awesome decor and fashion for a fabulous price.
First off, I want to give a huge shout out to Tai Pan for making our party possible. We couldn't have made quite the visual impact without their generosity or fabulous decor.
Alt Summit put a call for party submissions several months ago (August? September?). I quickly emailed Erin (I've been wanting to collaborate with her for some time), and we put our minds to work. Alt went with Erin's genius plan for a Secret Garden themed soiree.
Why the genius? Because it totally played into the styling and decor that already exists at the Grand America (our venue)!
We took on two more extraordinary creative partners, Alix and Brittany, and planned the heck out of it. I can't begin to tell you how much hard work went into every little detail. Nevermind. I guess I can because you're here, reading this.
Our hurdles:
- $1000 decor/photography budget
- a refrigerator box and a dishwasher box and a bundle of 10' pipes that needed to be transported 700+ miles
- arranging seating in a 500 sq. ft. room, half filled with a meat carving station
- hanging things without touching the walls
- finding time in our busy schedules to make everything happen
Knowing that the florals were taken care of (minus shipping them 700+ miles), it allowed us to focus on the decor. Unfortunately, if we wanted any kind of big statement (and we did) $1000 wouldn't get us a whole lot.
Tai Pan let us borrow the most magnificent over-sized urns, topiaries, ceramic gnomes, 4' lions and more! Every little piece was the right kind of whimsical detail to make the party great.
We used two 5' planters on either side of the interior of the door to hold the 8-10 tall florals. With our team and the help of serious floral foam, we got them to create a cozy archway that made such a fabulous impact on entry of the room. Sort of an Alice-in-Wonderland moment.
I didn't get nearly as many photos as I would have liked, but here's a little snippit of some of the signage I made and the hankie wall. We pinned the hankies onto several moss plaques. It made a fun statement, but when the hankies were gone it still looked nice.
Flanking either side of the exterior doors were lions. They were at least 3 feet tall. Alix made giant floral crowns for them. I loved the juxtaposition of those two elements.
Shhh!! It's a secret! It was so wonderful to work with such talented ladies. From left: Erin, Brittany, Alix, Me
Alix made the photo backdrop from shredding lace and dyed thrift store bed sheets. Inspired by this pin (anyone know the original resource?), but a TON fuller. It made a fabulous impact in the room.
We kept the tables pretty simple with moss runners, river rocks, ceramic gnomes and inspirational quotes. Trying to find quotes that would fit the Secret garden theme was TOUGH! I watched the movie with Penelope about a month or so ago. I forgot how sad it was. Penelope even started crying! She was so sad to see the little girl's mom ignoring her. It might have hit a little too close to home for Penelope (Chris has been picking up a lot of slack lately with all this Alt craziness).
View all photobooth pics here.
Planning a party of this scale couldn't have been done without such great support of these fabulous ladies (and a husband or two). Working with these inspiring women was so much fun (a little too much fun at times, even).
Another special thanks to all of the people and brands that helped make our vision happen: Tai Pan Trading for decor and jewelry, Lizy Bowden for florals, Spoonflower for the hankies and Tiffany for the C-stands for the backdrops.
Now I'm ready for a nap.
As part of the preparations and plans, I collaborated with Brittany from 
The lettering was fun to do, but I think the florals are the show stopper. We printed these babies on cotton voile. They're crisp and vibrant in person.
I'm thinking I'm going to frame one (or both!) design on the wall, or back it with a thicker cotton and make a pillow case.
Did you miss out on getting one? Head over to 
Since that wasn't an option, plan b was set in motion. I wanted to create some artwork to remind attendees at Alt that they're amazing. Last year's Alt Summit was inspiring, but I still left the conference with this sense of serious doubt and overwhelm.
I don't want others to leave with that same sense of anxiety, so I made a little reminder that they're awesomesauce.
I designed new cards to include 
Then I used the leftover letterpress paper to letter out "You are awesomesauce". Calligraphy on letterpress paper was not fun. The weave and texture of the paper made the going really slow. I found that the Esterbrook 356 and 357 with iron gall ink worked best (minimal feathering) on this paper. I had origionally started with Dr. Martin's gold ink, but it was a little unruly and took about 3x longer than with the iron gall ink. I love this old world iron gall ink as it's slightly transparent, but moody. It destroyed both of my prized vintage nibs, though.
Here is the cost breakdown of each business card:
The workshop is 3 hours, it includes one-on-one instruction, dinner and a kit with all the supplies you need to get started. The kit includes:
I struggled to figure out if I should go with a black decal or go blingy with a shimmery metallic. The metallic won out.
I'm loving the mixed metallics trend I've seen pop up here and there, so I decided I need to roll with that next week. This will be part of my Wednesday outfits at Alt Summit. I can't wait to go! Oh wait! I can! There's so much to do! I haven't even started printing my business cards (letterpress plates coming tomorrow!).
Yesterday, I designed and finished this shirt, sewed another shirt and tie dye skinny jeans from scratch. All that's left are cards, signage, one shirt and two skirts! Totally doable in 7 days.
As I was working on the design for this sweatshirt, I was thinking about the actual time it takes me to write a post like this. Just an FYI (since we're all about blogging and prep work at the moment), here's the breakdown:
Outfit details:
Also, Silhouette is offering 30% most items in their shop. This basically applies to supplies and extras like 
I went for a flourished style with more traditional notes. But little nods to contemporary styling with the angled baseline
I just went for it, not knowing the overall look of the shoot. I'm stoked at how well it all fit together.
For the boutonnière cards, I went lowercase and simple, with a little flourish.
For the place cards I went more traditional and fancypants with lots of flourishes with each name.
Learn how to use the pointed pen with my online calligraphy class at 
My friend Susan gave me this rad embossed suede a couple months ago. It's just a killer color and texture, it was begging to become a purse.
It's something like a 3 ounce leather, so I couldn't get too fancy with it with my sewing machine so I made a simple box-bottom tote out of it. My machine didn't like the leather a whole lot, but it submitted to my will in the end.
The inside is partially lined with leather, so I didn't want to sew the straps on to the actual leather (3 layers of leather would have made my machine go out for a pack of bubble gum and never come back). So I punched a hole and affixed brass rivet thingies instead. The rivets took considerable amount of work as a two-person job. Thankfully I had Chris at the ready to help me make the rivets happen.
Despite the possible headache of the rivets, they're nice and snug on the leather, so I'm hopeful that they will stand the test of time.
The inside snaps together with a brass magnetic button. It was kinda evil genius of me to line the top part of the purse with leather since this provides a considerable amount of stabilization for the closure.
I made two pockets in the interior. They were hard to photograph, but you get the idea. The first pocket is an open pocket that's flush with where the suede and lining fabric meet.
The second pocket is my favorite: a zippered pocket for secret surprises. It zips all the way across the tote with pink leather details (not pictured) on either end.
The interior fabric is