Our-life-2013-Artifact-Uprising-book-1

Our-life-2013-Artifact-Uprising-book-2

 

Our-life-2013-Artifact-Uprising-book-3

I have wanted to create a real photo book for our family for ages. With all of our photos being digital I felt we needed to move our memories off of computer and into our life. What I wanted for us and our kids is to sit down with the book in their laps and re-live the moments of our life. Few weeks ago, right before the holidays, I finally placed an order for a hard cover book from Artifact Uprising. I’ve been a fan of Artifact Uprising for a few years and have been admiring their breathtakingly beautiful books and most importantly design philosophy and environmental policy. And, I love their tag line: Inspired by the disappearing beauty of the tangible.

The book arrived yesterday and wow! what a beautiful book! I am in love this book! It is perfect! I couldn’t be more thrilled with the final product – the paper is soft and quality amazing. For this book, I picked the most memorable photos from the past year and showed them in chronological order. I hope to continue to do this each year! I plan to make at least one book at the end of every year, so that we can have a library of our lives through pictures. It is such a great way to preserve memories!

HolidayCardsWithMultiplePhotos_IwonaK

Our holiday cards arrived this week, and I couldn’t be more excited! Each year I design our cards and this year was no exception. I originally wanted a simple one-photo holiday card as I feel that reflects the personality and lifestyle of a family but I couldn’t decide which image is best. I guess we had way too much fun last year! Multi picture layout was the necessary solution.

I designed a clean front with holiday message typed in a calligraphy font and added multiple photos on the back of the card. I like that I was able to choose a few favorite photos… Last year, our extended family and friends were excited to see what we have been up to over the previous year and we wanted to tell a lot of stories with our card this year too. Our cards were printed on a heavy white cotton stock and matched with a red envelopes lined with a stripey liner. Happy Holidays!

HappiestHolidaysCard_IwonaK HolidayCardsWithPhotos_IwonaK

OurHolidayCards_IwonaKonarski

Each year I plan to have my Christmas cards designed and printed early. And then life happens and they are always sent late. I am a graphic designer and design should be easy, yet it is always so much work. I usually have a hard time settling on the right design (let’s not even mention picking photos) and then, well the addressing of all those envelopes takes forever too. This year the biggest challenge was not designing but taking the photos of our little ones. We finally brought them home a day before Thanksgiving and life has been a whirlwind since. Due to their fragile conditions and our crazy and unpredictable schedule, we were unable to have a photographer to come to our house to take our family pictures. I was left with the job of capturing our precious babies. And it was a challenge. Babies tend to fuss and stretch out and don’t like being confined. After taking hundreds of photos we finally chose one that had both of them looking into the camera.

 

This year’s card was extra special because it was also Jakob and Izzy’s birth announcement! Originally I wanted to send out two separate cards, but there is no way I could have made that happen. This year our card will double as a Christmas card and baby announcement. And I am totally ok with that. Why not to celebrate the season as well as our bundles of joy. I am so happy with the way those cards turned out! Merry Christmas!

OurHolidayCardsBirthAnnouncements_IwonaKonarski