More Leap Year Designs

In January I got into this wonderful designing place of mind. In the course of a week I think I designed fourteen different holiday cards. These Leap Year ones were among them. All I can say is, it was a very fun week!

 Happy Leap Year Card

 Leap Year Boxes Card

 Leap Year Dots Card

Retro Leap Year Card

Happy Valentine's Day!

This is one of my most favorite quote pictures that I have designed. It's not just that I love the movie - which really is awesome, but the whole layout is pleasing. The picture is fantastic. The most memorable quote is large and centered as well. Then the rest of the quotes provide a lovely frame. Every time I look at this picture I am amazed at how well it turned out. It just goes to show you that a good layout really is essential.

Romantic Movie Quote Card Fiasco

I designed these for a friend's son's wedding. She used them as part of the centerpieces on the reception tables. She wanted it to be a sort of game, you know, "guess what romantic movie this quote is from." It actually turned out quite cute! I think there are 78 total.

The hardest part was getting them to print correctly. I think it took me at least 5 tries. I don't know what my problem was. It was sending them through the printer and then re-feeding the pages so that they'd print on the back and then that they'd be centered. It was a whole fiasco. But in the end they turned out really great and I think they're a fun little game to have around the house.

The Romantic Movie Quote Calendar

A couple of years back I had the idea to make a romantic movie quote calendar - three hundred and sixty six quotes from romantic movies. It was quite a daunting task. About that same time I had a rough time sleeping. I'd seem to get only three or four hours a night. I guess you could say it was a blessing in disguise because I all of the sudden I had a few more hours in my day. I was always tired, but I had a lot of time to work on this project.

I scoured my movie quotes files and then the internet for great romantic movie quotes. I also watched a fair share of movies, pausing so that I could write down the quote. It was a tough job, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it.

Once I had compiled the quotes I wanted to use I spent some time coming up with the fun design and different color schemes for each month. I created a template in InDesign and then dropped my quotes in. I made it so that the title of the movie was small enough in the corner that you could put your thumb over it, in case you wanted to make a game of guessing what movie it came from.

I gave my friends a copy of it for their birthdays that year, with the stipulation that they'd tell me if I had any typos or errors. I knew there were probably a few typos because, well, the sleep deprivation meant I wasn't on my 'A' game.

It wasn't until last year that I decided to add to the website, which meant creating a cover for it. Every year I try to design a fun Valentine with my favorite movie kisses, or couples or the handsome men I love. As I was looking for inspiration for the cover I ran across one of my old valentines and thought it was perfect. Just a couple of tweaks were made and it was ready for the internet store!

The cover

A sample page

The Be Mine Floral Card

When I'm out and about and bored I tend to doodle little things on the backs of any paper I have with me.The was one of those doodle. I scanned it into my computer at least a year ago and then it just sat in a folder waiting...

Then a little while back I had some free time, so I took the image out and thought I'd convert it to a vector image in Illustrator. An hour or so later I had come up with this image. I didn't know what I wanted to do with it, so again it just sat...

The this last month I got on a design kick and came across this image again. I played around with the shading and embossing until I came up with something I liked. Then, since it was Valentine season I added the 'Be Mine' to it and... the Be Mine Floral card was created.

Leap Day - The Elitist Holiday

Leap Day is one of my favorite holidays. It's kind of an elitist holiday. I mean, it only comes around once every four years, because coming every year would be so common. I think it would be fun to be born on Leap Day - you get to choose when to celebrate your birthday and you'll be one of the youngest people you know - since your birthday only comes around once every four years. Yep, it would be awesome!

The Revision Process

I had this great idea for a Valentine card. I thought I knew exactly what the final product would be. The design did not unfold that way. At all. I started with this design. It's not bad, but it just wasn't hitting the spot.

So, I tried this one. It was much closer to what I was thinking, but I didn't much care for leafy elements.

Maybe something totally different would look better.

How about a different design with additional colors. I actually debated about this one for awhile. Did I like the colors? Would it look better with just the purple hearts for additional color? I put this one away for the day and came back to it the next day and just wasn't satisfied with it.

So I tried again. I created a swirly element I liked much better. That went a long way towards satisfying me with the final outcome. I really wasn't liking the watermelon color either. So when I messed around with the colors I came up with my final design. The colors were perfect and the design was exactly what I had desired.

What do you think? Do you think that my final design looks the best or do you like one of the other versions better?

Designing Groove

Sometimes I just get into a designing groove and can design many things practically overnight. My latest designs have been Leap Year and Valentine's cards. I'm posting them on Facebook, but I thought I'd post them here as well.

Leap Year Calendar Page Card

Leap Year Circular Card

Be Mine Boxes Card

Be My Valentine Card

The First Post

As with any blog there has to be a "first" post. Ah, but what should it be about? Should you be clever and witty? Should you just get the most pertinent information up and available? I don't really have an answer, so I'm going to just introduce ourselves.

DesignAbility was founded/created in 2003 by Anneliese Bennion and Stephanie Skolmoski. They're a mother and daughter team - Stephanie being the mother and Anneliese the daughter. They both got degrees in Interior Design, but decided there were other avenues they wanted to pursue.

Anneliese took some Graphic Design classes in college and fell in love with Photoshop! Which soon became a love for all things Adobe. She is skilled in not only Photoshop, but Illustrator and InDesign. She loves to doodle on scraps of papers - especially church programs. Ever since Jr. High Anneliese has enjoyed creating greeting cards for friends and family. Which has then lead her to create quotation pictures, calendars, wedding albums, wedding announcements and even illustrate children's books. She has just finished redesigning this website, which she did in order to learn html and css a little better.

Stephanie has always been creative and her Interior Design classes really brought that out in her. Although she doesn't design many of the products, she usually gives a lot of the inspiration for the new products. Stephanie has always had a love for writing, whether it’s writing in journals, short stories, poetry or children’s musicals. In addition to all of that she has written three children's books with ideas for more books always dancing around in her head. Stephanie also has a degree in Music and loves to share her love of music with everyone around her.