Modern Kids Photography

When Edyta recommended Sarah at Modern Kids Photography for holiday family photos, we knew she'd be amazing (Edyta's behind all of Hello!Lucky's editorial product photos). The clincher? Sarah's a former nanny with a natural warmth and openness. She miraculously put Sabrina's twin toddlers at ease the moment she set foot in the door!

We shot in and around Sabrina's house and neighborhood...

In the back yard...

At home...

And walking around the neighborhood...with their colorful walls and doors, the neighborhood provided a surprising variety of backdrops.

Tips for a successful photo shoot:

- Schedule it for when the kids will be well-fed and well-rested.

- Shoot at home, around the neighborhood, or at a familiar park.

- Pick comfortable clothes and pay attention to color palette. Outfits don't need to match but it helps to pick colors and patterns in the same family (we chose a variety of stripes in preppy colors and earth tones).

- If you're using your photos in holiday photo cards or photo birth announcements, have a few card designs in mind and keep their color palette and photo orientation (portrait vs. landscape).

Sabrina used her photos in the accordion-style Four Seasons New Year's Card by Susy Jack* - check out the results here!

Happy Halloween!

Needless to say, Halloween is a just a big excuse to get our crafting on and we love to pull out all the stops!  This year, Jude was a strong man (inspired by his penchant for bashing things and lifting heavy objects despite repeated warnings that if one, say, drops a large rock on one's foot, it's gonna hurt!)

His costume was based on our fab Going Strong card...

The costume consisted of drawing Sailor Jerry style tattoos with Sharpies on a pink leotard, leggings (made by tracing half a pair of store-bought leggings, cutting out four pieces and stitching them together - way easier than you would think!), a pair of Tom's and a barbell made with two styrofoam balls, a dowel, and papîer maché...the toughest part was drawing a moustache on a two year old!  I also slicked his hair down with egg whites for that 19th century gentleman look...

Have a fabulous Halloween!

Circus Fever

It's no secret that we love everything circus. We find timeless inspiration from the peppy colorways and the wild patterns, especially when we find one of a kind vintage circus themed items, like this fabric (above via Cherry Tomato).

The images inside Circus Alphabet from Whitman Tell-A-Tale-Books are packed with hilarious illustrations of the circus days of the 1950s. We can only imagine the excitement of such a fantastic event!

And we can't forget precious Jude's first birthday party invitations and circus party decor!

It doesn't end there! We have our beloved Circus Photo Birth Announcement!

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! So many wonderful ideas!

...introducing Elliot!

There's a new babe in town! Elliot is the newest baby to join the growing H!L family and we are thrilled! Almost as adorable as Elliot's button nose is his letterpress printed birth announcement designed by our very own Anna Hurley. How cute are the worms and mushrooms?!

Welcome Elliot and congratulations Kelly & Erich!

Jude, the Destroyer & His New Chair!

This is my hilarious son, Jude, wreaking havoc on his dinner.  He has recently begun objecting to his high chair...

...so I was thrilled to find this amazing vintage booster chair on Sweet Lucie on Etsy via ModernKiddo!  How genius is this? I swear we had something just like it when we were kids...so cute and love to 70's floral...

*eunice

Lucky Friday # 22 Bundle of Joy, Baby Congratulations!

Hello all you lucky folks out there! This is the twenty-second edition of our Lucky Friday Giveaway! Each Friday we feature one of our letterpress cards. We’ll choose THREE LUCKY WINNERS to get a free card.  Post a comment by 12 p.m. PST the following Thursday, and we’ll announce the winners on the following Friday!

The three winners from last week are (drum roll, please):

Mary, Marjolein, and Alyssa!

We’ll contact you early next week to arrange sending your Good Luck card.

Now for this week’s edition:

Design: Bundle of Joy

Artist: Anna Hurley

Inspiration: We don’t quite know how it happened—  something in the water, or a glimmer in the eye— it felt like the idea just fell out of the sky.

Who to send it to: A couple whose wish was granted—that the stork has landed.

Ideas we scrapped in favor of this one: We had a version of the card with a weary looking stork carrying triplets, reading: “Stork Up and Save!”

Favorite detail: We like how the skyline could be most anywhere, but it has a mix of San Francisco urban and Scandinavian flair.

Why Letterpress? You’d be stork raving mad not to send or stock such striking stationery!

Don’t forget to post your comment, and tune in next week, same time, different stationery, to see if you’ve won!

Jude's French flash cards

At craft night, Eunice has been working on French flash cards for her son, Jude. They are pen & ink illustrations with a watercolor finish - absolutely fantastic for any aspiring bilingual babies!

Eunice is trying to raise Jude bilingual in French and English, so she's always trying to find fun ways to teach him new vocabulary (ok, so he doesn't speak yet, but!) as well as adding to her own French vocab.  She has a love for making flash cards - the words really stick and it's a fun and quick excuse to doodle.  It's also a great excuse to play around with painting/watercolor techniques - the perfect platform to practice on (being the raging multi-tasker that she is!)

Her inspiration for each card is to find things Jude has seen, or words that are just plain amusing (like the fact that raccoon directly translates to "a washing young rat" more or less!) - both the raccoon and the otter are animals they saw at the zoo recently.  The kites are from a recent outing to Crissy Field and the race car is a noise he's learned to make lately.  Next up are a horse, gorilla, tiger, cow and duck - more noises he's been making lately (for the gorilla he pounds his chest!). Once he sees a cow and starts mooing, he will moo for the next 20 minutes!

Pikku Designs: New Pocket Tees

Pikku is debuting some dapper, darling new tees! Some of the Hello!Lucky boys got them as a surprise gift, and we had to share a preview.

Click on the images to visit the Pikku shop.

Have you seen our Pikku baby announcements? If you like these simple, sweet patterns, peruse our Pikku birth announcement designs. With a simple change of text they can be re-purposed as a birthday invitation, too!

Handmade, repurposed fabric toy mats/sacks

A good friend of Hello!Lucky makes these fun and functional convertible play mats/toy tacks.

Here's a visual step by step:

Brilliant! With all the little boys around H!L these days, we've got our eye on these!

Such cool and colorful vintage fabrics! Check out more of their work on Etsy at repurposedplayground.

National Stationery Show!

Whew! We just wrapped up another National Stationery Show - complete with old friends, new designs and lots and lots of inspiring new work. Our own booth featured a lovely felt sign made by our staff (above) and a couple projects from Handmade Weddings, like these yarn wrapped bottles...

...and fun paper link chains!

We were super excited about our new products, like this "Treat Yourself" card from Julia Rothman....

...and our reversible journals!

Some amazing people stopped by our booth to visit, but our favorite visitor was Eunice's son Jude - he really put the rest of us to shame with his amazing sales skills!

Hello!Lucky's Everlasting Giveaway on Pingg!

We wanted to let y'all in on one of our best kept secrets! Many of our most darling birth announcements and kids' party designs are available on Pingg! If you don't already know about Pingg, it's a fab site that allows you to create adorable E-invites, for free!

Hello!Lucky has seventeen different designs to choose from, a couple that you won't find anywhere else. How sweet is that?

Click on the image of our Roller Coaster design to see it on Pingg!

Or, how about a Tea Party shower invite? Can we come too?

Pingg is super user friendly, fast, and it's easy to sign up through your Facebook account, or just through e-mail.

It'll be a great party! Wish we could come!

James & Alex's Cardboard Box Birthday!

Sabrina's twin sons James and Alex's cardboard-box themed 1st birthday party was this past Saturday - it was a huge success!

It all started one night with some hilarious antics involving a Huggies box...

...which made Sabrina think that cardboard boxes would be the perfect theme for their party! It also worked perfectly with a happy graphic style inspired by Paul & Ann Rand's Sparkle & Spin, a favorite since childhood!

The invitations were printed on kraft board with box-inspired envelopes. The party was billed as B.Y.O.B. (Bring Your Own Box)!

We transformed cardboard boxes into all kinds of vehicles for the party -- a car...

...a prop jet...

...and a castle guarded by Ugly Dolls, ducks, and piggies...

...and a fierce / playful dragon!

Monsieur Hugo, a party-goer, aboard a cardboard bus...

Fun custom balloons were a graphic accent...

...along with mini-box favors (instructions can be found in our book, Handmade Weddings)...

...and paper hats!

Cardboard flowers in yarn-wrapped bottles (instructions are also in Handmade Weddings), sodas and stripe-y straws...

Eunice & Sabrina with cousins Jude and Alex eyeing each other...

Happy 1st birthday, James & Alex!

Special thanks to our friend Jillian Northrup of Because We Can for the amazing photos - check out her photo stream here. And props to Noe Valley Bakery for making the delicious cake based on our design! And finally, high-fives to Craft Night for your cardboard creativity (you know who you are!)!

Pull along toys

Could these pull along toys be any CUTER?!! The Marajah might be our favorite, although the Tuareg is a close second!

See more here.

Let it Never be Said...

That we are not deeply dedicated to our clients!  This is the result of a bag of confetti and brief moment of distraction while assembling wedding invitations - clearly he is a future artist, expressing his creativity in all it's glory!

La Moustache Party de Mr. Hugo

We were very pleased to be invited the La Moustache Party de Mr. Hugo (who you may remember from his recent appearance as a French clown)...

His mom, Vanessa, is hilarious and quite the style maven, and she did not disappoint with the many cute and funny details!

Like these snappy little moustache cupcake toppers (the cupcakes were DELICIOUS - from That Takes the Cake)

and these hard candy lollipops...

She had all kinds of simple, yet ingenious, touches - Washi tape bands add cute graphic flair to  plain glass bottles...

Love these little paper cups!

Of course, one must have a selection of moustaches on a stick!  These fab paper 'staches available here and the wooden 'staches here...

...and we loved the hilarious bunting made from photos of famous mustaschioed gentlemen - ah, Tom Selleck...

And the random celebratory moustache imagery that popped up in unexpected places...love those Y-fronts!

Ah, how we love a well-designed par-tay!  Bonne anniversaire, Mr. Hugo!

Jude's Big Top Birthday: Ring 'o' Fire, baby!

Every serious circus needs a ring of fire, obviously - here's how to make your very own.  Tiny tiger not included!

Download the tutorial here!

Jude's Big Top Birthday!

Saturday was Jude's first birthday party, and what a fun little fête it was!

We served fresh popcorn in vintage style popcorn boxes, sugar cookies frosted with royal icing (so fun to paint!)  and delicious cupcakes with chocolate frosting with little flags made from ribbon and satay sticks - classic birthday treats!

The cake was a yellow cake with buttercream frosting, with a cute little banner (it's been a hot trend this year, and I couldn't help myself - so perfect for the circus theme!) And how perfect were these napkins?  I found them (as well as stripey straws, paper fringe and more) at a super adorable little shop called Shop Sweet Lulu!

We provided clown noses, for those who didn't happen to have any appropriate circus attire on hand...

...or who just happen to look ridiculously cute in one...

We made these charming birthday hats out of pom poms, ruffly paper trim, stickers and poster board - so fun!

One of Jude's birthday presents was this amazing Schylling baby piano that Sabrina picked up at the super marvelous shop  Paxton Gate's Curiosities for Kids which was a big hit at the party - she brought over hers too so we could have dueling pianos...

Jude, striking a pose...

One of Jude's friends, the ever charming Miss Eva, arrived dressed as a tiger!  How apropos, given the presence of this Ring 'o' Fire - hilarious!

We painted an upside down flower pot to look like a circus pedestal - a perfect place to pose this vintage Dumbo doll and his strong man friend...and I made simple striped slip covers for our ottomans to transform our living room into an instant big top!

Now, a great party is all about enthusiastic guests:  Sabrina's son James, seemingly unperturbed by his amusing head wear and sporting a natty suit!  Quite the sartorial splendor!

Darling Hugo, who's half French, looking very adorable as a tiny French clown!

Our friends Jillian and Toast of Because We Can, came in hilarious cowboy attire...(props to Jillian for staying up 'til the wee hours the night before decorating cookies!)

The whole family, getting our circus on...

Alas, the birthday boy was a little less than enthusiastic about sporting a birthday hat!

Sabrina and her son Alex, having a jolly time! (How could you not, while double fisting kazoos??)

The party reached it's peak with an all kazoo birthday salute!

Happy Birthday, Jude!

We'll be posting tutorials for the Ring of Fire, Pennants, Circus Sugar Cookies, the cake topper and more, all week, so stay tuned!

Photos by Jillian!

designworklife

Love this blog, designworklife.  We found they had posted about our Jude Turns 1 party invitation, and in the process turned up all sorts of beautiful things!  Foremost in our minds today were these amazing wee artist books by Elsa Mora (click on her name and be awed at her cut paper creations!)

Be sure not to get completely derailed by Elsa's amazing stuff, though, as there are all other sorts of goodies to see on designworklife.

Enjoy!

Dino Epoch!

Spotted these cookie favors and thought they would be perfect for a Dino Epoch themed birthday party!

Our birth announcements designs aren't just for new babies, they can easily be adapted into birthday party invitations with just some minor tweaking.

Contact us with questions!

The rawr-some cookies came from Whippedbakeshop on Etsy.

Rawr! Onesies on the loose!

Dinosaurs, and roosters, and elephants, oh my! These adorable onesies are from local San Francisco Etsy shop Color Tree. Check out the full menagerie here.