FMN Design is a Vendor on Project Wedding!

Have any of you heard of Project Wedding? It's a great site that helps make the whole wedding process simple. You can look up vendors in every category, including me! Since album design is a fairly new market in the industry, it's a bit dodgy finding me. As soon as we have ten album design companies on the site, they'll give us our own category.

So, for now, I'm listed in the "Other" category but I'll take it! I'm #74 to be exact. One of my clients was sweet enough to recommend me as well. She wrote such wonderful things on my page that it made me blush. Thanks Kristy!

I hope that you check out the site. Take a look around and you never know what you might find. They have vendors that offer everything from custom made wedding dresses, stamps, help finding a wedding site, photographers, cake decorators, coordinators, invitations, hair and make-up, jewelry, dance lessons, videographers, officients and yes "others" which include me, your personal custom album designer!!

Check It Out! I've Been Kissed!

Hi everyone,

Check it out! KISS Wedding Books is now offering design as a service on their site and I'm one of the designers. I've had the pleasure of working with Kiss for a while now and I have to say they truly make the whole process a piece of cake. Kevin Swan, one of the founders of KISS is such a great guy. Always available and I swear the man doesn't sleep. No matter what time I fire off an email, he responds right away. I love that! He's been great to work with and I'm flattered to be part of the team.

Their books are simple. People love them. I love one of the lines on their site....:"Just say no to complexity. Get KISSed!"

So if you haven't been KISSed, pucker up!

Dolls with an edge

I love Robert Knowles. He's a designer here in San Francisco. I was lucky enough to hire him while I was working my corporate job and "what a find". He not only has a great sense of design but he's an artist! He's one of those guys that has you stop and think, "wow, you have a lot to contribute to this world!"
He's recently made a series of dolls that he's looking to market. They ROCK!

The Whole Package

I've recently had the pleasure to work with an up and coming wedding photographer. Brooke Buchanan is the cousin of one of my best friends. She always has her camera in hand and shoots in that editorial style that I love. She came to me looking to have her first portfolio designed. I not only designed her book but put together her whole logo design and business system as well.
I love how it's turned out. Take a look!

Easter at Home

Easter was mellow this year. My youngest son was sick so we stayed home and just hung out. My husband and I hid some eggs both inside the house and in the backyard. Mason, who's turning 4 on Monday (I can hardly believe it!) had a blast. Here are some of my favorite shots that we took.

WPPI in VEGAS!

Carrie from Urban-Baby and me In the KISS Photobooth. Hot!



Our new "In-N-Out" Friends

WPPI was great this year. I flew in for the whirl wind tour. Arriving in LV at 10:15 in the morning, I met up with Carrie Cook from Urban Baby at the airport. We've worked together for some time now and had never met in person. After a long awaited hug, we headed over to Paris. Both of us are the mother of two boys so this was a special day. Out, exploring new ventures for our businesses without little ones clinging to our pant legs or holding on around our necks. Of course, we babbled back and forth about our boys pretty much the entire time.

We connected with Garrett Burdick, half of GB Photographers (my husband being the other half) and signed in to the show. We cruised around the booths checking out albums, software and anything else that caught our eye.

Garrett introduced me to Me Ra Koh. She and her husband Brian were such sweet and personable people. I really enjoyed talking with them. Then we were off to check out Couture Books. I had seen their site and loved it and was anxious to meet the West Coast rep. Dave Luebke to whom Me Ra introduced me. He showed me their new line that I fell in love with on the spot. The "Earth" line. A totally green series of albums. I absolutely CAN'T WAIT to design and print one. The rubber cover book was awesome!

Carrie and I both loved the new Iris book from Cypress. I've designed a matted album through Cypress and am excited to have an Iris book in hand. Their books are so sweet and just simply beautiful. They have a special product that they offer.

While walking around we were grabbed by a crazy fun girl, Tanja Lippert. She made us take an oath and wear In-N-Out burger hats swearing to give the "secret handshake" to anyone else we saw wearing an In-N-Out Burger Hat. She raised our energy level a few notches, that's for sure! I couldn't NOT have someone take a photo of all of us!

I finally met the guys of Kiss! That was a long over due meeting. They had a photobooth set up with fun props for anyone to jump into. Carrie, Kevin, Shaun and I took some photos and then Carrie and I took a few more. The animal print cowboy hats were "hot"!

After an amazing lunch at B & B Mario Batali's restaurant in the Venitian Hotel we headed back to catch the last group of vendors and then we were back to the airport.

That was the whirl wind tour of WPPI. I'm excited and energized to design new albums and have new books in hand. I send my gratitude to Carrie Cook, Garrett Burdick, Me Ra Koh and her husband Brian, and Kevin and Shaun from Kiss for making WPPI 2008 a blast.

See you next year!

WPPI

I'm off to Vegas tomorrow morning. I'm going to be looking at the different album companies to see their books and what's new. I'm eager to see what's out there that I might not know about. I'll let you know what I find.