Reserva la Fecha: Design

As the six month mark to the wedding date approached, Mr. Tortolito and I began to take the "Reserva la Fecha" (our translation for "Save the Date") business a lil bit more seriously. We wanted it to reflect our Mexican theme and incorporate a festive color scheme somehow. After determining a general "look" for our project, it was time to bring it to fruition!

I'll start from the beginning: choosing a design. We wanted something "talavera" like. Talavera is a type of typical Mexican pottery, and I am a little bit obsessed with it. It's the Mexican damask, bbs!

Anywho, Mr. Tortolito sent me this image that he found while googling "talavera:"

{Foto source here}

We both agreed that we liked the design, so Mr. Tortolito digitized the image to obtain this:


The image was good, but still a little too rough around the edges. I decided to utilize my copy of Adobe Illustrator to smooth it out and clean it up.

{{Disclaimer: Prior to this project, I had ZERO experience with Adobe Illustrator. I'm still getting familiar with its features and it takes me hours to do what an experienced person can do in probably minutes. I don't know if I'm using any of these features correctly, but I'm learning! Please allow me to embarrass myself as I attempt to impart my beginners knowledge to you.}}

Step 1: I opened the jpeg file with Adobe Illustrator. It looks a little something like this:

Step 2: Click on the image in the middle of the screen. Find OBJECT at the top in the toolbar, scroll down to LIVE TRACE, and select MAKE like so:

Step 3: Adobe Illustrator works its magic:

You get something with smoother, more defined borders and equal shading throughout. Much nicer, eh?

After that, I used Photoshop to copy and paste the same image to create the tile effect:

Once we got a basic talavera design down, it was time to implement it with El Gocco. Yep, I'm a Gocco bride and I have a love/hate relationship with El Gocco. Stay tuned to hear more about the progression of the Tortolito's "Reserva la Fecha/Save the Date."

Anyone else using a "signature design" for their stationery?