Alesia Zorn Calligraphy

Outdoorsy much?

Geez Louise! Where did the time go since the last post?!?  LOTS of envelopes, place cards, table markers, signage - there's a small pile of items waiting to get on the blog.

Today, we're talking about slightly larger - and fuzzier - items.  Slices of log, complete with bark and moss and fabulous textures!  I was contacted by Jordan of Blum, Design in Flowers about writing on these pieces that she prepared with chalkboard paint.   They'll be placed next to their respective items at a garden wedding.  So cute, unexpected and fun!

 

 

Pimp My Warehouse - what a wonderful time!!

Last week, ISES Portland hosted their 3rd annual Pimp My Warehouse which featured the Portlandia rallying cry "Put A Bird On It."  Holy sparrows, we had a great time!!

Before I begin, a million zillion thanks to Andie Petkus for the great photos and fast turnaround - you're just delightful!!

For my part, I did nametags, as seen here.  The were really just blank canvases for guests to put their own bird on it!  (FYI - the fancy, colorful nametags were for the sponsors or guests of the sponsors - it pays to put out ;-)

 

 

 

After people picked up their nametags they headed to the DIY table and the fantastic artists and staff from Paper Zone Jack & Mayzie! 
The poor things didn't even have a chance to finish setting up or change into their staff shirts before the DIY artists-for-a-night descended on the table to play with all the goodies.

 

People loved getting to do their own artwork!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I did chalkboard menus for the incredible food provided by Premiere Catering.  "Why Alesia, that doesn't look like any of the lettering styles you've every offered!" you say.  "Damn straight, Skippy," I reply, "in keeping with the whole Portland theme did my interpretation of 'Akbar' - developed from the handwriting of local-boy-made-good, Matt Groening, creator of the comic 'Life in Hell' and 'The Simpsons.'"

 

Don't know that I'll need this script that often but I'm glad I've learned it and have it in my back pocket (so to speak.)

 

 

 

More chalkboard with the REAL star- the food!!

 

 

 

 

 

That's right, my friend, that's a trio of grilled cheese sandwiches.  BRILLIANT!!  The geniuses who thought that bit of cheesy goodness?

 

Mike Peters and Peter Barnett of Premiere Catering. 

 

 

 

It was such a great night - I wonder what we'll do next year?!?

Chalkboard, buffet cards & oh my!

Good grief!  It's been a very busy summer & I have been beyond remiss in cleaning my desk & giving props to my friends!

I just came across this disc of photos from Paul Rich Studio.  He came to the ISES Portland's annual "Pimp My Warehouse" and took some fantastic photos!

 The fabulous menu was provided by Crave Catering.   As always the food was fantastic and I'm dreaming of the glazed salmon.  Wonder if I can wheedle the recipe...

A close up of the buffet card - I forgot about the sesame cucumber relish - more wheedling to follow!

Yes, I highly recommend following up the salmon with some fandamntastic Bananas Foster.  Actually, Bananas Foster probably makes a fine follow up to everything! 

Will work for cookies!

But only fandamntastic cookies.  Cookies that bring great joy. LeCookie Monkey Cookies!  Amber Darrington, Cookie Goddess, sent me an e-mail and asked me if I would do chalkboards for her booth at yesterday's Mississippi Street Fair in trade for cookies.  After I wrung all the drool out of the keyboard I answered with a resounding "Yes!"

And please note the pretty, pretty wedding cake Amber decorated to the right of the board, she's a goddess of many talents!  

Go ahead and profess yourself my newest bff - take a number!  When I mention my fab trade deal to my PDX friends, they've already made their dying declaration!  It's almost like facebook "friends" ;-)

(For the curious, I did grab a bag of toffee bacon for me and my friends at the fair to share.)

ISES Portland Sasha Souza Meeting Photos!

It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks!  The wedding "season" in Portland isn't exactly what you'd think.  September is almost as, if not more, busy a wedding month than June.  That's partly because the weather here can be dicey in June - Portland received it' average monthly June rainfall within the first three-and-a-half days of the month.  And it's hardly stopped since.  We also haven't seen many days over 70 degrees. 

So the past few months have been busy with a mash of addressing save the dates, addressing invitations, doing table items (markers, escort/place cards, programs, etc.) for the brave souls having their weddings in May and June.  AND I've been attending networking meetings where fortunately I've been gathering CDs from the gracious photographers who take photos of my work and share them. 

As I've said before, I'm a proud member of the board of the Portland chapter of The International Special Events Society (ISES).  Earlier this year we were thrilled to host celebrity event planner Sasha Souza as a speaker for our monthly meeting.  Sasha is promoting her book "Signature Sasha: Magnificent Weddings by Design."  It's some serious eye candy!  Sasha was a wonderful speaker - inspirational, exciting and fun!  If your group is thinking about bringing her in, do it as soon as possible.

I was very excited to have the opportunity to do the programs and name tags for the meeting as well as chalkboard signage.  The icing on the cake was the photographer for the event was David Barss and the gorgeous rentals were from Peter Corvallis Productions - big kudos to them for everything!

 

Garden Vineyard Room - Bravo! Wedding Affair Nov. '09

Oooh!  I've got a disc FULL of gorgeous pictures of the Bravo! Wedding Affair from last month.  The disc generously comes from Paul Rich Studio.

A little while ago, I cross posted to a blog entry from Champagne Wedding & Event Coordination.  They, along with Helene of East West Floral Arts came up with the design for their Garden Vineyard room.  How beautiful is this?!

I'll always remember walking around looking at all the eye candy - and wondering "why do I smell grapes?"  This would be why - and that's up on the ceiling, my friend!  So pretty!  This was early in the day, there's a suspended candle in there, really lovely when they're all lit up.

   

My contribution to the room was a chalk board listing the vendors.  This is such a great eco-friendly way to get information out.  I rent out the chalk board and write whatever you'd like - a list of vendors, or a menu, program, meeting agenda - then the board comes back home and all the lettering comes off and the board waits to head out to its next party!

Thanks again to Paul for the pictures and Mandy & Rachelle of Champagne Weddings & Events for asking me to contribute to their room!

When I say "Anything you can dream up..."

...I really mean it!  I'm doing chalkboard menus for a wedding this weekend.  I wish I'd been clever enough to think of this, but I give total props to the bride, it was her idea.  Besides large menu chalkboards, she wanted to have signature cocktail chalkboards on the bar... but not just any chalkboards - rebus puzzles!!

 

 

The answers:

Jack and Cola (there is that trademark issue ;-)

lemon, raspberry and gin

beer or wine

I had to scan and send this now because I'm so excited about her clever idea.  I'm hoping the photographer will take detail shots of the menu boards.  Yes, boardS - one for apps & dinner and one for a dessert menu that will make you weep!

Photos from the February Bravo Show

Last night my e-mail box was blessed with photos from the February Bravo show.  I wanted to immediately get them on the blog but knew I was too tired and too excited (think a 5-year old past bedtime) to make any sense.

After a good night's sleep I'm not tired but still excited so I'll try to make sense of it all.  The Bravo Wedding Affair is held in a hotel, each ballroom and pre-function room is assigned to a wedding planner who works with the vendors assigned to their room to decorate it according to their theme.  This is when the planners get to cut loose and bring their vision to reality.  It's always so much fun to help out, they're so creative and come up with the greatest things.

For the February show, Cindy Rosen of Encore Events hit me with some fantastic and fun ideas for her Oregon Vineyard theme (for those not from around here and not familiar, Oregon puts out some fantastic wines.  Oregon Pinot Noir has often kicked even French Pinot patootie in taste tests.  Oregon represent!)  OK, I'm admittedly not a devoted vinophile, I'm obviously a tad proud of my state ;-) so it was even more fun to work with Cindy & her great theme.

First up, the place cards...

These little wine glasses held tea lights to act as the place cards AND a light source.  The lettering on these glasses is removable, so they're eco-friendly (hello! we're in Oregon).  For a real wedding it would by easy-peasy to make the lettering permanent and this would also act as a favor.  Multi-tasking at it's finest - place card, light and favor

Next up, the signature cocktail from Premiere Catering...

     

I'm never happy when scheduling conflicts mean I miss the Bravo shows, and this time I was even more unhappy when I found out Premiere would be one of the vendors in Cindy's room.  They always do a spectacular job!  I did an eco-friendly chalkboard to compliment the room's colors of eggplant, sage, copper and all things vineyardy.

And now - cake signage.  I think the toughest thing about being a calligrapher is doing menus - me want CAKE!

   

Of course the purpose of the photo is for me to wow you with my calligraphy and don't get me wrong, I'm proud of my work but ... c'mon...read about that cake - how awesome (it is 9am and I haven't had breakfast, can you tell?)

I've saved the best for last - the "guest book." 

This was Cindy's idea and I'm thrilled she asked me to bring it to life...  signing a giant wine bottle. It would be fun to say Cindy & I drank the whole thing because artists must suffer for their art, but it's not true.  She received it from a rental company who grabbed it at an event.  Again with an eco-friendly chalkboard, completely reusable.

Many thanks to Nataliya Sostin Photography www.sostinweddings.com for the lovely photos. A big shout-out to Kevan Inouye who provided the gorgeous and luscious floral of which you've only seen teasing hints.

Earth's Best Friend

Once upon a time I worked at a radio station in South Carolina and "The Earth's Best Friend" was one of the positioning statements.  It was in the early '90s and we really tried to walk the talk.  It's a message that hit a nerve, and never more so than when I moved to environmentally-friendly Oregon.

I'm always investigating ways to bring being The Earth's Best Friend into the wedding and event world.  What can we do to reduce waste?  The Fates sent Molli of Soiree to me - she was approached by a local TV station to do a segment on green weddings and our phone conversation started with "Can you write on an apple?"  (I love phone conversations with Molli because the question "Can you write on ____?" is usually in there.  If you've read anything in my blog you know that blank is filled in with cool stuff.)

Well, I'd never written on an apple, but I knew it could be done - surely.  Voila!  An ecofriendly table number.  Also featured in the segment were a candle table number and a tabletop chalkboard menu... what unusual items would you like to see as part of your wedding or table decor?  Ask Molli, I love the unusual!

     Photos courtesy of my friend David at davidbarssphotographer.com

1960s Fun

  My last post mentioning Cindy from Encore Events reminded me of a very fun project I did for her.  Cindy hosted a bridal consultant meeting at the very hip & groovy Jupiter Hotel in Portland, OR

The Jupiter's meeting room ("The Dream Box") has a wall that is floor to ceiling chalk board.  I wrote the featured vendors' names on the wall and left a box of chalk out for the party goers to use throughout the night. 

 

I also did the name tags for the event - I'm happy to report I see people using them at other wedding industry events, that's such a compliment!  It's not every day I get to use fluorescents on black!

 Big thanks to The Sidewalk Studio for the gorgeous photos!