jersey city has seriously been stepping up its game.  and right now, i'd have to say most of it has to do with the residents stepping up their game, coming out to support those small businesses that are popping up all over town right now, and the businesses stepping up either game by hosting community events.  it's been a win-win for everyone.  jc fridays has been a fantastic event in downtown jersey city for a while now, celebrating the works of local artists, getting the community out for a night of fun in the meantime.  although jersey city isn't home to galleries on every block, you can find local art in nearly all downtown restaurants and a lot of specialty stores.  for instance, LITM keeps its walls bare white, with rotating local art on display putting pops of color throughout the minimalist bar.


cupcakes from sugar supply

while jc fridays is a great event to store hop/bar hop/art gallery hop, we decided to plant our feet at e.tittlemouse and co . for the night.  napoleon and belinda, the store owners, are huge supporters of local talent beginning to shine.  their theme for friday was "a night of noir" celebrating the upcoming works of john trigonis and lauren clemente , as they will soon launch a new comic book titled " siren's calling ," a horror noir comic book based in santa monica in 1947.   lauren is the illustrator for the comic, and her art featuring scenes from the comic were on display (and for sale) at the event, including original sketches of the characters. 




lauren clemente's artwork from siren's calling .

everyone was encouraged to dress as if they were in the comic, the men donning trench coats and fedoras, skinny ties and suspenders.  ladies played their parts with sultry dresses, red lipstick, and victory rolls, headpieces from local jewelry artist caviar noir , or fascinators in their hair.

while i was excited to attend the entire event (gosh the anticipation leading up to it was intense!), a last minute business trip put me at the store 2 hours late.  hoping to catch the tail end of it, i didn't even change my clothes before coming (lame!), but luckily my partner in crime/husband slipped his way to the event right on time, in costume (looking as adorable as ever), with the camera and all! enjoy his amateur-but-awesome photos below (gosh he's getting good at those photo-taking skills!)

what's the fun in signing your name with, well, your name?  when hung and i first started dating, i noticed he drew this "face" on everything he signed for his friends or family (cards, wedding sign-in books, etc.)  everyone knows "the face" and quite honestly, i was a little jealous. so i made one too,  seizing the idea as "our thing" instead of "his thing" (sorry babes).  since then, we've been to a LOT of weddings, sent out a LOT of christmas cards, and used these faces a LOT. 

so, why not use them for our wedding? we're practically doing everything untraditional anyways, wouldn't you like to get an invite and a save-the-date with some personality to it? who says you have to have fancy writing and proper embossing and use you "wedding colors"? this is about as personal as it gets! i'm starting with the design above, and work with it to make the invites, the save the dates, the itineraries, any sort of "paper" that goes along with the wedding will have this logo brand... style? (we're not a business, we're a couple)

anyways, when we decided to go down this path, we both decided our faces needed an upgrade to match our looks.  if you remember OOOOLD blog posts i used to sign with this signature:

those are the faces we've been using for years, but since hung has that slicked back/man-swoop thing going on, and i chopped my hair to a pixie (remember, i talked about our new hair here ), the faces needed and upgrade.  no better time than when we get married, right?  i liked the look of these wedding invites , and how the drawn faces were cut off on the side, so i might end up putting a border around the edges to show that it was intentional that the faces were cut off on the side, but for now, you get the idea ;)  when i saw those invites though, i thought it was the PERFECT way to incorporate our "faces" into our wedding.

looking forward to designing the rest of it! for now, we've got to start practicing just drawing these new faces, so next time we're signing the wedding book at the next wedding, we're not holding up the line :P

what do you guys think!? did you do something creative for your wedding invites?

now, if only i had adobe illustrator or photoshop to properly design them! (maybe i'll set aside one weekend and bang everything out within the free trial period!?)

cheers.
jenn

i think everytime i plan a date night from now on, i will only think that no date will top our march date (hint: that's when hung proposed !)

...however, last night was pretty fun too.  trying to err on the cheaper side of things these days while we save up for a wedding and a kitchen remodel, i planned a night at the art studio NY for a painting class! i felt it was a little cliché when i signed us up.  it seems that everyone is doing the BYOB painting classes, but now i know why! they really are fun!  and we came home with two clearly amateur beautiful paintings to find a place in our home.