Graphic Design in Rexburg, Idaho

You might be wondering why I created a printable calendar at the end of March. Well, I'm due to have a second daughter on May 15 this year and I've just recently started to plan ahead. Perhaps next year, I'll create on that starts in January? We shall see.

At first, I looked for free printable calendars elsewhere and found some cute ones. I really loved this one from elli and printed it out only to find that it starts on Monday! I tried the Monday start of the week until I was fed up with it. Thus the calendar to the left was born. 

While creating this calendar, I didn't want to have to manually plug in the right dates and holidays, so I was really happy when I found a site for editable calendars. Saved me a ton of time. 

I may end up being the only one who uses this March through December 2014 Calendar, but I thought I'd put it out on the World Wide Web, just in case. Click to download the file below for personal use only ©Kaelie Nielsen Design.

My daughter is in preschool and I have been searching all over for fun valentines. I found one with a pun I really liked here and decided to do my own take using gold fish instead of swedish fish and having my daughter decorate the boxes. 

Enjoy!

I've had a few friends ask me what I did. My response is usually something along the lines of , "My iPhone taught her" and, "She's just really interested in reading." 

Both are true, but I guess there's more to it than that. I am no expert, I have no official training and I'm not a model parent, so I'm just going to tell you 7 ideas that I think helped.

1• My friend who worked at a daycare would point to each word as she read it, so we do that too. It seems to work to get kids to notice the words.

Have you heard of Fry Words? They are words that are frequently used in children's books. 

If your child can memorize those, they will have about half of every children's book memorized. 

There are a lot of fun things you can do with the list linked above. In the summer, I wrote some of the fry words  in circles on the driveway and had my daughter jump to whatever word I said. I also created the printable on the left of the first 100 fry words and used a 2" hole punch to cut out the words to make a memory game as well as flash cards. 

Speaking of flash cards, we got some  in the dollar section at Target and I noticed there are a lot of learning materials at the Dollar Tree.

My friend's daughter saw ours read a book and was wondering if she had really read it or if she had just memorized it. At first I said she had read it, but I guess the answer was yes to both. Thanks to preschool and starfall, she's learning to put the sounds of letters together to read, but she hasn't quite figured it all out yet. I'm not sure what route is best, but memorization has been easier for me to teach and faster for her to learn. 

If you're like me, you put off shopping for food for Christmas Dinner until the last minute. 

In order to help make the process easier, I created the categorized shopping list on the left for myself (while procrastinating going to the store) and thought I would share it with you. You can download the black and white or the color version below.

Merry Christmas!

Does the magnet above look familiar? I changed my design from the previous post and used for a neighborly christmas gift. In order to package it nicely, I created the downloadable paper star box template on the left.

You might be able to get the magnet for free until Dec. 26 here.

Wrapping presents is always fun for me. In order to add a nice touch, I created the printable Christmas tags on the left.

© Kaelie Nielsen Design 2013. Free for personal use only. If you would like to use it commercially, please contact me. 

First, I'll talk about what did work and what I used to create it. 

I bought inkjet shrinky-dinks (important that they are inkjet) and then printed the joy printable on the left. 

Then I found some christmas music and printed one page on the other side. 

I cut out the letters with a 2" hole punch. Then I punched a small hole in the top and bottom of the j and o and only the top of the y. 

Then I shrunk them to the size of nickels. Watching that process is so fun! 

To connect the letters and make hooks, I used some wire and voilà, done. 

Now for the designs that didn't work for ornaments, but would work as other things:

After going too small, I went too big with the design on the right. Imagine 4 duplicate designs on letter-size paper. I cut them out and rounded the corners, punched holes and then shrunk them in the oven. What I ended up with was 4 keychains... 

I'm not sure what I was hoping for that time around, but after deleting 3 of the duplicates, I ended up with a great template for a card. 

Fold hamburger style with the design facing outward and then hotdog style with the design on the front and you have a customizable card. 

If you want it to be extra special, you can draw something on the back side before folding so your recipient opens it up to find a letter-size poster. I like to have my 3-year-old go to town on that part. 

Welp, Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you enjoy my printables! If you'd like to redistribute them or use them in designs commercially, please use my contact form. 

Craft Swap organized by Kits Crafts

My mother-in-law said it took her 30 years to finally finish the laundry. I have a feeling it will take me the same amount of time to do that as well as finish the dishes. 

I was commiserating with my mom about the never ending mountain of laundry and dishes and she quoted what you see on the left. So true!

Below is the black and white version, free for personal use only. 

To create the backgrounds for the 
following posters:

Sometimes, you get stuck doing something because you didn't even think about the alternative. I created the background of this poster using a few different illustrations and then a free parchment texture listed below. I sat there for much longer than I care to admit looking at the poster wondering why it was so dull and why the colored logo (something I couldn't change) looked so lackluster. Writing now, I am even wondering why I sat there trying to fix a problem with a solution so obvious! Just change the background color. Contrast and colors matter, it's Art 101, but we all need a little reminder at times, or at least, I do.

Below are the different illustrations and the texture used to create the background. 

To the Left: I used the 5th texture down. These textures (along with many more) were provided by VandelayDesign.com. It's the type of site where you go (as a designer) and wonder what your life could have been like if you had only known about it sooner. I love the freebies on their blog and will use them again.

Also, the Seinfeld reference inherent in their name makes me happy inside. 

The picture to the left was not used in the poster, it's my desktop wallpaper for August and possibly September. We will be moving to Idaho soon, so going to the coast in Oregon was a nice way to say farewell. Feel free to right click it and select download.

© Kaelie Nielsen Design 2013. Free for personal use only. If you would like to use it commercially, please contact me. 

To learn more than you care to know about the difference between serif fonts and sans serif fonts - click the image above (created by the blog's author)
 
Fonts that are a disgrace to the typographer who created them
These typographers are like Dr. Frankenstein, "I've created a monster!"

Comic sans
Hobo
Papyrus
Arial (not so much because of the font, but because it's a total rip off of Helvetica)
If you ever come across these, look the other way. So don't look at the image below.

Rules to help you avoid faux pas
Don't pair a sans serif font with another sans serif font (Pairing Arial and Helvetica would be a faux pa). 

Script/handwritten fonts can be used as headers, but never for paragraphs.

Do not bold serif fonts. My typography teacher said the letters look like fat ballerinas. 

S P A C E (or track) C A P I T A L letters as it makes them easier to read. Never write a whole paragraph in capital letters. 

Do not track l o w e r c a s e letters, because when learning to read, people memorize the shapes of words and breaking up the shape of the word slows down the reading process. This concept is also the reasoning behind never writing a paragraph in all capital letters - unless of course, you're designing a wedding invitation.

When placing paragraphs, try to avoid creating bad rags, widows or orphans. Please click for further explanation on my strange type jargon.