Our wedding coozie designs

Today, I finished the designs for the coozies that we will give away during our wedding.

I designed them using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator CS4.

Here they are:

blue coozie
The blue "formal" coozie.

Photos taken for the blue coozie were shot by Pin Lim, from our engagement photo shoot. The background of this coozie will be blue, so the ink needs to be white, and so the white ink is black above – which means it’s kind of hard to tell what this one will look like. I’m confident it will be awesome.

white coozie
The white "fun" coozie.

One of the photos taken for the white coozie was shot by Pin Lim (see the one on the far right). The others were shot myself, holding the camera out at a decent distance. This coozie was white with blue ink, so it’s not hard to see what it will look like, since the black ink above will be blue.

UPDATE: See a photo of the finished coozie, printed by Kustom Koozies, from Pin Lim’s wedding photo shoot:

The coozies
The coozies came out great. Our guests loved them!

Tribute presents

A few Sundays ago we went to my uncle’s house for a family birthday party. We celebrated a lot of birthdays.

Five. Could have been more if more people showed up. Those people will remain nameless, but they know who they are.

Two of the five people were Donna Novak and Melissa Jones. Donna is my cousin Steve’s wife. Melissa is her oldest daughter.

In February, Donna’s mother passed away suddenly and unexpectedly. I never got to know her very well, but I did know she was a great cook and a longtime busdriver for the Magnolia Independent School District.

A scholarship was created in her honor after her passing, and word is a Magnolia student’s college burden was gratefully lighter.

Anyway, so, for their birthday gift, Donna and Melissa received a 5×7 frame with a print of some photo art I worked up for them. From recent photos I had taken at Melissa’s November wedding.

Mike and Judy Chaney pose for a photo during Melissa's wedding. This was the photo I gave Donna. I made the background grayscale and blurred it a bit to bring out the brightness of Judy's smile.
Mike and Judy Chaney pose for a photo during Melissa's wedding. This was the photo I gave Donna. I took out the red eye, made the background grayscale and blurred it a bit to bring out the brightness of Judy's smile.
Mike and Judy Chaney join the newly weds Melissa and Tim Jones for a wedding portrait. This is the photo I gave Melissa for her birthday. I combined two photos in order to capture the whole arch, took out the red eye and gently blurred the background to bring out the people.
Mike and Judy Chaney join the newly weds Melissa and Tim Jones for a wedding portrait. This is the photo I gave Melissa for her birthday. I combined two photos in order to capture the whole arch, took out the red eye and gently blurred the background to emphasize the happiness in these couples.

I share these photos here not only to show off my skills in Photoshop, but also as a way to honor the Chaneys who mean so much to people who mean so much to me.

Gruene Hall: We were there (together)

On July 1, 2009, Kim and I visited historic Gruene Hall outside of New Braunfels. Standing outside, a biker saw us and offered to take our photo. We obliged — who wouldn’t? — he was a biker.

Biker photo
The biker took our photo, though I'm pretty sure his bike stole the frame.

Then, Kim took my picture outside of the historic building.

Some guy in front of Gruene Hall.

Then, I took her photo.

Kim at Gruene Hall
Kim at Gruene Hall.

And later, using Adobe Photoshop, I combined the two individual photos to create an image of us together, in front of a full view of Gruene Hall.

Gruene Hall together
Grune Hall: We were there, together.

Then, later the combined photo was printed in a Shutterfly book I made for Kim.

shutterfly book
The Shutterfly book I made for Kim to remember our 2009 summer vacation across central Texas.
Gruene Hall photo in book
Here is the adjusted photo as published in the Shutterfly book.

Of course, the gallery of the photos I took during our Summer 2009 vacation can be seen here: day one and day two.

News page layout and design

At the Tomball Potpourri, not only was I tasked with writing stories and taking photos to accompany the stories, but I also designed the interior news pages using QuarkXPress and Adobe Photoshop.

Here are the page I designed for the March 7, 2007 issue.

I was in charge of writing all headlines, sizing the photographs and creating graphics to accompany the stories.

layout work
My layout work on the March 7, 2007 issue of the Tomball Potpourri.

Download the PDF of my March 7, 2007 layout design.