Joel & Christina

This past weekend Joel and Christina celebrated their engagement with some photos near their home at the beautiful Lake Errock. We were joined by their precious daughter Jaima and boxer Juno, whose enthusiasm for visiting the park couldn't be dampened even by the rain! Thanks for inviting me to join in the celebration, I loved getting to know your family and can't wait to continue the party next summer!

A Christmas Favourite

This illustration for Phil Callaway's article in the November issue of Insights will go down as one of my favourites. Danny Brown had a great first Christmas.

I hope you're getting as ready for the holidays as I am! (my work brain has already moved past christmas into 2013, but my home brain is itching to get decorating!)

Dreams

I'm starting to grow dreams.

I've never been a dreamer. It is much safer to concentrate on the here and now than to hope for something bigger tomorrow. Its easier to be content with what's on my plate when I don't think about what could be on it tomorrow. Its much less frightening to look straight ahead than to look up or down and acknowledge the heights I could be climbing.

safer. easier. less frightening.
boring. stale. irresponsible.

We've been given many gifts, and I don't thing God gave me mine for me to keep clean and dress up on holidays. So, I'm starting to grow dreams. Its scary, and each opportunity that approaches makes me wince, shrivel up, and want to hide. But instead, I plug my nose, squeeze my eyes shut, and jump.

Working with // Pinterest

I have a confession: I am not the methodical type. I think it must be part of my creative process: I rarely approach a project the same way twice. I design a monthly magazine, so you'd think I'd be able to nail down some sort of process...but inspiration can come from anywhere! More often than not I find myself staring at my computer/sketch book with only a vague idea of where to begin.

On any given project I usually have an idea of what kind of feel I'd like to achieve. Sometimes its a feeling, sometimes its a certain crowd, and sometimes its simply the time of year - I am just beginning to work on our December issue, which needs to head in the winter direction.

I love having a colour palette nailed down before I even begin working on images to help the magazine become a cohesive whole. To start, I create a pinterest board and collect images that express what I hope to achieve. I did a quick gather of wintery images that suited, then I narrowed it down to three that nicely rounded out the colour palette.

I usually try to get a good neutral, a dark tone, and a pop or two of colour. I can't go too light, or I will end up trying to set type in beige that anyone over the age of 27 won't be able to read. Kinda a problem considering my target audience...

Step two is to visit one of my favourite (albiet ugly) website tools, CSS Drive Colors Palette Generator to turn my images into a big set of swatches. There are other sites that do this as well, but I just love how quickly this works for me so I've stuck with it. I usually take screenshots of the swatches and use the eyedropper tool to narrow them down in the next step.

Step three is to narrow it down! As I've gone through the process, my "colour vision" for this wintery issue is coming together. Its not too hard to narrow it down to a set of 5 or 6 colours that I plan to base my images on. Often it changes a bit as I work, and it usually ends up being 2 or 3 swatches that show up consistently, but having an established palette makes me feel like I've got paint on the canvas. Not so daunting anymore!

I usually drop these blocks of colour on the sides of my indesign document as I work through the articles to keep them fresh in my mind. I've used this same process when working on websites or logos, whenever I feel like a fresh or strong colour palette is especially important to the design.

I haven't even started on images yet for this magazine: and I can't predict what the end product will look like. I can't even promise that I'll remember to blog about it as a follow-up. No matter...I had fun, stretching creative muscles in a way that doesn't feel like work. Kinda like free-style dancing after a long day of yoga. Not that I've ever done that...! Happy day :)

Our Wedding Album!

I finally did it! Got my butt in gear and ordered our wedding album! I had it 95% done for the past 2 or 3 months but procrastinated finalizing the files. Let's blame the weather. 

I can't say enough how THANKFUL I am for these incredible photos by Sharalee Prang. I put so much work into our wedding day and she captured it in a way that still makes it seem surreal! What I absolutely love about her photography is her aptitude to capture "the important stuff." She didn't miss any of my work-intensive details, but she also didn't miss a single ear-to-ear grin from my loved ones! Every time I look at this album I get this feeling that no one wanted to be anywhere but at Saar Bank Farms on that beautiful cloudy august wednesday. THAT is a good memory for a bride! 

Here are some of my favourite spreads (cozy on my hand-made wedding blanket from my maid-of-honour)! 

At the back of the book I included a spread with our wedding verse (Philippians 2:1-4) and the song I chose to walk down the aisle to, "Something Beautiful" by NeedtoBreathe. And here is where I admit that I just saw my own typo. I can't believe that. You'd think I'd have made enough mistakes to know the importance of editing by now!!  Ahh well, it wouldn't represent me without a typo...

I printed via Blurb, a wonderful option for superb quality photobooks. They aren't that fancy (as far as binding options, and they don't lay flat) but the print is excellent, and they offer a variety of high-quality papers in different finishes. My favourite part is that they allow professionals to submit custom made designs and ensure colour correcting! I knew my files would be well handled. I am sure that using their automatic options would also be a great way to go. I built my book in Indesign/Photoshop and imported  a pdf. If you want to see the whole thing...here's the blurb book viewer! 

Vanderwel Wedding Album by Laura Vanderwel | Make Your Own Book

New West

On Sunday Dwayne and I fought off the lazies and decided to go to the Westminster Quay to soak in the beautiful sunshine. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as awesome as we remembered it being...it was beautiful and sunny but the "market" was dismal, so instead we found ourselves touring some old museum boat. To be honest, I didn't read any of the info cards so I really have no idea what it was used for. I took some photos, we had some gelato...and then we left 2 hours before our parking ran out, and went to Chapters. A Good day!

Cuba: $20 for One

I'm excited to share this project! Not only because it was a fun print piece, but also because its an ongoing project at Insight for Living Canada.We've been working in Cuba for the past 3 or 4 years in a variety of ways. First we sent down books for discipleship, then we sent down more books for pastors and leaders, then we had conferences for those pastors and leaders based on the books! And we're not stopping! More conferences are planned for this november and possibly next spring. 

The kind of feedback we've heard is incredible. We had to get someone to come in to translate all the letters we received all the way from Cuba-we had no idea that putting our office contact information in the back of the books would lead to all that feedback! The conferences offer the chance for pastors to dig deeper and explore things like purity, perseverance, and passion in leadership. Cuba is home to a quickly growing church and many leaders have little or no formal training. To read more about the conferences and how you can help (as well as some of the letters from Cuban pastors), visit here.

The new campaign, $20 for One, is aiming to send 2000 pastors to the next set of conferences. Each $20 donated equals out to one more pastor attending, and one more church congregation growing in the truth of Christ!