Urban Undercover designs smarter multi-functional essentials that fit better, look better and last longer so you can go about experiencing life. Their practical yet adorable travel tuck pouch makes discretely carrying an extra pair easy. Sairey, the brains and design power behind this operation, and I happen to share a love for black and white with a touch of funky flair which made this project a perfect match. What started as a simple refresh turned into a full blown makeover and I am totally loving the end product we created together. Below is a sneak peak into our brand design process and the full blown custom designed wordpress woocommerce site we launched earlier this summer.
Another beautiful hand lettered brand from this past spring. Winx Lash & Makeup Studio has been consistently voted Houston’s Best Lash Salon and I had so much fun working with owner, Trishia Wiggins, on her new brand and learning all about lashes! Trishia new the new vibe she was going for with her new brand we just had to figure out exactly what that looked like. We had fun translating some of the exact paint colors of her studio to her new brand and working with different variations of hand drawn styles and glyphs for Winx. In the end, Trishia went with the hand drawn calligraphy concept – which I loved as well! I also had the opportunity to design their print material along with their brand new wordpress website which is showcased below.
I’ve been trying to get caught up from my maternity leave and this is the first in a string of beautiful brands I have yet to launch from my pre-Marshall days. Mikel Rumsey is a super stylish hair and makeup artist out of South Carolina who also has a love for fashion. Her work as been featured in Martha Stewart Weddings, The Knot, Weddings Unveiled, Tryve Magazine, Geraldine Magazine, and Smitten Magazine, as well as Style Me Pretty, Southern Weddings, Grey Likes Weddings, Wedding Chicks…the list goes on. Mikel came to Salted Ink looking for a full brand makeover that spoke more to her own individual style. From the soft and neutral color palette to the hand lettered brush pen logo, this brand is truly one after my own heart.
It has been a wonderful (and exhausting) 2 months but I am wrapping up my maternity leave and getting ready to get back to it. For the rest of 2015, I will be accepting 5 to 7 new branding clients (depending on project depth) with projects starting as early as August 15th and I am so pumped to start designing again – even though I might still have a little spit up in my hair.
On August 3rd, I will have my client contact form back live on my website ready to accept inquiries and can’t wait to hear from you! My 2015 Media Kit is also currently available for review and download at this time so feel free to take a look at our offerings for the fall/winter and see if I am a good fit for your business branding needs.
Since it’s inevitable that I can’t take on every project (please know that I so wish I could), I will be spending some serious time going through the inquiries and contacting business owners that seem to be a great fit for the Salted Ink process. Therefore, it is so very helpful when potential clients spend time filling up the contact form with helpful and awesome info to give me an insight into their business right off the bat. I promise there is a reason for all of those questions!
And to those of you that have contacted me during my leave, please know I so appreciate your interest, thank you so much for your well wishes, and I hope to hear from you soon.
Man, it’s been a while but I promise I have a good reason…it’s this little guy pictured above. As most of you know that follow me on insta, we welcomed Marshall Everett Dart on May 27th. He came into this world with a set of lungs and some seriously strong little legs. Since then, this dude has been giving us a run for our money as first time parents. He is stubborn like his mom, has his dad’s nose and loves to go for walks and rides in the car. He isn’t too sure about his furry brown brothers yet but I think they are growing on each other. This kid is such a blessing and we are so lucky to be his parents…sleep deprived, albeit.
And because we like to keep things interesting around here, we also moved to Charlotte about a week after Marshall was born for Scott’s new Orthopaedic Residency spot at Carolinas Medical Center. For those of you thinking about moving cities with a newborn…yeah, I didn’t think there were any of you out there. BUT we survived and lived to tell about it. We are enjoying our new home and the new family we get to put in it. Scott is currently working crazy long hours as a new resident does and I am trying to learn how to take care of this little guy on my own. Once upon a time Scott and I spent our summers biking to the beach with beer in hand. Now we are navigating diaper blowouts and sleep is worth its weight in gold. My my have times changed but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Marshall is one cool kid.
While I absolutely love being a new mom, my work makes me whole. I can’t wait to get back to it and I feel so lucky I get to do both from my little home office. I’m looking forward to designing awesome brands here soon and plan on opening up my booking again sometime in August (official announcement will follow on social media and here on the blog). In the meantime, here are some photos of the new little guy. I will also be following up with some posts on the beautiful brands launched for some pretty amazing clients this past spring.
Oh my gahhhh! I am so excited and overly humbled to finally be able to share that not one, but two of my brands are featured in this amazing book “How to Style Your Brand” by the oh so talented and genuinely sweet person, Fiona Humberstone. Even better, this book is only on preorder status right now but is already hovering around the top spot on the Amazon best seller in the UK. So very flattered to be published next to some of the very best in the industry and many of whom I have admired for years. I will be sharing more shots and details in May when the book is officially released. Lovely photograph above captured by The Floral Alchemist.
For those of you that have been following along our crazy little life journey, we finally have some official news to share. Scott and I recently found out that he snagged an amazing spot in the newest class of orthopaedic surgery residents at Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. This is such an huge accomplishment and a direct result of his hard work and dedication over the past four years in medical school and I couldn’t be more proud.
Within 36 hours of getting the news, we went under contract on a perfect little house in the Plaza Midwood area and are set to close in 2 weeks if all goes well. We are so excited to finally plant some roots as a family in the queen city without all the traveling back and forth we have been doing through Scott’s time in school, especially with little Marshall on the way here in late May. We are also very grateful we get to stay in NC, close to our family and friends and thankful that I have a job that goes right along with me without skipping an beat. And man, it’s simply just so nice to finally know where we will be living for the next 5 years! I’ll be sharing some pictures of the new place and office when we get all set up in June.
Very pumped to share this new brand for the talented Cassandra Couture, owner of Lustre. Cassandra is a classically trained couturier specializing in completely custom wedding gowns for some very lucky brides. I really enjoyed getting to know Cassandra’s style and helping bring her vision for her new brand to life. Being primarily in the wedding industry, she needed a brand that was feminine and classic. We started with a mostly neutral color palette to set a romantic tone. Our branding concepts were across the board from handwritten calligraphy to clean serif fonts. We also created a beautifully branded custom WordPress website that Cassandra will be officially launching after her own wedding this summer but a few sneak peeks of her design are included below. Best wishes to this lovely bride-to-be with her upcoming wedding in June…you can bet her wedding dress will be to die for!
Clean, Simple, Modern. That’s exactly what Alissa was going for with her new brand for Lenore Design when we started brainstorming in late 2014. She wanted a look that resembled her own interior design style but also wouldn’t compete or clash with the colors in her work when we translated it to her new website. Once we developed the main logo, we came up with a simple submark and a stacked variation for use on multiple different marketing mediums. To complete her brand, the we designed a wordpress website with lots of white space, easy navigation and a lovely portfolio to showcase all of her beautiful work.
So this is a little secret I have been holding close on the professional front for almost 22 weeks now. I always struggle with how much of my personal life my readers really want to see on my blog but I have learned over time that these posts are the insights into our lives that make us relatable and real, a bit more than just website designs and brand launches. I often find myself enjoying the little personal life snapshots my fellow designers and bloggers post the most. It’s so refreshing to hear them share their story, their struggles and their life experiences. So I made a new years resolution to do the same and be a little more open on my blog from time to time. To put real person behind this thing I call Salted Ink. I just hope I don’t bore you guys to death.
And with that resolution in mind, I’m coming out of the gate with some pretty big news on the personal front. Scott and I (and of course Finley and Bailey) are so very pumped to share that we have another dude joining this family at the end of May. We are so seriously grateful for this gift and the opportunity to start our family. This one, Marshall Everett Dart, will hopefully shed a little less and be raised to have better manners than his older, furry brothers. But of course, in this house we can’t make any promises. We are just lucky if he is potty trained by age 10.
Most of you know that Scott is also on the home stretch of med school, graduating from Virginia Tech Carilion in early May. But here is another fun fact – we have no clue where this baby will be born until the residency assignment ceremony on March 20th. We will then find out where Scott “matched” and will be rushing to get settle in before this little monster gets here and Scott starts his job in mid-June. This has been our impending doom ever since Scott left for school. We always knew we were going to be assigned a residency spot (with little control) that would determine where we spend the next several years so we are very anxious and ready – I think. There are several places we could end up, mostly on the east coast, but we are crossing our fingers and toes for one of our top picks for sure. Most of all, we are looking forward to finally settling into a place we can call home together for a while instead of the constant back and forth between cities and states. And I will also simultaneously start my official countdown to our move back to the beach when the residency is complete. Oh how I miss that place and those people.
So that’s a little peek into our crazy lives here at the Dart household. This year should be packed full of exciting, challenging and life changing events and I look forward to sharing a bit more with you guys as we carry out our little journey. That along with some lovely brand designs, of course. Here’s to an unforgettable 2015!
Final Brand Styling and Print Materials
