chik n' pastry

One of the reasons for starting this blog was to have a creative outlet and motivation to keep sketching and designing while on my hiatus from the working world. If I had to write each week, then I had better have something to write about, right? I must admit that my previous experience with blogs was limited to a few minutes a day when I needed a stress break between contractor phone calls and reviewing incorrect shop drawing submittals at work. It wasn’t until my good friend, Heather, started a blog about food called Chik n’ Pastry that I became more interested in the blogging world and started to explore. Although I read a lot of blogs about design, architecture, graphics, and pottery, food blogs are still my favorites. Food tends to bring people together and create some great stories and recipes to share.

When Heather asked if I would design a new blog header for her Chik n’ Pastry blog, I was excited. I had fun trying to design my own blog site. Even though it looks pretty simple, there were a lot of iterations with changes to the name, header, colors, fonts, and background images before I settled on what you see now. I am sure I will have time to play around with it again, but for now, it’s done.

As you can imagine, there were a lot of ideas that I played with for the Chik n’ Pastry blog also. Here are a few of my sketches:

One of the designs that we kept discussing was to use images of food that could be changed out with the seasons.  I also had a feeling that she would appreciate some brighter colors (sometimes it's good to work with friends if you know them well enough to know what they'd like or dislike).  I'm not sure how/when I came up with this final comic-ish design.  I might have been influenced from my husband's expansive collection of comic books and graphic novels piled on the bookshelf beside my computer.  Here is the final design:

You can get a better idea of the finished product with the borders and link bar if you go to the Chik n' Pastry website.  While you are there, don't forget to check out the blog and get some great recipes, too!


Thanks for reading!