Birth announcements for a future fisherman

Birth announcements are one of my absolute favorite projects, mostly because the designs are so freaking cute (almost as cute as the babies that inspire them), but the main reason is because in comparison to the number of wedding invitations I design, birth announcements seem like a rarity. This particular design was inspired by the father's love for fishing. He's borderline obsessed with it and lucky for him, his first-born is a boy (which in my mind means that Dad has a better chance of taking his kid fishing than if he was a she, not to stereotype or anything).

Instead of going over the top on the announcement with the fish theme we decided to keep it quite simple using a rusty orange ink, a monogram and simple border and incorporated the fish using an envelope liner. We bought the Flora & Fauna Marine Fish & Irish Algae Wrapping Paper from Paper-Source and trimmed it down into about 8 liners per sheet so that there were a bunch of different cropped images from the 1 large design. What I love most about the liners is that the images aren't small detailed fish illustrations. The fish are so large on the original sheet that when they are trimmed down you see these crazy big eyes or detailed scales. The immediate thought when you open the envelope isn't necessarily that it's lined with fish drawings - it takes a few seconds to realize what you're looking at.

While I was initially a bit put off by the idea of designing around fish (realistic fish, not cutesy cartoon-like fish), I was thrilled with our end result! Take a peek:

{Photos by Brea McDonald Photography}

{Wrapping paper via Paper-Source}