Only a few more weeks to go before it’s Halloween once more. If you’re thinking of hosting a Halloween party, we’ve got plenty of Halloween-themed images for you to choose from.

Invitation Cards

How do you kick off a grand Halloween party? Start with sending out invites to your prospective guests. Whether you want them cute or a little on the spooky side, these illustrations would make a cool backdrop for invitation cards.

Halloween-themed illustration featuring a Skeleton Standing Beside a Black Cat and a Tombstone

 Posters

Now that you’ve sent out your invites, it’s time to work on the details.

Do you want your guests to follow a particular dress code? Are there a few house rules that you’d like to announce in advance?

Putting up an informative poster or two would be the way to go.

Just take your pick among these Halloween-themed images and add your own text. With their bright colors and catchy designs, they’d be hard to miss.

Halloween-Themed Illustration Featuring a Jack-o’-Lantern Holding a Blank Wooden Board

Printables

With all the parties that everyone will be throwing come Halloween, your party needs something that will make it stand out – something that will give it a personal touch – like these cute and trendy images for example.

Available in ready to print formats, these images would look great on cake toppers, place holders, buntings, and loot bag labels to name a few.

Halloween-Themed Illustration Featuring Cute and Colorful Sugar Skulls

Greeting Cards

No party would be a success without the guests, so make sure you let them know you appreciate their attendance.

Pulling them aside for a short, personal chat would do, but sending them a thank you card after the party would work too.

You could easily order them in bulk, or you could also get a stock illustration or two and personalize it according to your taste. The image below could give you a good start.

Halloween-Themed Illustration Featuring Colorful Scarecrows

If you maintain a personal blog or a commercial website, these images could also come in handy the next time you update your web pages — like after your fabulous Halloween party, perhaps?

Halloween-Themed Illustration Featuring the Silhouette of a Haunted House

What are you waiting for?

Get off your chair now and get that party rolling!

(^_^)

It’s no wonder more and more people are experimenting with Asian themes. From homes and establishments using traditional Asian decorations, serving traditional Asian food, and selling traditional Asian costumes with a slightly modern twist – the growing appreciation for practically all things Asian is quite easy to see.

Illustration depicting a cute female cartoon character wearing a Cheongsam
(traditional Chinese dress) –
a fairly popular design choice for people putting up posters or
sending out invites for Asian-themed parties.

And that’s no longer just limited to things that you can touch and try because interest in learning Asian languages and understanding the inner workings of the Asian culture is also seeing a notable increase.

Illustration featuring a cute Japanese girl wearing a Yukata (traditional Japanese costume).
Often used as accompanying illustrations for articles espousing the beauty of Japan and its culture
such as those that appear in travel magazines or tourism brochures)

Just take a look at the number of websites that are offering language lessons as well as the personal and commercial blogs that detail observations of the Asian culture that have been sprouting on the internet lately.

Illustration such as this cute Filipino boy wearing a Barong Tagalog (traditional Filipino costume)
often show up as an accompanying drawing for websites
that offer Tagalog lessons or books discussing the Filipino culture)

Aside from language and culture sites, there are also blogs and websites handing out beauty and fashion ideas inspired by popular Asian trends.

Cute illustrations like this lovely girl wearing a Hanbok (traditional Korean costume)
seem to appear fairly often on the labels of beauty products
as well as accessories like socks and handkerchiefs.

Quite interesting, don’t you think?

Of course whether we’ll be seeing more of them in the coming years or if they will just prove to be a temporary fascination to people who are looking for some novelty is still open to argument, but right now one thing is for sure – they’re just some of the cutest things.

Beach

Enough said.

Who wouldn’t want to go to the beach on a hot, summer day to cool off their bodies in crystal blue waters or sink their feet into the sand while walking under the shade of tall coconut trees? Just like this illustration of ladies enjoying a walk in the sand, it’s a welcome change to the hectic work days we usually have to contend with.

Illustration by BNP Design Studio

Refreshing, isn’t it?

Reunions

Home is where the heart is, so wherever we may be currently settling now, we’ll always find a way to go back home.  That is why reunions are so popular during this time, because aside from Christmas vacation, summer holidays are some of our few chances to meet up with loved ones and catch up on the recent happenings on our lives.

Illustration by BNP Design Studio

Scenes like these kids taking advantage of the summer vacation to hang out with and fool around?

Priceless.

Sales

With so many people hitting the beach and other popular vacation destinations in the summer, malls and other shopping places take the opportunity to encourage customers to shop by offering big discounts on selected items.

Illustration by BNP Design Studio

Swimsuits, swimming gear, summer accessories, food, coolers – those are some of the items that usually top the list of summer must-haves – like these trendy shopping-related illustrations below:

Cool, right?

How about you? What are the things you like the most about summer?

Lunch at the studio has always been enjoyed with movies and lighthearted banter; however, these days, a new pastime has been keeping both the hands and minds of the BNP Design Studio staff busy.

We’re talking about Scrabble.

Indeed, intense bouts of silence alternated with the sound of chewing as players contemplate where to place their tiles on the Scrabble board to snag the most number of points.

One of the score sheets we used during some of our previous Scrabble games.

That’s how competitive the players have been in the last several days that instead of playing random games, we decided to hold a mini-Scrabble tournament in the office to decide who will be the last one standing.

To do this, we divided the staff into three groups, with the winner of each group moving on to face each other in the championship match.

The BNP Design Studio staff playing in their respective teams.

After players have been assigned to their respective groups, we discussed the rules of the game and decided on which dictionary we’re going to use for reference should doubts about the validity of a move has been challenged. Once that was out of the way, we moved on to the actual matches.

Every man for himself. BNP Design Studio oblivious of the other players as they think about the best possible moves.

The matches started out slow, with a good number of the players settling for less than impressive scores while waiting for favorable openings that could come later in the game; however, as the game progressed, the players started to become more proactive in letting higher-scoring tiles go and using manipulative tactics to lure their opponents into playing words that would work to their advantage.

This is gonna be a long day… BNP Design Studio staff holding on to their higher scoring tiles while waiting for more favorable openings.

This resulted in matches that took longer than we initially anticipated, so we were forced to call it a day after the first round of matches concluded and leave the championship match for another day.

In the end, our art director, computer programmer, and one of our writers won in their respective brackets, although we have yet to see who will be the one left on top once we find the time to hold the championship match.

Stick around for updates! ^^

Two years after we launched the T-shirt project that you all know now as talk@tee, we are very excited to tell you that aside from our virtual store at www.talkatee.com and the BNP Design Studio located along Diversion Road in Ilayang Dupay, Lucena City,  you can now check out our latest t-shirt products at our first physical store that had just its soft opening last August 08, 2013.

That’s right! Our baby is finally ready to venture outside. The preparations ate up quite a bit of our time that we had to set aside some of our planned playdates and turn down some project offers for the time being (T_T), but seeing all the people who have been coming to our kiosk to get their own talk@tee shirts, we can truly say that our collective efforts have been well worth it.

Photo taken during the soft opening of the talk@tee kiosk last August 08, 2013

So, what are you guys waiting for?

For those who haven’t gotten the chance to visit our store yet, do drop by at the second level of Pacific Mall Lucena, just around CD-R King and we’ll be more than happy to show you our wide array of couple, Pinoy, statement, and other random shirts.

See you guys there! \(^_^)/

Organizing a pirate-themed birthday bash for your little boy; making a cute, romantic envelope for your love letter to your amour; or a scrapbook of the most memorable moments in your life – those are just some of the things you can do with printables.

Not familiar with printables? Printables are ready to print illustrations that you can download from the internet and print with your own computer. They usually come packaged in groups, but there are also some printable makers that allow people to mix and match different bundles according to their preferences.

Our artists have been making printables for some time now, but the rest of the BNP team hasn’t had much opportunities to experiment with them, so we decided to make party printables the topic for this month’s playdate.

We’ve been hosting friendly competitions since we split up the team into three groups a couple of months ago, so before we started, the members of each team were asked to pick a theme first. The first team picked a pirate theme, the second one chose a “glam girl” theme, and the last team went for Halloween.

After we’re done picking themes, we started to choose the things we’ll be using for the activity. Each group were asked to pick three items from a predetermined set (buntings, cup wrappers, cupcake wrappers, cupcake toppers, table toppers, straw flags, invitation cards) so everyone got busy discussing what they’re going to pick.

After all the teams have decided what they’re going to do, we started gathering the materials we’re going to need.

All three teams pretty much used the same materials, although some groups threw in a couple more for some extra touch.

Since we were on the topic of printables, we just browsed our database for existing designs that match our chosen themes, then we had the artists from our teams group them together in one file.

When everything was finally ready, we printed the designs, then we started snipping away the unnecessary edges. The buntings were quite easy to cut because they’re triangular in shape, but the cupcake and cup wrappers were a bit tricky because they are circular, so we had to make sure that the length and width of the printables matched the measurements of the cups and cupcakes so the edges would fit snugly.

After we’re done cutting, we moved on to gluing the items we printed and cut to their respective places. When everything has been glued, we thrust the cupcake toppers on top of the cupcakes then we started arranging the designs together so we can take some photos of the final products.

Below are some shots from the activity.

What do you think?

If you’re interested in trying it out for yourself, you can download one of the printables we used for this activity. We’ll also be releasing more printable designs soon, so do watch out for them.

(^_^)

Let’s start with the materials.

The most important thing you’d need in making popup art is the paper. You don’t really have to use any special kind, but you do have to make sure that it has the right amount of thickness for the project. A piece of paper that is too thin would have difficulties holding up while a piece of paper that is too thick would be difficult to fold. Usually, an Oslo paper should be enough to do the job.

Aside from the paper we’d also need a protractor or a ruler (we’d have to use it to measure the angles of the folds), glue or double-sided tape (for sticking the popup art to its base), and a pair of scissors to cut out pieces of paper into our desired shape.

Ruler, specialty paper, colored paper, glue, and a pair of scissors: some of the materials we used for the project.

When the materials are all set, we’d begin by picking a design. Pop-ups can either be paper cutouts glued or taped to the base, or strips of paper that are carved into the base. Which one you want to use is totally up to you, but if you neither have the time nor patience to draw or carve complicated designs unto paper, printing a digital design then cutting the parts you need out is a faster and easier alternative.

If you’re going to use a cutout design, though, try to leave an extra centimetre or two of blank space from the edge of your design because we’d be using it to prop it up.

After you have the design cut out, we’ll start folding the paper. To make the folding easier, you can use any object with a blunt end like a bread knife or an old ball point pen that has no more ink to make indentations on the parts that we’re going to be folding.

However, before we fold the design, we’ll fold the extra centimetre of blank space that we set aside earlier first then slip it under the design until it’s no longer visible. When we’re done with that, we’d start folding the design itself. While doing this, make sure that the spaces between either side of the design is even (e.g. 45 degrees to the right; 45 degrees to the left starting from the middle) so the pop-up design would close down and open up nicely.

After that, we’ll apply some glue or stick a strip of double-sided tape on the stand then press it tightly against the base. For good measure, you can also stick another strip of paper (the same width as the other stand) at the back of the designs so it will be easier for the designs to pop up when you open the card or the book.

An example of the kinds of stands you can use to prop up your pop-up design.

When all of those are done, just hold the back cover of the card or book, press it down against the front cover until the pop up design in the middle is flattened it out. Hold it down for a bit, then after a few seconds, open the card or the book, and the design should pop up. If it didn’t close down properly, you might have to adjust the angles of the stands supporting the back of the designs, but other than that, that should be pretty much everything.

Photo showing one of the finished products starring Tok, Kat, and Tee from our talk@tee World of Tokkats collection.

So, how did it go? Let us know the result of your experiment below.

Plenty of materials can be used for stop motion. Some of these are clay figures, wooden mannequins, and paper cut outs — but for this activity, we’re going to use the last one to do our little experiment.

There are no special materials necessary. We just used a whiteboard to sketch the storyboard and draw the backdrop, a digital camera to photograph the different poses (using a tripod is optional, although we recommend using one to make the camera steadier and the shots clearer), a photo editing software to remove unnecessary objects in the photographs, a video editing software to place the photos side by side and play them in sequence, and a printer to print out the illustrations we’re going to use for the project.

Before we started with the project, though, we tried to come up with a storyline first. The direction you want your story to go to is completely up to you, but we suggest you try to start with a simple one first because the more complicated the story is, the more photos it’s going to require; and believe us, taking photographs, sorting them out, and editing them could take quite a while.

After a few minutes of deliberation, we decided to do a short featuring characters from talk@tee’s World of Tokkats taking a jeepney ride, and to give us a better idea of how the project would play out, we did a storyboard featuring sketches of each proposed frame.

After we were done with that, we started drawing the would be background by drawing a typical cityscape on a whiteboard.

Photo of the background illustration used for the stop motion project.

Normally, we would have taken care of the characters first, but since we already had the designs we’re going to use on file, we simply printed them out and placed them against the background. Once that was done, we started taking photographs.

To do this, we assigned one person to take the shots, one person to hold the lights, one person to move the cutouts along the background, three people to move the whiteboard to make the illusion that the jeepney the characters are riding on is moving along the highway, and six people to cheer from the background (Go, guys!)

All in all, 175 shots were taken, 152 of which made it to the final video. Some of the photos had to be discarded because of continuity errors and lighting issues (we had to shoot indoors under artificial lighting, so we had to make some adjustments every now and then) and some new photos had to be taken because editing some parts out would have taken more time and effort.

When the photos that would be used for the video have been picked, we superimposed some text on the photos in the extro to let people know where to get their own talk@tee shirts.

After that, we used a video editing software to place the chosen photos side by side and play them in sequence then we we gave it a final touch by adding some music on the background – the result of which you’ll see in the video below:

How about you guys, have you tried this before? Do you have any tips or stories that you can share? (^_^)

It’s summer time once again!

One of our colleagues who was in charge of the report discussed the brief history of kite flying and the different types of kites

After that, we grouped ourselves into three then each group get to choose which design to make based on talkatee characters, Tok, Kat, and Tee.

Hey, you can also join us in kite-making! All you have to do is follow these simple and easy step by step process:

1. First, you have to prepare all the materials needed. Here are the materials we’ve used:

• Sticks
• Japanese Paper
• Scissors
• Glue/Tape
• Nylon Cord/ Strings

2. Prepare the frame or spine of the kite by making a cross-like pattern. Place the smaller stick half-way higher than the center. Secure its position by reinforcing the intersection with string or tape.

3. Plot the japanese paper onto the frame then make an outline of the design. Cut out the paper according to your desired design.

4. Firmly fasten the Japanese Paper onto the frame with the use of scotch tape. After that, you can add some tail or “fins” that can add stability to the kite.

5. Make two holes near the cross section of the frame. Feed the string onto the hole and tie them making a keel. You can now draw some additional design on your kite.

It’s done! Now you can make your kite fly. Here’s our very own Kat from talk@tee Kite, look at how it soars high in the sky!