Feature Friday: The Parfumerie Rug

Thank goodness it's Friday.  For many reasons!  I've got a teething baby and can't wait for my husband to take over.  The weather is (still!!) nice here and we've got big beach plans.  But most of all, I've got a spiffy new feature courtesy of yours truly and Laura!  We designed this one together and gave it to our Mom for Mother's Day.  We present:  The Parfumerie Rug.

Laura called me and she said, "One of my customers is going on about how great vintage labels are.  Let's recreate a label and put it on a rug for Mom's kitchen."

So we did!  I created the initial design.  It's interesting, because I am so accustomed to designing for digital use, I never worry about the stuff that's important to stencil design.  Things like the weight of the type used, where the breaks will be to ensure the letters don't just fall out of the mylar.  Here's my initial work in Illustrator I sent to Laura.

If you notice, the fonts used for "Double Ambree" and "Parfumerie, et al" have a distressed, aged look.   Well she called me right back and said, "That's not going to work.  When I weight the type (you want stencil fonts to be on the heavy side so they aren't so delicate when cut) all those imperfections are going to be magnified."  So we switched those out and as lovely as that script for "Paris" is, there were going to be way too many breaks for it to cut successfully.  So that got swapped for a more Gothic looking font. 

She also commented on the negative space underneath the "Marque Deposee" bit.  "There needs to be something there!"  So I hunted around and found a little Victorian doodad that would fit in.

I think the changes made were good ones, both for style and utility.  Let's face it, no matter how terrific something looks, if you can't use it correctly as a stencil, what's the point?  So this was a great learning experience and Mom loved the finished product.

We've done a few more of these typography stencils and so far the response has been superb.  You can check them out here in our French category in the Maisondestencils store.

Have a wonderful weekend!