Flora June Blair’s Birth Announcement

Oh. I’m so excited! I get to share June’s Birth Announcement with you today. It was illustrated by the tremendously talented Apryl Stott and continues the birth announcement series we started with baby Ralph. I love that it shows June in a mountain-y Colorado backdrop. And the fox and bunny? We’ve actually seen them both in our backyard here. What do you think? Adorable, right?

Apryl sent the finished artwork in a mat, ready to be framed. I can’t wait to frame it and add it to our collection in the nursery. We adore having all the original artwork in our home! Apryl also included a disk with a high-resolution scan so we can easily print these announcements at a smaller size and mail them to friends and family.

June is clearly delighted with how it turned out:

If you’re curious what the process is like working with an illustrator, here’s a brief description. 1) I contacted Apryl and asked her to illustrate the birth announcement. We discussed a few ideas, but really, I knew Apryl would come up with something wonderful. 2) Apryl sent back a sketch in black and white:

3) I loved it! I showed the sketch to the kids and we decided to switch out the stuffed animals for a fox and rabbit. We sent our feedback to Apryl and she sent us an updated sketch. 4) We gave the updated sketch two thumbs up, at which point, Apryl made the final drawing and mailed it to us. Yay!

Apryl is the best kind of person to work with. If you’re interested in something like this for your birth announcements, I can’t recommend her enough.

74 thoughts on “Flora June Blair’s Birth Announcement”

  1. This is so creative and beautiful – I love how you get the original artwork and the announcments are prints from it. Kind of wished I had done this!

  2. I’ve been wondering if the “Flora” part of baby June’s name was inspired by Ralph’s April Fool’s Day blog joke or if it was a name you were already kicking around. Can you share the story behind her name as you did with the other children when you were pregnant with June?

  3. What a brilliant idea! I’ve been spinning my wheels trying to figure out what kind of announcement we’ll do. Since everyone is expecting super awesome, this fits perfectly! :)

  4. She did a fantastic job with all of your announcements. Such a neat idea to hang all of the originals, as well. The announcement is almost as cute as little June herself. Congrats, again!

    Melissa

  5. Very nice! I read your reasoning for why you hired out the design on the link to your other kids’ announcements, even though you’re a graphic designer. Boy, I don’t know if I could do that! But I get why you did and they came out great. When my best friend (who is also a graphic designer) had her first a year ago I made a typographic print with his name and birth stats as a gift. She ended up using it as his announcement, just adding a photo and printing them on her gocco. I think she was relieved to not have to come up with a design in those first few weeks with a new baby!

  6. How strange that you have 2 sets of babies born so close in dates! :)

    I love little Oscar looking thrilled to death to see June!

    Oh, and I second Susan’s request about her name!

  7. gosh your family is beautiful! love your blog. I am a new mom and I want to buy pretty much everything you spotlight. :)

  8. I love Apryl, I totally ripped your idea off when I was pregnant with my first. She’s designed both of my girls’ announcements and as I’m pregnant with my third child, I’ll be contacting her soon about another one.

    I live in San Francisco and both of my daughters’ announcements have SF landmarks that are dear to us (our neighborhood park and Palace of Fine Arts) and I also copied your style of having the sibling in the background on the other announcements. Apryl was so easy to work with, I sent her pictures of the landmarks and she sent me black+white drafts to get my feedback. Love the process and her talent.

    Thank you so much for recommending Apryl. I too completely recommend her. And I love that I have a keepsake artwork to have forever too.

  9. Must pipe in that June is ADORABLE (Still!) and that I’ve worked with Apryl, too, and she blew me away with what she came up with (to my odd request). She’s fantastically talented and a joy to work with!

    June’s birth announcement is stunning and a work of art!

  10. Cute announcement but nothing compared to that ADORABLE child next to the announcement. Are you going to start shopping her around to Gap Baby? Good grief she is sweet.

  11. I heart the announcement. As always, Apryl did an awesome job. (And I’m not just saying that because she’s my bestest friend in the whole wide world.)

  12. I love how you’ve done these for each of your kids. What a wonderful gift- and fun to see the older kids popping up in the later kids’ announcements.

    Perhaps I’ll have to create some for our kids- does it matter that the oldest ones are almost five?

  13. Whoa, Gabby! Thanks for such a glowing review!! It helped my creative process that I had such sweet inspiration. That June-bug is AH-DORABLE. As are the rest of the Blair family. So glad you like it! So glad you asked me to do it!
    xoxo

  14. Whoa–Apryl’s gonna be swamped! I love it. I was just feeling sad that I never got it together to send out announcements for my little one but maybe I could still do something like this but put it in a frame for her wall. (Is that weird?) It’s just such a sweet piece of art.

  15. Love it! Each announcement is beautiful, what a wonderful “series” you’ve built by having Apryl illustrate one for each of your children. And I LOVE the fox and rabbit, along with the mountain-y backdrop. What a great way to feature June in the landscape that she calls home!

  16. Perfection!

    I have been waiting to see this because I loved seeing Betty’s a few years ago. Oh, to be a Blair baby!

  17. That is the sweetest, most unique announcement I’ve ever seen! Plus, love the picture of her next to it – she’s growing so fast! Thanks for sharing…

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