For My Brother

My wonderful brother, Marty, went to live with his heavenly Father on April 20, 2012.  He had ALS, a horrible disease that took a man who lived life with love and joy every single day.  We had his memorial service on May 9, 2012, and of course I had to make something for the service.  Instead of a little hand-out, I decided to make bookmarks so that friends and family could actually use it and remember him often.  His favorite place was the Huntington Beach Pier, thus, the photo of the pier on the bookmark.  I designed the bookmarks in Photoshop, then had them printed on glossy cardstock.  I then punched the corners and the hole, and inserted some bookmark tassels.  Here is what they looked like.

We had flower arrangements made in reds and white, as Marty was the biggest Angel baseball team fan ever.  He had season tickets right behind home base for over 30 years.  I made some cards to back photos, merging the Angel "A" to the top.  Then I cut out the white outline A and the red A, as well as the silver halos.  I ran all of the A's (over 40 total of each) and the halos through my 9" Xyron Creative Station.  It took 2' to 3' of adhesive.  I was able to take this sticker sheet with me out of town, and had family members help me assemble them.  The Xyron worked so well, and made it easy to transport the stickers and them put them all together.  I then put the photos on the backing with the tape runner, and added a floral wire between the photo and the backing. We inserted all of these into the floral arrangements.  Here is what they looked like:

The horizontal photos had the Angel's A, and the vertical ones were just backed in red.  The A's were on both sides, as were the photos.  All of the photos were different, so over 40 different photos were displayed.  You can get a glance of his life by seeing his slideshow by clicking here.

RIP my dear sweet brother