All Aboard.

Chris and I were hard at work this fine holiday weekend. As I mentioned, our Southern Exposure piece is all about an old train line that ran through the Mission. And since I love you guys (and apparently love talking about myself), here's a sneak peak of what this Saturday will look like.

The first thing I've been finishing up is the design for the vinyl markers that will follow the old train route. The markers will featured a little blurb about the history of the route and also tell participants where the next "stop" is. The final stop will be a train depot that my handy husband built.

Mock up of vinyl markers as installed.

There, Chris (dressed in a great old vest and tie combo along with a pocket watch) will greet the "passengers" and give each of them a ticket. Chris has been busy drawing old trains and stations from the route. I then scanned them into Photoshop and played technicolor wizard to make them look like old postcard images. They will go on the back of the train tickets with a nice little anecdote about the line. There will be four different ticket designs. Two of the original drawings are below.

The front of the ticket will be fashioned after old train tickets. Chris will write the passenger's name on the ticket and then punch whichever "stop" that they boarded the train. Each ticket will be numbered and lettered differently so each ticket will in fact be an original. Who has two thumbs and is super excited to print and cut out 125 of these bad boys? This girl!

Click on ticket to see more detail.

So that's where we are at today. I still need to finish up the research, design the last two tickets, finish the vinyl, get the vinyl cut, print the tickets, cut out the tickets and prep the vinyl for install. Oh, and Chris gets to finish the depot. You know what I'm thankful for this year? Caffeine!!