this is to invite you to....

I mentioned in a previous blog that I've been spending a lot of my spare time planning a wedding and here is a chance to see some of what I've been up to!

Seeing as we've now given out all our invites there doesn't seem to be any need to keep it a secret any more!

I was inspired by browsing other wedding invites on Pinterest but we wanted to have something that was still unique to us.

Jonny (my fiance) and I came up with design ideas together which included a hand-drawn tree, map and swirly branches.

The tree on the invitation section is based on a necklace that Jonny gave me when he proposed and the leaves were painstakingly coloured in by hand to have a more authentic gold look that was tricky to achieve with a printer!

The fabric used to tie up the invites is the same material my mum and aunt are using to make our ushers' waistcoats. And the green colour is a fairly close match to the material of the bridesmaid's dresses.

The ivory and walnut coloured card came from a great company I discovered called Eco Craft who produce high quality recycled card and paper. And we also got our labels and envelopes from them too!

Putting the invites together was definitely a team effort and at one point Jonny, me, my two brothers, my mum and my cousin Sorren were all involved in cutting fabric, tying bows, filling in John Lewis cards, colouring in leaves, writing envelopes etc! 

 

My brother Simon refused to look at any design ideas because he wanted the final result to be a surprise! So he was the first to receive an invite meaning we could then get him to help us make the rest!

Last-Minute and on a Shoe-String

We're running Vane Tempest Sessions for one final night this year and decided fairly last minute that it would be a good idea to have a poster to remind students we were back after the Easter holidays. However there wasn't any time to get posters printed in colour so I went for the black and white approach to keep costs down when printing from home. Normally publicity takes me a few hours to get looking just right but this one took about 15 minutes!

A Very Special Mix CD

Initial drawing for CD cover

Finished front cover in full colour

Back cover with track listing

My boyfriend moved to London this week for a job and I made him a few things to take with him, one of which was a mix CD. I think I had more fun designing and making the cover than putting together the track listing although the whole project was very fun! 

I've designed a CD cover before for a friend who records his own music and I really enjoyed it so it was good to remind myself of that. The previous one was in a similar style with a fairly intricate pen line drawing painted over with watercolour (but unfortunately I never got the original back so I can't post it here).

I loved the look of this artwork when it was just a matt finish but one spilt cup of tea and it would be ruined so I covered it with sticky-back plastic too.

Hopefully this won't be the last CD design to make it onto this blog. They make very good presents so I may well be tempted to design more...

Ribbon Willow

Welcome to my blog! I'm planning on posting about the different creative projects I've been up to which could be photography or graphic design or sewing... I've been trying my hand at film making recently as well so that may find it's way onto here. I hope you enjoy looking at it!

Willow Tree, July 2009, Bishops Stortford

Jan 2009, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Sketch for Vane Tempest Sessions

I love trees, they seem to pop up all the time in artwork I've done or photos I've taken so it seemed appropriate to use the name of one for my blog. I also wanted to come up with something memorable and slightly whimsical that I can use for labels on things I make. My friend Jon came up with this idea and it stuck. So after a quick Google search just to make sure it was original, Ribbon Willow was created!