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!

Vane Tempest sessions on a boat!

This Monday we're holding our most exclusive Vane tempest Sessions on the Prince Bishop, a boat that sails up and down the River Wear. During the day the boat normally transports tourists to see the sights of the city from the river but at night it is hired out for birthdays, barbecues and this time round for a gig!

As this is the last Vane Tempests Sessions of the year, it required a nice new set of publicity. I decided to embrace fully the predictable nautical theme but put my own stamp onto it by hand drawing rope and a life belt in the same style as previous flyers and posters. I especially like the coiled up rope, it was simple to do yet effective I think.

I originally only had colour on the blue and white stripes (incidentally, they're from a top of mine that I scanned!) but it looked a bit dull. I tried to make the life belt red in sections but it didn't look good so it ended up being font that was highlighted.

This poster was rather hastily put together this evening because we decided it would be good to have something bigger to catch peoples eye. I think it does the job okay.

I'm looking forward to this event on Monday night. The music is promising to be of a really high standard. Sir Paul McCartney is a fan of Thomas J. Speight which is a promising start and Rams' Pocket Radio is currently on tour with Foy Vance. If you've never made it along to Vane Tempest Sessions before and you don't have plans yet for next week than this isn't one to miss! Even if you have been before, this is looking like an evening on a par with Dry the River and Flight Brigade.

See you on Monday!

my day job

A couple of months ago I started a new job at A Way Out in Stockton. It's an amazing charity that really does saves people's lives. I'd fully recommend you to check out the website and the work the charity does.

My job title is Fundraising Admin Assistant but I'm not entirely sure whether that gives the right impression of what I do. It sounds quite office based and a bit boring (at least that's what I thought when I was offered the role)! But in fact I love my job! It does have a more admin side to e.g. writing thank you letters to people who have donated money but that's a nice thing to do anyway. 

Our first big event - a jumble sale with a twist

But the vast majority of my job is to do with event planning. I'm one of two staff members in the brand new Fundraising department which means that we get to be really creative. All the work we've been doing so far has been centred around local, community events. These range from gig nights to fashion shows, golfing days to glamorous balls. So on a 'normal' day I might be pricing up Gucci boots for a designer jumble sale before heading out to a country estate to negotiate prices on a golfing day, then creating a running order for a gig and maybe designing a poster to advertise it!

I've blurred out the address as it was somebody's home

The poster design aspect of my job isn't one that I anticipated being allowed to devote so much time to. But good publicity is essential to promoting an event and so spending a bit of extra time making it look eye-catching and attractive is worthwhile. I've really enjoyed getting some more practice in graphic design and I really like thinking about the target markets for different events and trying to think of something that will really appeal to them.

Our under 18s warm-up to the festival season

I consider myself lucky to have such a fun job (even if I still have to write risk assessments and keep budgets)!

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!

New Term, New Artwork

Term 2 flyer design

We'd been running Vane Tempest Sessions for a term and it seemed like a good idea to produce some fresh artwork in case people were getting bored of the old flyers. I decided to keep the logo and ripped paper on a  brown background for continuity's sake and kept the design hand-drawn but replaced the main tree with a floral design which feels appropriately vintage-y.

Back of flyer

On the back of the flyer, I put the line-up for five consecutive weeks, rather than three (as I did previously), meaning we could print off a bigger batch which have stayed in date for longer.

Poster for February 5th 2011

We also had an extra push when Wolf Gang came to play because they were a slightly bigger band, supported by Emily and the Woods and we were running the night in association with the Grove, a student poetry society. All of this was very exciting so we printed off an extra run of posters, using their own artwork as a background.

Vane Tempest Sessions

Back in October a friend asked me if I wanted to think about starting a live music night for students in Durham. After a lot of coffees and planning meetings we began Vane Tempest Sessions (named after the room we use in the Students Union). We promote up and coming indie/ folk artists from around the country and have talented Durham students supporting. My friend tends to oversee the music side of things, booking bands etc, whereas I'm responsible more for the creative side of things such as designing the artwork, but it all overlaps quite a lot.

Some of the objects we've collected

Our venue has a capacity of about 140 people so the gigs are really intimate and we make the most of this atmosphere with lanterns, fairy lights, vintage items and leather sofas.

Our first ever flyer design

When I was designing the logo I went for the hand-drawn look as a contrast to all of the computerised artwork out there at the moment and it's gone down really well.

Christmas Special flyer

It's so much fun being involved in something like this and I get to see so much live music which is fantastic. We've had bands such as Athlete, Emily and the Woods and Dry The River come play for us.