Where have I been?

Well, nowhere. I've been doing lots of mini projects and things, and have completely forgotten to post stuff here. Below is one of my recent knitting projects: a little sweater for a wine bottle!

I thought it was pretty cute, and also practical, if you like your red wine to stay room-temperature that is. This will be a Christmas present, but I'm thinking about doing one for myself as well!

In addition to this, I've been working on the table numbers for the wedding:

They are just 3D papier-mache numbers from hobby craft, painted and with stuff stuck on them. I like the moss one the best, and it was a really relaxing activity to stick all those little foam pearls on the 1.

The thing I've spent the most time on recently though, has been setting up a little micro-business on Etsy. I enjoyed doing my own wedding invitations so much (although they still aren't completely finished) that I decided to design some more, in a downloadable format, and offer them up in an Etsy shop! I also thought it would be fun to make little notecards too:

So this is it - www.etsy.com/shop/LeMariageDePapier

Websiite

Hello!

I thought it would be a good idea to create a website for all the info on our wedding:

www.stulieswedding.co.uk

Did you see what we did there?

Final Invites

I've been doing a bit of work on the invites, and I've come up with the final design. This first one is where I started:



Then I adapted it and fiddled a bit until I got this:



I like the final one, and I think it'll probably do.

U-turn

I've had a few new ideas, which don't entirely cancel out the old ones, but "enhance" them!

I really fancy an art nouveau style, and the colour green is really appealing to me! I love this cake:


and I think these bell jars would be cute centre pieces:



Now I'm thinking about kind of bluish green bridesmaid dresses to tie the whole thing together..

More Cake Ideas

What I like about the cake above, is that it looks almost cartoony. This cake below has potential as well!



When I saw the giant-cupcakes-stack-cake I had an exciting moment when I realised that it could be three giant versions of anything stacked up...My immediate thoughts went to cadbury chocolate blocks. The picture below of a cake banana split makes me think of three giant scoops of cake ice-cream stacked up:



These others are also very nice, if slightly less fantastical:





This last one here fits my bird theme nicely. I'm starting to thing about a woodland theme as well, which would be great with my forest/woodland venue.

Pop-up Placemats

I really like these:



They could be used as place name cards...

Another One

Just finished this last invite design, which should probably be the last for a while - I could do with getting on with other things. I quite like this one, not too much going on and you can tell there is a certain bird theme.

Too much?

Is this a bit over the top?

Table Design

Today I've been thinking about table centrepieces. I suppose the main draw of using bird houses as opposed to bird cages is that they will be useful afterwards - in fact, people can take them home for their gardens if they want.

Development of the theme...

I've just got round to doing this design:

Not too sure about it. The two black blobs sitting on the branch are supposed to be birds!

A chocolate dessert station

Today I've been mostly thinking about having a chocolate dessert station/buffet, probably for the evening. My idea is that the wedding cake will be on a dessert table, surrounded by little chocolate treats! There will also be a coffee urn, so guests can help themselves. I have no idea if this is feasable, but below are some pictures of dessert stations that I like...



On a related topic, this cake would be perfect if it was more chocolate. But would it look so good with chocolate icing?

Colour Scheme

I've already decided on a chocolate brown, white/cream and blue colour scheme, but the shade of blue has so far been up in the air. I may go for a variety of blues, because that seems easier and hopefully they'll all tie in together. Anyway, I was browsing the wedding blogs, and this came up:

I love this colour scheme! The pale, muted blue tone is lovely. I will definitely try to incorporate it.

Another design

This one is a completely different style of thing. I like the whimsical story book style, and I may develop this one further:

Cake!

Another thing that I'm very excited about is the wedding cake. I've been thinking about it a lot (I think about cakes a lot anyway, but this time there has been a practical purpose to it), and I've just come up with a quick sketch of the kind of thing I fancy:

The idea is that the cake will be covered in milk chocolate, with dark chocolate on top and oozing down the sides...mmm...the indistinguishable little blue blobs are sugar-coated chocolate eggs. I'm looking about for a multi-tone blue ribbon to go round the base of each layer. Oh it's so exciting, and since I plan to be on a diet between now and the actual wedding, I think a massive slice will be well-deserved.

Bird theme

The main theme for our wedding will be birds. I have an idea of including that in the invites, so I've done a couple here:

This one is a completely different style:

The bird/birdcage thing really lends itself to a wedding, with cake toppers and table centres etc.

Invitation development

I could never just leave a thing alone, and my wedding invitation design is no different. I've come up with a slightly different effect here, which I think is quite successful. I've decided on the colour scheme for the wedding - chocolate and blue - so this fits in nicely.

Also, it has a date on it that actually exists.

early attempts

I've decided to give it a go designing the invitations for my own wedding, since it'll surely save some money, and I'll be able to get exactly what I'm after...
The method I used for the production of this design was "quilling", which is a technique using strips of paper. I like the effect, but it's very time consuming.




My mum pointed out to me after seeing this design that there is no 31st of April. Probably should've checked that out.