About Me

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I'm a retired primary school teacher, who started paper crafting in 2008, when I had a fancy to make my own Christmas cards. Since then, I have tried all sorts of techniques and styles - and I kind of like them all. I have been lucky enough to be on blog teams and large design teams and to do a bit of freelance demonstrating - and I love the challenge of working with different products. My crafting style is very varied - from junk journaling and art journaling, bookbinding and journal making, to quilting and patchwork - and of course I still make cards. This variety keeps me interested - and my crafty stash growing!! I'm always seeking inspiration for new projects.

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Wedding Bells!!!

No, not for me - I'm very happily married already!! But I feel like ringing all the bells I can get my hands on to celebrate that I have managed to finish the Wedding Invitations I have been commissioned to make!!! I have had my ups and downs with this project which I will explain as we go, but I am really chuffed to have it complete.

To give you a little background, I was asked by a friend if I would make the invites for her son's wedding. Having agreed, I spent a lovely evening with her, her son and his fiancee, where we discussed what they would like in terms of design (whilst eating a scrummy tuna pasta bake). They decided on a simple design with yellow ribbon and daisies, on white pearlescent card. The final details they left to me.

So, I went away and spent some time finalising what I wanted to do, sourcing the materials that I would need, and costing everything up. That was a exercise in itself, and I ended up setting up a spreadsheet to keep track of what I needed and from where!!


The design I came with up for the invitations uses the X Cut Rosa Border Die, wrapped firstly with yellow satin ribbon, and then with a thinner lemon organza ribbon. Three fabric daisies are then mounted onto the ribbon, and they in turn are topped with 4mm flatback lemon pearls. The silver foiled message was also decorated with the pearls.

Both the day and evening invitations were completed in landscape format, and each required a RSVP card with envelope. These are A7 (... I think ie they are half of A6),  and this time the foiled message is mounted on the border strip to allow room for the message.

The Order of the Day has not been completed yet, as the details have not been finalised, but the design is the same - just in portrait instead of landscape.

All sounds great - and it is - but goodness me, I now know what it must be like to work in a factory and do the same process over and over and over again. I decided that I should prep everything and then assemble it all at the end. Well, the daisies came as a long string, so I have had to trim hundreds of individual daisies. Then cutting the border strips - well, as there is a lovely punched out area, as each border was cut, I then had to clean all the bits out of the die. Over 100 of those and I was begininng to lose the will to live. Then fixing ribbon, then ribbon on top of ribbon, then sticking the tape to the back of the border ready to attach to the card.


My biggest faux pas happened only this morning, when I realised that I had prepped all the RSVP's for Wedding Invitations, when half of them were supposed to be for the Evening Reception!! Took a bit of time to remedy that one.

BUT, the invitations are all done now and ready for delivery tomorrow!! And I have to say I'm rather pleased with myself!!

Have lots of projects in the pipeline, now that I've broken the back of this, so hopefully will be blogging again soon.

Cxx

6 comments:

  1. Very impressive!! I dislike doing multiple copies of cards - the most I have ever done is 50, and it was absolute hell!

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  2. Wow, what an amazing project, I'm very impressed! Such pretty invites & I love the lemon ribbon, the border & the litttle daisies. So much work has gone into these cards & it shows. Well done.
    Sally x

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  3. White and lemon together are perfect Carole and your wedding project is gorgeous, well done you hun :) Donna ♥ x

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  4. Gosh what a lot of work! but how rewarding and oh my! they are lovely! Thanks for taking the time to visit my blog and leave such a lovely comment. Judy x

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  5. You've created such pretty invitations Carole I'm sure your client is delighted. I can only imagine how time consuming the job was but your finished work is wonderful.

    Feebsy
    xx

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  6. Your invitations look stunning! They're very elegant and will definitely make a great impression! Thanks for visiting my blog and your sweet comment, I so appreciate this! Ira ;-)

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Thank you so much for visiting my blog and leaving a comment!! I really appreciate it!! Cxx