Far, Far Away

I've been away for a while... yup. Lost a lotta contact. Missed a lotta happenings. Feels like a lot longer than 3 weeks since I've blogged, but it's that. It's been a good month since I've been able to make anything, that's for sure. Something snapped, I guess. In the househunt time condensed and my craft room gathered dust. I'd like to say that in this time we've gotten ourselves a nice little property, but it's not the case. Not yet. A standard has been set, though.

I'm gonna get back on the blogging horse, and visit all of you and see what I've been missing. I hope you'll all come back and visit me, too. I've missed this contact.

Anyway... deep breath...limber up (stretch, stretch)... what have I actually managed to scrape together these last few weeks?

Well...

...a wedding invitation order took up a lot of my time:

But that's OK because I made someone very happy.

There is an unconventional colour challenge this month at XOXO:

For which I used pink and orange. All the time I was thinking 'yeuch' but then I remembered fruit salad penny sweets and embraced the challenge - and I was really happy, in the end. There's a bit of Washi tape in there, some fabric ribbon, lace and other fabric - all from Gauche Alchemy. There's a bit of Crate Paper's Random stuff in there too.

Oh, I got my hair cut:

Yeah, that made me feel goooooood.

I've also been playing around with my camera, trying to learn a thing or two about its manual settings...

OK, work in progress - but I'll get there.

And I went to a gig - another time, another story... but I took my camera:

That was one awesome night. I will come back with the story another time because I'm gonna scrap it. Like, ASAP.


All righty, I think that feels OK - I'm blogging again. I'll go warm down now. Hope to see you all on the rounds again! Thanks for stopping by to say hello again!

The Wedding of Awesomeness: Part Five

I got a great write up on Gauche Alchemy's blog - go check out our wedding being famous!

getting married on the same day as the National Beer Festival... priceless

The Wedding of Awesomeness: Part 2

It feels really weird to write this, but there were more than two hearts at our wedding.

What you saw when you looked up

Those hanging paper hearts are, and have been, all over the internet and especially Etsy for some time. But I still had to have them. I made them back in February, and I was damned if I wasn't going to use them! Cherry paper and everything!

The magical bunting was a labour of starchy love. My mum made over 50 metres of it, having chosen a whole range of fabrics that would match with the outfits and colours and styles of the wedding. I don't have the precise data, but I think it took a good couple of days to starch all of those triangles.

And the nautical stars - well... I made those a couple of weeks before the wedding, deciding one day that there was not enough nautical star in the whole picture. After the little star on the invitations, there had to be more!

These little ones were fiddly to put together

The hanging stars are 3D. I can tell you how I made them, if you like. It's quite easy.

1. I printed a large star template, and added tabs onto each outer line in pen. Then I used the template to cut out two stars from a piece of card, complete with tabs. I drew all the inner lines on in pencil with a ruler, including the ones separating the tabs from the main body of the star, and then scored along all the lines.

2. I manipulated each star so that the long lines coming from the centre to the points were mountain folds, and the shorter ones coming from the centre to the dips were valley folds. I folded all the tabs inwards.

3. This is where you decorate the star as you wish. I used the folds and lines to measure and cut out contrasting half-points to give it that nautical look.

4. Then I used PVA glue to stick the tabs of each star to each other. This was quite slow, as I needed to pinch and hold each part so that it adhered fully and began to dry before I could move onto the next part.

5. Once dry, the star - if you've made it, like I did, from thick card - is very sturdy, and holds up to more manipulation. Squash it down a bit, to make the folds and valleys really pop and dip.

6. Finally, hammer an eyelet through the top point and string it up.

They're equally good for Christmas... and that's just around the corner!

I'll leave you with a picture of me and my family.

Stylish, no?

The Wedding of Awesomeness: Part 1 of Many

Hello everyone, and welcome to my little story about the time I got married. It was not, I can assure you, though I'm sure you already know, a day of pink frilliness and enormously long dress trains. It was more a day of Things That Make Up Us.


The groom and the bride got ready on the morning of the wedding in separate houses: I with my bridesmaids and my mum, and he with his groomsmen and his family. A few days earlier I'd taken a little box of presents over to the house where he was getting ready, for the boys to open on the day. The little box contained the boutonnieres that the boys would be wearing. Of course, they are handmade. As was the box.

Gauche Alchemy goodies helped decorate the lid

The texture of the box was achieved by mixing some texturising medium with acrylic paint, loading it up onto the lid and sides of the box, and then pressing a woodgrain pattern embossing folder into the paint. You gotta try it - it's a great effect!

See? They're just jumping to get out

I hand-sewed the felt skulls myself. Regrettably, I can't take credit for the idea, though. Here is the main man's skull in action:

Lots more to come soon! (And possibly some official photos, one of these days)

At Last

As you may remember, I had (like most other people out there) some computer issues a couple of months ago. Namely, my computer showed a dislike of wine and shut down with a flicker and a huff, and wouldn't wake up again.

Apparently, though, it is possible to dry them out. After purchasing a shiny new laptop, I eventually braved the on button of the old one... and whaddaya know? It works. Just like it did before.

So, at last, I can share the original photos of our wedding invitations.

cute, no?

This is but one of the piles of them:

And here is what they look like on the inside:

You simply slide off the outer band, and you have three cards - the invitation proper, some info and an RSVP:

We used Bazzill swiss dotted white cardstock for the sleeve and some paper from MME for the cards (Lost & Found Union Square "Happy" paper). I did a little bit of letterpressing for the "&" circle, some fussy cutting to get the printed swallows, and employed some good old Cricut action for the hearts and stars. Oh, and a circle punch for the sleeve.

Now, although I didn't think I was doing any jumping, there really is a bandwagon. And not in a bad way. Over at Paper Issues there is a linkup opportunity for wedding projects. Yes, I've already played linky a few times this month, and there will be more linkups before the month is over!

Saving the Date: Waterfall Card Tutorial

As soon as I asked my husband-to-be if he'd prefer lollipop or filmstrip STDs, he immediately pricked up his ears. The plan was always that I was going to be making all the stationery and decorations myself,* but suddenly my man was offering assistance. It wasn't until we started making the STDs that I fully realised how grateful I was - and how good he is at doing stuff with paper ("It's just lady-tools, isn't it?").

* Later it turned out my mum would make a very large portion of the decorations too.

Anyway, we opted for a filmstrip-style design. But we wanted something a little different, a lot fun, and somewhat interactive. Here's what we came up with:

It's a postcard, a photo booth strip, and a waterfall, all in one. We received such awe-filled praise from our guests-to-be that, apart from feeling very pleased with ourselves, we want to share what we've done. So here's a little step-by-step on how to make a waterfall save the date postcard.

A few words of advice before you begin: decide on - and print - the final photos you want to use BEFORE cutting any card. It'll save you loads of time, stress and wastage. Even though you'll probably take some amazing photos that you love, you might have to let go of them and accept that they don't work. For this project the photos were portrait and roughly passport-sized (4.3cm x 5.6cm to be exact). All relevant measurements I give will relate to this size.

For the mechanics of the card:

1. Cut your card to size, and print your message on the back. (If you've chosen an image to print on the front, like we did, print this too now.) Our cards were postcard size - A6/C6.

2. Cut a strip of card that is as long as the postcard is wide and wide enough to be sturdy (2). Ours were 2.4cm wide by 10.5cm long.

3. Cut another strip that is as long as an A4 piece of paper, portrait-wise, and as wide as your photos (3). Ours were 4.3cm wide by 29.7cm long.

4. Measure where you want your small strip (4a) - about a fifth of the way up from the bottom of the card is good. Measure where the large strip needs to be folded - one end needs to join to the small strip (4b). And you don't want it to extend past the top of the postcard, so you'll need to make a fold there (4c).

Then fold and score the large strip like this:

so that the intervals between folds are half the height of your photos, except for the first one (the part where your large strip will join onto your small strip).

5. Fix the small strip across the postcard - with glue, double-sided tape, eyelets, brads, whatever you want. Just make sure you only fix it at the edges because the large strip needs to move underneath the small strip (5).

6. Fix the large strip to the small strip with glue or double-sided tape (4b again).

7. If you want to, back your photos with patterned paper:

- do this before sticking the photos down.

8. Then stick them down, the last photo in the sequence first (on top of the part that joins the small strip), by applying the glue or double-sided tape to the large strip and then putting the photo in place (it's much easier this way round, trust me!).

9. To make sure your recipients know what to do when they receive the card, give them a little instruction (9). Alternatively, you can punch a hole and add a ribbon if you prefer, or anything else you can think of.

Et voila!

It took us about 10 hours altogether to make 50 of these. That DOESN'T include the time we spent agonizing over the photos, which I don't really want to talk about! The chosen pics in the end were a compromise but we're essentially happy with them... except that we are a little gutted that this one had to be vetoed (yes, my fault, because I didn't like my expression):

Still, we had fun! I hope you like them!

Marriage Musings

With the wedding of a friend next weekend looming, and our own some three months off, there may well be cause for musings on the subject.

For us, the invitations we recently sent out have given rise to a new flurry of congratulations... yes, we were engaged for a long time - long enough that people forgot, apparently - but it's been amazing, and we'll be a little sad to see it end, I think.

For others, plans are about to come together, anniversaries have just been celebrated, or memories are still living strong. I recently scrapped about my friend's marriage, for which I was a bridesmaid. Three years ago, almost, and hasn't that passed in a flash?

The sumptuous Emma's Shoppe papers from Crate formed the most part of this page - and aren't they sumptuous? Just right for a sunny Sunday. Have a lovely day, everyone, and give a few seconds thought to a marriage close to you at this time.

A Little Bit Punk, A Little Bit Rock n Roll

After a full night of wedding nightmares, it somehow seems apt that I finally share pictures of our invitations.

(These are not the original photos I took; they disappeared with the life of my laptop. So the lovely black, kraft-lined envelopes and the two great piles of invitations live on only in my head.)

And as the reality of the nightmares fade, if not the memory, I have some great news to share too: I'm on the Punky Scraps DT for 2011-2012! Yep, I'm now officially a Punky Rebel. Punky Scraps is a great challenge blog with a DT that is a bit more unconventional... go check it out!

I must now go and brush the residual cobwebs away and do some positive wedding planning to avoid any of the outcomes in my dreams. Have a nice day everyone!

It Must Be Love

... to go to these lengths of measuring, cutting, punching, painting, inking and printing. Not to mention sticking, writing, stamping and posting.

This photo shows a stage in the wedding invitation making process that was actually quite near the end. Today we are even closer, so close we can smell the envelope glue, but I'm going to leave y'all hanging on just a little bit longer so that the guests can have a look at the finished cards first. What better way to spend a Sunday? (Don't answer that; I'm all too aware that there are more fun things to do!)

Finding your Place

This weekend we were working on our wedding invitations. In amongst the mayhem of sketching, planning, measuring, cutting, discussing, testing, rejecting and trying again, I had a bit of time to reflect on things. At times this reflection was rising to panic; but on Sunday we met with the lady in charge of the venue and somehow it became obvious that everything was starting to slot into place. So, calmed, I came back to reflection.

There is a lot of advice on wedding blogs and websites and forums to the tune of 'don't get into arguments with your future spouse'. But I have found nothing saying that getting into arguments with your future spouse is inevitable, and that it's the way you come out of it that's important. Well, a few flare ups between us have shown that it's inevitable, but we came through, and perhaps now have even more respect and love to show for it.

This week's postcard was super simple, but super poignant.

Asking for Help

Something I'm not very good at is asking for help. I tend to want to do things myself, my own way. But recently I've learned that asking for help can really reap rewards.

Our wedding date is booked and a lot of things are already in motion. One of the first things to tick of the list was our Save the Date cards. I'd had a few ideas, but when I mentioned them to my fiance, we were suddenly brainstorming and designing and having a ball. I'm amazed at the effort he's put in - at least 50% of the final product is down to him - and his interest. If I hadn't asked for his help, he may well have sat back and not said anything, knowing me and how I like to do things myself. But without him we wouldn't have such a brilliant product.

So. A little peek of something I'll show you in a week or two... a joint effort between me and my fiance.