Summer Weddings

It's time for summer weddings and engagements!

Fine art prints and original paintings make wonderful gifts for couples building a new home together! 

 Shop wedding cards, shower cards, engagement cards, and thank you cards here. 

New cards

New greeting cards now in the shop!

 best wishes

 Happily ever after

 Happy Birthday

 I love you

 You are awesome

Progression of a custom ornament

I recently did a custom ornament for a client and thought I'd share a bit of the process:

Initial sketch as I try to figure out general spacing

A more advanced layout with slightly different font options

 The final product

 

 

Shopping at The Boutique

I announced a few weeks ago that some of my pieces are for sale at The Boutique at The Dressmaker's Closet in Charleston, West Virginia, and this past weekend I finally had a chance to see it all in person.

Everything looks amazing! The shop has one-of-a-kind handmade dresses by the talented Julie Wirts, owner of The Dressmaker's Closet. She uses a lot of vintage fabrics and lace for her pieces, and each one is beautifully and thoughtfully made.

All the dresses are lovely, but the periwinkle lace dress is my favorite - gorgeous color and a lovely vintage silhouette with sweet details like a piped waistline. 

Above are some of my West Virginia state hoops with some handmade purses, bowties, and vintage wedding hankies.

Also in the shop are one-of-a-kind veils, sashes, fascinators, original art, and jewelry. Amazing eye candy everywhere!

If you have any questions about anything you see, you can contact The Dressmaker's Closet.

Snapshots of a Wedding

The past few weeks: 

 

So to sum up: I really love desserts. 
Also, my new husband. 

New art to come soon! 

Personalized Cake Toppers

Sorry for the recent blog silence - wedding mayhem and custom orders have been consuming all my time!! 
On that note, here's a little wedding project I whipped up the other night. 

I've seen lots of personalized cake toppers floating around the web. 

Rather than pay over $100 for one, I decided to make my own. 

It started with tiny wooden "people" pegs and some Martha Stewart High Gloss acrylic paint. 

I wanted a shiny finish, rather than a matte finish. It seemed more wedding-y. 
I painted the cats from memory and painted the groom and I as we would look on our wedding day.

It took 2-3 coats of paint for good coverage, but it dried very quickly and took an hour, tops! 

The cats would have looked ok with painted-on ears, but I "felt" like a 3-D ear would add just a little extra cuteness. #puns #waitforit

I cut them out of FELT I had lying around and hot-glued them on.   #justmadeyourday

Below is the finished project! 
**Dress spoiler alert!!**   
It will be white and cylindrical. Yikes. 

Now all we need is a cake! 
No, like, right now... I want some cake. 

Capitol Romance

Jason and I had our engagement photos, taken by Emily Porter Photography, featured on the DC weddings blog Capitol Romance. 

You can see the post here. 

Scroll down the post for a peek at some of the illustrations Jason made for the engagement book he made me!

I featured 2 of them before in this post, but below is my favorite, for good measure:


This is Jason's interpretation of our first date, which took place at the Corcoran Gallery of Art:

#findsomeonewhomakesyoulaugh 

Engagement Photos

Our engagement session was done in DC by the husband and wife team Emily Porter and Bobby Oberlander that are Emily Porter Photography

Since Jason and I met in DC, we wanted iconic DC photos. And also, I can't resist a good art museum (we were at the Modern (East) Wing of the American Art Museum, the Sculpture Garden, and in front of the Capitol Building)

We had a great time and the photos are GORGEOUS 

Is it too braggy to note that I went to high school with Emily? Hometown pride! 

While their posed photos are gorgeous, they take some pretty amazing candids, too. 

They will be our wedding photographers, too, and we are so excited for April! 
(the photo below is from a wedding Emily and Bobby did this past year of actually another lovely lady that I went to high school with - I just had to add it because it's such a cool shot - hope you don't mind, Emily!)

 Emily Porter Photography is based out of Charleston, WV, but they LOVE to travel (they actually spent 3 weeks in Italy this fall and got back the day before our engagement session). You can find more info on their engagement and wedding packages here 



all photos shown by Emily Porter Photography

Wedding Invitation Update

My wedding invitation design is finally done, and not a minute too soon! 
(seriously, I was cutting it close there)

Here's a little walk through my process:

My first step was to play with the lettering A LOT. 
 (below is the original design)

After lots of playing with swashes and angles on the page, I finally landed on lettering that I liked, so it was time to incorporate the flowers. 

I wanted to choose flowers that I am actually using in the bouquets and arrangements, so I featured (my loose version of) peonies, spray roses, anemones, berries, and lambs ear... and there's some other greenery thrown in for good measure. 

This photo was a big inspiration (I apologize, I do not know the original source - found off Pinterest forever ago).

After sketching it out in my notebook, I traced it onto smooth Bristol paper with pencil. On one copy I left the flowers in graphite, and the other I used the Micron to outline. I was originally going to use brush pens to create a thickness in the swashes, but the pens I was using just started to feel too heavy - I wasn't in love with the line weight, so I switched to my trusty ole Microns (.03).

 The original intention was to do watercolor with the more graphic outlined flowers and acrylic on the graphite version; after using watercolor on the graphic outlined version, though, I liked it so much that I wanted to try a looser watercolor version with the pencil. 

Much to my surprise, I fell in love with the looser version! It just seemed more suited to the feel of the wedding, and the contrast between the inked names and the soft, watery flowers was lovely. 

For fun, I also added some painted text for the RSVP and info cards. 

The rest of the pertinent information is being typeset by the printer. 

I love the way everything works together - I chose the blush envelope (from Paper Source) and lined them myself with white and gold chevron paper by Fig. 2 Design Studio (from Fifteen Eleven). 

Glad this bridezilla is finally happy! #kiddingagain #thebrideisme

Recent Activities

What I've been up to lately...

Eating BBQ (isn't that the cutest pig ever?) 

 

Painting (just a little sneek peak...)

Watching Downton Abbey (heck yes, season 3!)

 

Hanging with the kitties  (hey, guys)

A more detailed wedding invite post coming soon!
 

Wedding Design

Sneak peek of the invitation design I'm working on for an upcoming wedding

 I will be trying hand-lettering with a paintbrush, which, surprisingly, I seem to have more control over than a pen or nib.

Next step is to move onto paint. 

Debating whether to try the design in watercolor, acrylic, or both... man, this bridezilla is so demanding!  (cause it's me...get it? nerd alert!) 


I found this design by Anna Bond on the Rifle Paper Co. blog... I am pretty much in love with everything Anna does, and this cats-wearing-fancy-accessories Save the Date is just too hilarious.

My fiance thought having cats on our actual invitation might be a little too weird, but he was open to the idea of it for a Christmas card... hm.... maybe next year... 

BTW I just recently started sketching in a grid-line Moleskine... I was afraid the gridlines would be hard to get used to, but I am actually finding them pretty useful as my natural inclination is to draw/paint/hang everything at an accidental angle.