Alex & Kevin's Wedding Invites

Hello!

I had another graduation card to share, but I just realised I still hadn't shared those wedding invites I did for my good friends, Alex & Kevin earlier this year!

It was an absolute pleasure being their "invites consultant" (haha), and it turned out rather nicely. And it was a great team effort to get it all done before Alex dashed off to Europe on her Elective. I just hope they don't mind me posting the invites here... because

So... Alex is a very blues girl. She loves anything blue. And it's not surprising that her bridesmaids will be wearing blue dresses on the big day, and her shoes are royal blue too. And surprise surprise, the wedding invites had to have blue too. They were rather keen to have their engagement shoot photo in there somewhere so that made it rather tricky coming up with ideas.

Somewhere along the track, I had one of those 'lightbulb moments' and thought, "Hey! We can have a blue frame with your photo inside!" Well, it worked and here is the after-product. It's quite simple, but does the job. Alex and Kevin both liked it, and that's a really sweet photo from their engagement shoot (had to blur out their faces... just in case).

 

  

By the way, it was my birthday yesterday, and (as requested) I got a new camera for it from my parents ;) Not a fancy dSLR as I had been eyeing up for the past 5 years, but something that will do the job for my trip to the Cook Islands soon. I had to test it out to see how it was in the room lighting, because the old camera (the cr** one) took horrible photos with semi-reasonable lighting. I'm satisfied with the quality for a super-compact camera, and it's still better than that old one we have.

We, together, made 100 of these all by hand. I had the Embellishment die cut and the frame all stamped and heat embossed (believe me, it was a big job) whilst I was living in the dungeon room out in Timaru Hospital (because I had nothing better to do there!). I probably inhaled half the embossing powder and will get some lung disease 50 years later, but hey, it made the job so much easier on the day. The three of us literally sat around the table and punched out wedding invites like some Asian Sweat Shop. Lol.

Btw, that photo was printed straight onto the PTI cardstock on a laser printer. Kevin did an awesome job aligning them on A4 paper to get it bang in the middle and two on the same cardstock too!

So, something a little different this time round. Hope you all enjoyed the post. Thanks for coming by!

SUPPLIES & TOOLS:

STAMP: [PTI] Embellishments, Damask Designs
INK: [Versamark] Watermark Stamp Pad; [SU!] Not Quite Navy

PAPER: [PTI] Vintage Cream, Enchanted Evening
OTHER: [PTI] Mat Stack #5 die, Embellishments die collection; [Filigree] Embossing Powder (clear); Foam tape (lots of them lol)

No card still... but

Sorry! Still no card!

I'm on call again tomorrow and I'm just knackered when I'm back home these days. And I still have a few cover letters to pump out which I am forever denying the need to (until last minute!).

I just thought I'd share something that arrived in the mail yesterday!

It looks like that card I submitted to PaperCrafts in January and got accepted did make it to the States in one piece! This is rather exciting getting paid for something made for a hobby! So a quick shot of proof. I am dying to see what magic the photographers did to the card in the mag! ;)

And... did I mention we got snowed in last week?

I mean, really snowed in. Okay, maybe this is nothing compared to Canada in winter, but in my 15 years in New Zealand, we've only been snowed properly like this a handful of times. And I don't ever recall it snowing in June either! Usually we get a random decent fall in August/September (Spring) when we do get them.

It literally started snowing as I left home for hospital at 7.30am and just snowed and snowed all day!

This shot's one that made its way to our weather forecast website, MetService. It just got picked as the photo of the week! Well really, in all honesty, I think there were only about 3 photos submitted last week. It was more of a fun thing to submit than anything. No prizes for getting it picked either. I do reckon I should have sent it to TVNZ, then if it did get picked, then our famous weatherman, Jim Hickey, would have had to have a crack at saying my name right! Haha. 

Oh, I forgot to say what the photo was of. This is the Christchurch Botanic Garden looking down from 4th floor of Christchurch Public Hospital (technically the temporary student common room).

 

The funny thing is that literally every student who turned up to school last Wednesday took a photo of this exact same scene on their phones. I've already seen 3 different, yet the same versions on Facebook! However, I'm now copyrighted since I submitted this photo first lol

Sorry for keeping you all waiting for new cards. I'm sure if I dug around, there might be a couple of cards that I forgot to upload. I still have to upload all the other images that got lost when I got my new phone too. I'll get there eventually.

Have a great week!

Beyond the Page Wedding Gift

Hello everyone. Hope everyone has been keeping well the past few days.

  

I did promise a card earlier, but I thought I'd share something else instead first... because it's even better! LOL

  

I've a friend getting married next week and I've been struggling to find the wedding gift for the couple. They've decided to move to Australia so I didn't want to give them anything too big or extravagant (not that I can afford one anyway), so I've decided to get them something only I can give.

  

I've been accumulating several KaiserCraft Beyond the Page albums without having made a single one into a finished project. I decided this was a good opportunity to do something for once. The project itself probably took about 4hrs all up. 1.5hrs was taken up with the patterned paper background and trimming out the scalloped edges. I don't think I will try another one after that ordeal. LOL

   

I've had to blur out the faces, mainly for their privacy. I didn't exactly ask to use these photos. I took them off Facebook! And hopefully they don't visit the blog in the next 10 days (well, they won't even know this exists, but just in case...), because this is meant to be a surprise!

  

   

So above is the front page. I made my own chipboard letters and it worked rather nicely. 

  

This whole project utilised whatever embellishment I had lying around, which included random die cuts, buttons, flower embellies, ribbons and whatever else that I could dig out of my drawers. LOL.

 

   

And... I got to use all my patterned paper that I never use! I have great difficulty using them for my cards. I'm just not sure why.

     

     

The page on the above right, is my fav page of all. It's really a beautiful photo of Bella, except I've just blurred it all out so you won't be able to appreciate it fully. But I used Fancy Flourishes die cuts - two of them - and overlaid them on each other with some rhinestones ;)

  

  

Random cloud die cuts I had lying around... plus old alphabet stickers I had forgotten about!
         

    

 Love & Marriage set? My other friend getting married next year (the one I'm doing wedding invites for) got me that set to use for their wedding invites (well... going to try and put something onto the envelopes), but I thought I'd put it to use on another friend first. Hehe.

   

  

And I cheated on the last page. I couldn't be stuffed with another photo. I was doing this from about 10:30pm through till 1am in the morning in a mad rush. A mad rush indeed, because I had to finish it before coming back down to Timaru! I had photos, trimmed them, overlaid over whatever cardstock I could grab and random embellishment madness it was. I think it turned out rather nicely.

  

Now I just need to Mod Podge all the pages before end of next week and pray it won't kill the project (or I'd be very very upset indeed). And reminder to self to get larger rings.

  

But anyway, I hope that was somewhat refreshing from the usual cards. I have two cards left to share, but I'm going to keep one for a submission later. I'll try and update you on the other card later in the week.

  

Thanks for coming around :)