Handmade wedding invitations

This is the reason I love my job so much  (as well as having a warm and cosy craft room at home so not having to venture outside when the weather is lousy) but I get to play weddings and meet the nicest couples/brides and bridesmaids/families and they like my work enough to let me have one of the main roles in their weddings. I feel completely honoured to be lucky enough to make the stationery for them :) 

I would like to add at this stage that we, Party Nights Creations have a sale on at the moment. If you order your day and/or evening invitations during the month of December you will receive a discount of 10% as seen in Wedding Ideas.

I had another invitation order collected on Wednesday morning and another happy bride, thank you Catherine.

I made a seating plan, guest book and favours with name tags for the wedding on Saturday for Sue and Paul

and some more Thank You cards for Judith and Howard

and I also made some cards for the new Kathy's Waffle challenge which goes live tomorrow.
Thanks for dropping by and I'll see you later.

Show me yours.....

and I'll show you mine!!! I mean the photo of my desk :)

This was taken at two o'clock this morning when I was putting these 50 wedding invitations together. I hadn't realised how late it was so I gave it another half hour and fell into bed!!

If you visit the Stamping Ground blog run by the lovely Julia it explains what is going on and how you can join in with the participants of What's on Your Workdesk Wednesday #195. I'm sorry I didn't comment much last week but I was struck down by the lousy flu bug and spent more time asleep than I did awake. I'm ok now apart from the cough which still hurts my chest :(

Thanks for dropping by and having a look. Please leave me a message so I can return the visit. xx

What's on your Workdesk Wednesday?

#189 is now live on Julia's blog, The Stamping Ground, if you would like to take a look and find out more about this phenomenon that is taking over the world ;). I usually forget about it until it's too late in the day to post my picture but this week I thought I would give everyone a giggle and a tip on how to keep warm. I'll be good and show a photo of my desk first though, after all, this is what the post is for :)

 I've spent the last few days making Mother's Day and Valentine's Day cards and am in the process of cleaning up to start on my new wedding orders and samples now my orders have arrived. Things always seem to take longer in the first couple of weeks of January as the suppliers catch up after the Christmas period. Talking of Christmas, has anyone started their 2013 Christmas cards yet? 

And this is my little pet who lives under my desk. There is an air brick under my window but it's under the floor in my craft room and my poor legs freeze! As you will see we bought quite a thick mat to go on the floor on top of the carpet but it hasn't made any difference as it is the space under the desk which is cold. Hubby thought this might do the trick and bought it for me as a prezzie at Christmas. It is thermostatically controlled so heats my feet really well :) Now my knees are cold but my feet are lovely and warm so my next purchase will be a small fleece to go over my knees.  My youngest daughter says I look like old Granny Grunt with it, especially when I'm knitting lol,

Right, I'm now going back to work and will leave you to go on the world tour with WOYWW, happy travelling and thanks for stopping by here.

Thanks for stopping by xx 

Punches and Die Cuts

The new challenge on the Less Is More blog is (as it says in my title) to use 'Punches and/or Dies The availability of dies for use in cardmaking seems to have exploded recently, with many new ones appearing almost daily... do show us what you can do with them.' I've made two lots of invitations this week using die cuts and they both qualify for the Less Is More challenge. The first is a wedding invitation

Die used is a Sizzix Daisy #2.


The second 

The dies used on this one is by Cuttlebug.

Right, I'm off now, I have a train to catch but hair to dry first :) Enjoy your weekend.

Wedding stationery

It's Wednesday again and I can't believe it's it's a week since my lap top was so poorly. Luckily I didn't lose anything it just caused my son 24 hours of blooming hard work! I'm still trying to recover and change passwords as I visit different sites as all my history was wiped so my passwords went along with that, I'm getting there though.


So now onto the real reason of my post and that is because today is What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday #139 which is organised by the lovely Julia on her Stamping Ground blog. I would like to offer huge apologies for not visiting anyone last week but I had a bit of a computer problem (see below). I will make sure I poke my nose into the craft spaces this week though and thanks for all the visits I got.


My desk

as you see, I'm in wedding stationery mode at the moment. These will be finished and collected today then it's straight onto the next lot of 75 which are going on Friday :)


Also while I'm here, take a peep at Crafty Linby's blog. She has some fab candy on offer.

Right, back to my invitations now so I can take time later to start visiting the WOYWW bloggers later. 
TFL

Thursday

I think there is a pattern emerging here but I shan't say anything incase I spoil things ;)

The stationery order I mentioned yesterday was delivered today

The picture just do these little beauties any justice at all, they are gorgeous. The card is a really lovely pearlescent card with the fine laser cut border and the hot foiled sentiment.

I then slightly altered a fascinator by adding a few black feathers as per the clients request, so it went from this

to this

The lady in question didn't want any crystals or anything else adding, just a coule of black feathers to lift it a bit, very straightforward! I love days when I have jobs like the last two in because as they aren't huge jobs, I feel as though I've done loads lol

I had to bring the golden wedding invitations home with me as my printer decided it didn't like the card I was using. Luckily the trusty old knackered one in my craft room served me well yet again (even if I do have to do a head clean every time I need to print something in colour!!!)

Bed time now. 

TFL

Wedding stationery and.....

Christening invitations (which I have been making alongside my wedding stationery for the last six years. I feel the need to add that bit as last time I added Christening invitations to my blog, I was accused of copying someone else....a bit rich really, as it turns out!!!) Sorry about that, I just needed to say it.

Anyway onto the Christening invitations

I was really pleased when this order came in as I made mummy and daddy's wedding stationery two years ago. This is the second such order this year :)
and the wedding stationery consists of 36 day invitations with reply cards and 100 evening invitations which are being delivered today.

More of my stationery can be seen here

Right...DT work here I come, then it's an exploding box and a rubbing wedding album!

Have a nice weekend and let's hope the sunshine stays with us.

Busy little bee

and it's been a really good day for staying all warm and cosy in my craft room, why.......:)

My daft youngest showing off her sexy wellies lol. I was so surprised when it started snowing again this afternoon. It's stopped now so hopefull it will soon disappear.

So today I have made:

a commissioned birthday card

 

 

The small book sits in the pocket on the front of the card and contains a couple of colouring plane pictures and a set of instructions as to how to make a paper aeroplane! 

The numbers are hand cut from DCWV papers

planes are peel offs on acetate

sentiment is a Papermania rub on

image is from a free colouring site

ribbon from stash

wedding invitations

a couple of samples

and a couple of DT cards. I've also just got to finish a couple of extra invitations for an order and tomorrow I'm playing with beads :).

Sleep tight!

Wedding invitations

The final part of this order was collected on Thursday and the bride was very pleased with them. Even now I get a little nervous when I'm delivering or having stationery or cards etc, collected. Thankfully I have never had anyone turn round and say they didn't like was they had ordered.......I think I would just cry if they did :) I must say that one of the attractions of working in the wedding field is the lovely people I get to meet and spend time with and to know that couples like your work enough to represent their wedding is one of the greatest feelings in the world :)

I made the day and evening invitations in February and this part of the stationery set, for the wedding next Saturday, included the orders of service, large and small menus, place cards, thank you cards and the seating plan. This was the first time I had used my Nesties on a seating plan and was really pleased with the outcome, as was the bride.

TFL

Playing catchup........

yet again!! and my reason why...............this

or should I say, these :) My DD's wedding invitations. I made 16 day invitations (as they are only having a small registry office do), 59 reply cards and 59 gift list poems as they are going in the evening invitations too and there will be 110 at the evening do. So now I just need to make 43 evening invitations!

Doubling up!

I've decided to double up on challenges this week as life is getting a little busy again at the mo (I'm writing this while watching Strictly - I've never thought of taking my lap top into the lounge before duh!) My friend went on holiday today and I am running her hair and nail salon while she's away! (That sounds so impressive but I just answer the phones and make jewellery :))

Anyway, the challenge I combined were Friday Sketchers , which is the sketch below (which I rotated) and Stamp Something We have a new challenge for you today, it's called Something For the Birds. Make a project using bird images; any types, sizes, shapes, and colors.

The holly backing paper is from one of Debbi Moore's new cds and it is just gorgeous and the greeting stamp is one of Debbi's too (from my new design kit which is full of the most adorable acrylic Christmas stamps!) :) The patterned paper is Season of Joy from Scrapworks and the little bird is by Imaginisce........I just stamped it three times and paper pieced it together.

Well as I mentioned above, here's where life gets busy again...........we are out for lunch tomorrow, Monday is DS's birthday and as well as not having made his cards yet we are going out for tea too, I'm at the shop from Tuesday till Saturday, I got my new DT kit from Debbi yesterday and I still have about 50 gazillion Christmas cards to make as well as a couple of personal planners (but not weddingy) and eldest DD's wedding invitations to make too:) It's a good job I work best like this LOL

On a weddingy note, we bought her dress today and it is just absolutely beautiful........it's ivory with a burgundy trim and I love it!

I hope you all enjoy what's left of the weekend.

Take care and TFL.

DCM Friday plus

I can't believe where the last week has gone. I have missed so many challenges but need to make half a dozen cards ordered so should be able to fit some in this week. I have worked 19 hour days for the last two weeks. I just can't believe how much wedding work I've had in this week. It has been great and I've loved every minute of it but boy am I tired!! LOL

I realised at eight o'clock this morning that I hadn't even had a look at the DCM challenge this week (let alone done one :)) so as I had a teacher card to make I whizzed over and had a look. It was Tracie's turn this week and here is her brief "I want you to make a QUICK CARD! a card that takes you no more than hmm say 30 minutes max to do - start to finish. No set ingredients and pick your own theme, but be quick and be crafty! (and dont forget to tell us how long it took too).

I really must try to do 'unwonky' scans!! papers, card and vellum are from my scrap box - K & Co, Pink Petticoat and Papermania and everything else is from my stash and not sure where else. The die cuts are Cuttlebug. The sentiment was done on the pc and the card took me 15 minutes.

I can't believe that I am on week three of my stint as guest designer on Di Hickman's blog Here is Di's templateand this is the card I made

This card was made for DH's uncle for his birthday this week. Papers are K & Co and Under the Boardwalk by Daisy Bucket, stamp is from Clevercut and everything else is from my stash.

So what else have I been up to? Well, here are a couple of things I've done :)

Am off now to check out Sue's blog as I've been tagged :)

Birthday Fairy

Just look what the birthday fairy brought me...............I was just so chuffed when I opened them on Monday morning!!

They will be fab on holiday instead of wearing my flat ones all the time. I have black Scutes, pale blue Athens, a pair of dark blue fake Caymens and now these :) I shall be wearing them when I exhibit at wedding fayres too, I think they will look dead smart with my suit :)

I got loads of other pressies too and was spoilt rotten all day :)

I have a couple of commissions to show too as I think the single card fits the DCM Little Extra this week The mid week dare this week is another one by Mel - these are a few of my favourite things. What you need to do is use one of Mel's favourite things on your card (embroidery cotton/thread, buttons, felt or fabric) and combine it with one of your favourite things.

The 'thread' on my card is the fringing on the rug and the wool for the knitting. My favourite things used are ribbon, a girl can never have too much and I've just placed another order with Ribbon Oasis oh, and diamantes of course.

This one fits too as I have used ribbon and diamantes on these invitations too.

Must go back to work (it's a good job I don't have to go far ;)) I have 2 more commissioned cards to make which are being picked up this afternoon. I also have an exploding box to do. It's all cut out, it just needs decorating and putting together.

I will try to scan my birthday cards some time this week. I got loads of beautiful handmade ones. :)

I would love you to leave a comment as I really enjoy reading them.

Thanks for looking. XX

Sunday, Sunday

It's been a really good today. I've made two cards, a box for one of them and also been out for lunch with all my family (parents, sister and brother etc). The weather was nice for us and the food was gorgeous.

Unfortunately one of the cards was a sympathy card. One of my friends husband lost his mum on Thursday evening so it was for them. She was ninety last August and until she went into hospital about five weeks ago she lived alone in her own house and looked after herself. Here is the card I made. I do try to stay away from black for sympathy cards unless it is specifically asked for.

The next card I made for a friend to give to a friend of hers. She will be 60 soon!!

It's difficult to show but it is actually an acetate card. If anyone has any tips on photographing acetate I will definately welcome them. I made the actual card from Crate Twirl collection (which I love)! I then fastened the card inside an acetate sleeve with Papermania pearl brads. The flowers are Prima, Papermania and the large one is from Dunelm. The front tucks into the flap at the bottom of the card. I cheated with the box............I put together a bought one and decorated it!I have two birthday club cards to make and 30 wedding invitations tomorrow so not too strenuous. Also tomorrow we are going for an all you can eat Chinese buffet. It is absolutely superb and at £4.99 a head it would be rude not to! LOL DD2 is cooking at school tomorrow, she is making a meat pie (Tuesday's tea) which means I don't have the dreaded task of thinking what to have for tea until Wednesday................I could get used to this!!!

Bye for now. xx

Surprise surprise!

I can't believe another week has passed us by! It's almost Easter already (ok I know it's early this year but time is still whizzing past) He, he................at this rate it won't be long till we are wishing each other a Merry Christmas again :))

Firstly I would like to say a big thank you to Kathy for returning the honours with the award. You're a star!

I have had two wonderful surprises this week. On Tuesday I received a big box and here is what was in it. This was my second prize from the English Paper Company competition last year in Cardmaking and Papercraft. Good eh! What a shame that they are no longer!!

My second parcel arrived this morning and was for having a card published in Papercraft Essentials :)Lastly, here is what I have been up to this week :)

Fifty day invitations, ninety evening invitations, one hundred and forty reply cards, one hundred and three favour tags, seven gift bags and a guest book.........phew! I've also made an invitation sample today :)

Tomorrow we are all going out for lunch. There are 15 of us altogether with my parents, brother and sister and their families and my kids. It's my birthday on Monday............I'm going backwards in age as of now :)

Well, I must go and get dressed. I need to post the sample this morning and I have some commissioned cards to make. I also have another wedding order which has just come in which they want by Wednesday!!! so no weekend off for me.

Whatever you're doing, have a good weekend and thanks for dropping by.