The steampunk lama

He said he wanted a steampunk lama...

Oh the joy of new equipment...

Up. Up and away.

New computer, new scanner, upgraded Painter and the CS5 suite...time to start putting it to good use.

I love my husband.

Wedding Reception Illustration: A place for the Bride & Groom

A while back I had illustrated these little portraits of the Husband and I before we were married. They were at first a just for fun activity in Illustrator. I ended up using the images for our wedding website and for out place setting at the Reception.

The frames were originally in a hot pink, bought from Hobby Lobby. I spray-painted them white to match.

The original portraits as seen on the Wedding website.

Snippets from the Wedding

It was an over-cast and slightly rainy day.

So luckily, I had an excuse to wear the right shoes.

Photos from the official photographer are not in yet, but here are a few shots from Randy Badiola a good friend and award winning photographer. I was lucky to have him at the wedding shooting as I asked him to run over to the farm before all the guests arrived to take pictures of the set-up. 

(I lightened the picture below just a bit, though)

We had our reception at Heritage Prairie Market and Farm, it was a beautiful setting even though the day was cold, grey and rainy. Originally we planned to have the reception in their rather large tent, but with the chill that was reported for the following day, it was suggested we move into the barn.

 

An excellent idea as it turned out as it lent a very cozy, warm atmosphere to the party.

My wonderfully talented mother did all the flower arrangements for the wedding. The Barn was also surrounded in floral installments my mother created with plants from her greenhouse, geraniums and my favorite (a lucky last minute find) forget-me-nots. (Which I later planted in the flower beds of our new home surrounding a pondering Garden Gnome)

The menu board was handmade with chalkboard paint and a frame I scrounged from a previous framing job. The turquoise/teal napkins and ceramic bird whistles were fabulous ebay finds. Names were hand-written on punched red tags by me in aqua ink. The white lanterns were bought from Ikea and then donated to the farm for the use of future brides. 

The aqua baker's twine and calligraphy was used in the invitations and then carried into the reception.

Instead of a guestbook, guests were invited to write a letter to the two of us and drop it into the "Bushel of Love". Supplies in aqua, red and ivory were supplied along with stickers to decorate. It was a joy to see what people came up with, many of our guests were graphic designers, crafty people or kids.

Trial set-up. 

The wonderful thing about having your wedding at Heritage Prairie Farm, is that they are willing to use your own recipes for your dinner. The food was scrumptious, I made the mistake of happily downing the delicious appetizers before the main course and could barely get through the main dish!

I am extremely picky about cake and rather indecisive. Instead of one cake, we had over 10 plus Butter cookies and Bienstich...my favorite German pastry. This cake table harkens back to when I visited German with my mother for my Oma's birthday. The table would be laden with amazing cakes. I was lucky enough to find a genuine German Baker in Chicago at Cafe Selmarie. The cake is authentically delicious and working with Birgit was a joy. I made all the cake stands from wood pieces and bits with the help of Catherine over at Restless Violet.

Having 20 or so kids invited to the reception demanded a kids table. The wicker pig was a thrift store find I painted white and filled with crayons and farm theme treat bags. Plain white paper was laid out for the kids to draw on. (My favorite table to glance over at was this table, it was a constant flurry of activity.)

Cake, Just Married, Guest Book, Espresso and Kids.

I made the signs using the aqua twine and a Martha Stewart punch that I had also used on my invitations.

Ah...warm cozy sweater and a satin flower pin with pearls. The sweater is made from bamboo yarn and was in this pattern book by Bernat. I had only just learned to knit in December with the help of youtube. (the look on my face is: "Ha ha, I have rain boots with my wedding dress, what are you going to do about it?")

So many people came to help out the day before for set-up. Including the mother of my brother's wife, my husband's parents who helped with the finishing touches the day of, all three of my brothers, my mom and my best friend who whisked me away for a mani-pedi.

Wedding Reception: Cake topper

Luckily, my new Mother-in-law sent me a photo of the cake topper in use yesterday so now I can post it in it's native environment.

Instead of one cake we had around 14. Pictures of the cake table en-mass will come later. I ran out of time near the end to decoratively cut out the topper...if I only could do it over again! I also whipped out the actual painting in one night in order to get it scanned in time. With the assistance of my brother's wife's mother, this cake topper was made ready to put into the cake!

And the original illustration:

This illustration features our four cats. Maggie, Sam, Oscar and Schrodinger.

Wedding Illustrations

Below is the sketch and the final illustration of a piece that was part of the invitations sent out to our wedding. The content of the illustration was completely my husbands idea. 

It was originally going to be the save the date card, but time grew short!

Final piece.

Originally the colors for our wedding were orange, light blue and green. During the invitation design process, I nixed those colors and replaced it with red and cyan and brown.

Got Hitched

My silence on my blog recently has a good excuse.

More images will be coming, including art and invitation design.