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Blog: bird themed

Charlie

Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding at their idyllic Somerset village

Charlie

This beautiful summer woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding is a delight to share, not only because it’s full of lovely details that will undoubtedly inspire many of our brides, but also because it’s the wedding of one last years TNWC Real Brides, Fern (find all her blog posts here).

Fern and Dominic planned a natural down-to-earth wedding in their home village Montacute in Somerset. This idyllic rural village provided a pretty backdrop against which they celebrated their marriage, and wove into their wedding day some of the things they love most – woodland birds and country garden blooms. Over to Fern to share her wedding day…

Fern + Dominic, August 2015

Our wonderful August wedding was everything that we had hoped for. It was really important to us right from the beginning for our day to be really welcoming, intimate occasion to share with our family. We had a very small wedding party with only one bridesmaid, best man and one usher, but this was right for us. Lots of our guests commented on how much they enjoyed the relaxed family atmosphere.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern shares some of her handmade wedding details from napkins to paper garlands

Charlie

Real handmade wedding details

I am terribly behind for various reasons with my lovely Real Bride posts, so here is a post from Fern that she wrote in the run up to her August wedding sharing some of her handmade details like paper garlands, napkins, and table centre making. The photo of her little boy helping to paint the blackboards is just too sweet!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

Over to Fern…

It’s all in the details

It’s less than five weeks to go to the wedding and I’ve officially turned into a crazy person. Not in a angry, bite your head off way, (ok only once) but in a running around the garden at 5.00 in the morning looking at pieces of wood and measuring how long my garlands are, and trying to work out which of my plants will be flowering in August kind of way.

I have had my first wedding dress fitting and we have all had our hair trial at the salon. So it’s all getting very real now. We are still working on lots of projects for the wedding so here are some sneak peeks, without giving away too many secrets.

Paper decorations

After making the envelopes for my invitations I was left with lots of strips of paper where I had trimmed the papers down to size. I was determined not to throw them away but find some way to use them to make something for the wedding. Then I found this idea (above) on Pinterest for paper garlands. I borrowed a die cutting machine and got to work changing all my strips of paper into little hearts and I have stitched them together on the sewing machine.

For the larger pieces of paper I have made some paper rosettes which, although beautiful, have required some deep engineering to stay in place.

Handmade napkins

I really don’t want too much of a colour theme at my wedding. There is some pink sneaking in to places where it counts, but I really don’t want it to be too “in your face”. I was really inspired by an idea for patterned napkins on Show Me The Pretty and decided to make my own for my wedding.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Fern’s ‘how to’ guide for the pretty envelopes she made for her bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery

Charlie

I have just the loveliest post today from TNWC Real Bride Fern, who has not only made the most heavenly bird and wildflower inspired wedding stationery (and with my favourite brown craft card featuring!), but she has put together an easy-to-follow ‘how to’ guide for how she made the pretty envelopes. Plus she’s also shared details of how she created her different wedding stationery items.

I just know you are going to love this wedding stationery and it’s beautiful little details. If you are on the hunt for eco-friendly materials to make items for your wedding, do check out our DIY Resources section of the directory for a great selection of businesses that we love.

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

How to guide for pretty envelopes

It is always lovely to receive special parcels and post by mail, and wedding invitations can tell you so much about a wedding. Most of the weddings we have been to, couples have handmade their invitations and I never considered doing my invites any other way, but I really wanted my wedding invitations to have a wow factor as soon as they land through the letter box. So it was clear very quickly that I was going to make my envelopes as well.

I have included a ‘how to’ guide for making envelopes below, but I will tell you about my other stationary first.

DIY Floral Envelopes

Full ‘how to’ guide below!

Invitations, save the dates and RSVPs

I designed all the stationary myself in Microsoft Publisher and Microsoft Word, inspired by my finds on Pinterest. As I had decided that my envelopes would hold lots of colour it meant that I could keep my invitations more simple.

The fonts were Segeo Script used for our names on the save the dates and the rest of stationary we only used Traditional Arabic but varied use in all capitals or italics. The save the dates I made in Publisher by using the layout guides to divide the page into 8. I did for the RSVPs in Word; it is do-able but a lot fiddlier. I printed them on A4 and then cut them up with a guillotine.

The card for the invitations I found in a local shop with 10 brown kraft and 10 white sheets in. The design of my invites was dictated by this and its size. These were designed in Microsoft Word by customising the page size, even the map on the details.

We decided to trim all the corners to tie in with the envelopes, hole punch and tie together with ribbon. I then also made an afternoon invitation in the same way by customising the page size to A5 and then putting amended details inside. I printed everything at home on my own printer. It has cost around £35 for everything, not including postage, but I still have things left over for other projects.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: introducing Fern and Dominic’s natural woodland bird and wildflower inspired wedding in Somerset

Charlie

Plans for a natural woodland bird and wildflower inspired wedding

I am pretty excited today to be introducing you to the first of our TNWC Real Brides for 2015! It’s that fun time of the year when emails start to drop into my inbox sharing all kinds of wonderful plans and handmade details from these brides-to-be in the run up to their weddings.

Our first TNWC Real Bride to introduce you to is Fern, who is getting married to her Mr-to-be Dominic this August in Somerset. Both of them have a love of the countryside, and Dominic works as a forester, so they are weaving elements of woodland birds and wildflowers throughout their wedding. I can’t wait to hear more!

>> View Fern and Dominic’s woodland bird and country flower inspired wedding here <<

But for now, over to Fern to give you a little introduction to how they met and their initial wedding ideas…

How we met

Dominic and I have been together for over eight years. We met in our first week of university in one of our first lectures, introduced by a new mutual friend, Jon. After one day saving a space for Jon between us in the lecture hall for four hours without him coming, we decided that maybe we would sit next to each other from now on.

We both studied Geography and had most lectures together and got to know each other better. Over a year later, and after some shaky first dates, meaning we now affectionately hold Airplane as the first film we saw together, we finally became a couple and two years afterwards had our first flat together.

A village home in Montacute

After a few jobs, more courses and house moves later we eventually found our way to our little house in the village of Montacute, which has truly been a real home for us. We live right in the centre of this beautiful village in a secret courtyard where we know all our neighbours and are just a stones throw away from breathtaking countryside.

Charlie

Real wood wedding invitations engraved with a bird on a branch

Charlie

How incredible are these invitations – made of very thin real wood they are then engraved with a personalised message. This one in particular I liked with the tiny bird on a branch, and thought they would make lovely wedding invitations if you had the budget and wanted something really unusual and special.

They are made (I believe) in the Netherlands but can be shipped anywhere in the world, and new trees are planted when one is cut. Take a look at their Etsy shop for more designs and details.

Charlie

Original fabric ‘save the date’ idea with personalised ribbon hanger

Charlie

Today we have more fab ideas for wedding projects shared by one of my readers, Gemma, who writes Blossom Bells. Gemma created these sweet ‘save the dates’ inspired by a tutorial she saw in the July issue of Sew Hip magazine, written by Lilipopo.

Gemma, who is currently planning her wedding, decided to make these hanging fabric ‘save the dates’ from linen and a pretty back (that you can’t see) from organic cotton from the Cloud9 range. You can also buy organic fabrics from Organic Cotton.

Gemma designed a heart and bird shape, but also did a bat because both her and her husband-to-be have wildlife-related jobs – a fun way to incorporate your interests into your wedding.

Next Gemma stamped their wedding date onto the plain linen side using a custom stamp from The English Stamp Company with a water based screen printing ink. Another lovely touch from Gemma is making the hanging tags from ribbon with their wedding website link on it. That way your guests can find out details about your upcoming wedding.

Charlie

Do it yourself: rustic handmade wedding stationery ~ part 1

Charlie

I’ve decided to split the ‘do it yourself’ for our wedding stationery into four parts as there seemed too much to share in just one post, and I didn’t want you all nodding off. So without further ado, here’s Part 1.

First off, you should know I did all of this in Microsoft Word. Perhaps insane, as Word is not meant for graphic design, but it’s what I have. I don’t have any fancy software packages, so I had to do the best that I could with what I had. Yes, it undoubtedly caused headaches and extra time faffing about, but I got where I wanted in the end and I’m proud of my effort.

The Invitation

Inspiration

For me, our invitation needed to reflect what our wedding was going to be about. I wanted people to get excited (hopefully!) and have a sense of what kind of wedding they were going to.

I went through various different ideas, including sewing mini bunting onto each card, which I decided might kill me off and wasn’t a true reflection of our wedding day. Here are the some of the ideas I was inspired by…

From left to right starting at the top: found Once Wed; Perch Papiers; Junkaholique; Ruffled; unknown; found Snippet & Ink; unknown; Heather Ross; Ruffled; found Twig & Thistle

Charlie

A 1950s style blue vintage swallow bridal fascinator

Charlie

A Alicia Handmade is one of those websites I could spend hours looking around at all the pretty handmade goodness. So when I spotted this new addition to her collection I couldn’t resist sharing it.

Sky Blue Vintage Swallow Bridal Fascinator

Handmade in London from vintage materials, including a gorgeous swallow brooch, ruffles of vintage ribbon and clouds of blue net.

This adorable fascinator would look great on a bride, bridesmaid, or even a mother-of-the-bride – in fact, anyone! Sometimes items just come along that you fall in love with, and this is one of them.

All that combined with a price tag of £42 I don’t think this will be around long – so if, like me, you’ve fallen in love with it – go snap it up now!

Charlie

Handmade eco-friendly wedding cake toppers

Charlie

The lovely Heather from Star House got in touch and after looking at her pretty alternatives to wedding cake toppers I knew I had to share them.

Forget the cheesy plastic figurines and instead go for one of Heather’s that’s been lovingly handmade in wood…

Heather started designing and making cake toppers after she received a number of customer requests – previously she focused on “little folks for little folk”.

Now the majority of Heather’s work is designing likenesses and love bird cake toppers for discerning brides-and-grooms-to-be.

Charlie

An Easter wedding project: bird nest favours in vintage tea cups

Charlie

Wedding project: bird nest favours in vintage tea cups

April’s creative project is designed around the idea of an Easter wedding. When thinking about ideas for a simple but beautiful Easter wedding project I just knew it needed to centre around mini speckled chocolate eggs.

How to create these bird nest wedding favours

I used ordinary rabbit hay (I have lots of this lying around as I have two cheeky bunnies of my own) that I shaped into a small nest. Then I placed the nest of hay into a pretty vintage tea cup complete with saucer. I had a search around my backgarden and found some moss and a tiny white feather, which I placed in the nest to give it a more natural look. Then I nestled a handful of chocolate mini eggs in the centre.

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