recycled Archives - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: recycled

Charlie

Wishing you a Happy New Year with a half price offer on wedding stationery from The Little Cornish Design Studio

Charlie

Wishing you a very Happy New Year! I hope you had a lovely break over Christmas and have an exciting year ahead to look forward to – I had a somewhat exhausting 2012 so I’m hoping that 2013 is going to involve more quality time and a better life balance. How about you?

Let’s kick off the New Year here on the blog with a fantastic and exclusive half price discount – yes, half price! – for my readers. The lovely Natalie from The Little Cornish Design Studio is offering TNWC readers a 50% discount on all printed wedding stationery ordered before 31st January!

Charlie

New Wives Club Christmas Special: quirky illustrated recycled wrapping papers and tapes from Alice Palace

Charlie

Have you wrapped your Christmas gifts yet? If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram you’ll know that I’m way behind this year due to some home renovation, but I’m looking forward to getting festive this coming week when hopefully all will be finished. Yey!

My wrapping paper of choice is most often a simple brown paper parcel tied up with raffia, but when I saw these from Alice Palace with their beautiful hand-drawn images I was in love.

Decorated with joyous festive images such as robins, mince pies, geese, holly berries, Christmas puddings and even a lovely snow bunny – they are so fun and I’m sure your family and friends would be delighted to received parcels wrapped up in this paper. What’s even better is that Alice Palace’s wrapping paper is made from 100% recycled paper and printed using vegetable inks.

Charlie

Rustic postcard save the dates with stamped lettering on recycled brown card

Charlie

Oooh I do love a great but simple idea, and this one is just downright fab. I know there is a huge following for rustic brown recycled wedding stationery on this blog (there’s lots of you after my own heart and I love it), so I’m pretty sure this design will interest a few of you.

Designed by the very talented Allie Ruth, this is a postcard sized save the date, very simply stamped on one side with the words ‘Save the Date’, and on the back the basic details such as date and place, along with space for your guests address and a stamp. The white lace motifs were also stamped on.

What’s brilliant, is that Allie Ruth has a fab Etsy shop where you can buy that lovely ‘Save the Date’ stamp, complete with arrow struck heart, plus she also does custom address stamps should you be looking for a new ‘Mr and Mrs’ style return address stamp.

Charlie

The new whimsical and vintage inspired collection of wedding headpieces from Pearls and Charm

Charlie

Pearls and Charm have been one of the lovely businesses on The Natural Wedding Company directory for a while now, and I was delighted when I saw some great new photos of Gail’s designs on Facebook. Gail of Pearls and Charm designs wedding hair accessories and tiaras from recycled finds and treasures, incorporating lace, ribbons, pearls and buttons into her pieces.

Repurposed trinkets and charm tiara in gold

This beautiful tiara is created using repurposed charms, pendants and beads in a gold colour – it is such a gorgeous colour with the amber and golds and delicate wiring.

Grace vintage lace bridal tiara

Charlie

Photobooth and brown luggage tag wedding invitations and how you can make your own

Charlie

If you don’t want to do anything too complicated for your wedding invitations then this idea might be perfect for you, whilst still being fun and personal to you as a couple. A photobooth style strip of pictures (with details on the back) and a brown luggage tag fastened together with string.

Making the photobooth style pictures

Both these items could be printed at home – there are lots of photo programmes that allow you to make collages like these (I like Photoscape which is free to download), so you could take some pictures and put them into a collage to create a photobooth style strip without having to leave home. This would enable you to easily print details onto the back of the photos too.

Creating the luggage tags

Brown luggage tags come in all sizes so you could find the right size for you and simply stamp a message like they have done here onto the front. If you wanted to include more details printed directly onto the luggage tag, then you can print onto recycled brown card (available from some of these businesses) then cut them out and trim the corners to make them appear like a luggage tag.

You can punch a hole and stick on the hole reinforcers (brown ones are available from Etsy if you search for ‘reinforcements’ under ‘All Items’) and they should look just like a ready bought luggage tag, but with all the details you want printed on – and no nightmare thoughts of how you put a luggage tag through your home printer!!

I love fonts, and am a regular visitor to Dafont in search of fun fonts. I believe (this shows how much of a font geek I am) that the font used on the brown luggage tag in the pictures, is one called Artistamp Medium. I love it and use it quite a lot, if you take a look at my Directory Showcase features it is used on my graphics. You should be able to type the name into the Dafont search engine and download it for home use.

Alternatively, print your details onto paper and glue them onto the back of the luggage tags like they have done here. You could also jazz up your invitations by using coloured raffia or stripey butcher twine instead of white string.

Charlie

Handmade ‘tying the knot’ save the dates made from brown card and twine

Charlie

The joys of having a photographer husband-to-be! If you’re the lovely Lisa, one of my blog readers, it means you can make pretty wedding details and get great pictures of them – which in turn means lovely photos to share with you all.

Lisa was inspired by my own rustic ‘save the dates’ and got in touch to share hers – I think they are so beautiful and they incorporate a really neat extra that Lisa found on this blog whilst searching for inspiration – a twine knot.

Charlie

Romantic handmade bouquet made from recycled fabrics and old world details

Charlie

I am pretty addicted to Etsy as it is so full of beautiful and unusual finds, and I’m currently in the midst of buying most of my Christmas presents from Etsy sellers. This romantic alternative to a fresh floral bouquet is handmade from recycled fabrics and embellished with old world finds.

Each fabric flower bouquet is custom made, so you can choose the colours and beadwork you’d like, and they come in a variety of sizes. Ideal for the bride who wants a keepsake to treasure long after her wedding. These bouquets are handmade by the incredibly talented Etsy seller Cultivar.

Charlie

Vintage silk saree bunting

Charlie

I came across this stunning silk bunting made from vintage sarees on one of the businesses listed on the directory. Ganesha is a fair trade shop that sells gorgeous gifts, accessories and bits for your house – but this bunting really stood out.

I’m beginning to feel like I’m a bit bunting-ed out, the stuff is all over the wedding world, you feel like you won’t ever see an original piece of bunting and that it’s only ever floral or Cath Kidston-inspired. Then you stumble across bunting like this, which is not only made from vintage silk, but it’s also recycling an unloved product, and on top of this each string is unique.

Lovely at a wedding, but also perfect for a hanging in your bedroom. Yey for interesting and different bunting!

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