wedding invitations Archives - Page 2 of 3 - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: wedding invitations

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma on the beginnings of their DIY wedding efforts

Charlie

I am so excited about my new TNWC Real Brides feature and I hope you are too! It’s been lovely finding out so much about other people’s weddings and being able to share all those details with you here. You can catch up on all the blog posts by clicking this link to the full TNWC Real Bride feature.

Today has her second blog post, and is going to tell us all about the start of their DIY elements to their wedding – starting with their invitations. She’s even done a how to guide on how she made some very cute cake flags! If you haven’t read Emma’s first blog post, you can find it here. Over to Emma…

This week we have reached the first of our planning milestones – we posted our invites! We both wanted personalised invitations and I love to draw so I thought I’d have a go myself. I drew the designs on watercolour paper, painted in a bit of colour and went over it in fine liner.

I photographed the paintings then added the text using Photoshop. We had them printed on recycled card at Monkey Puzzle Repro Art who are based at Mount Pleasant Eco Park. I couldn’t be more happy with the service, John was lovely and got our invites printed within 24 hours of me emailing him the artwork! The front of the invite features us in what I think I can pass off as ‘naïve cartoon style’, standing in front of the archway area we plan to have our ceremony in.

Charlie

Handmade wedding stationery from a TNWC bride-to-be printed onto ellie poo paper

Charlie

One of the nicest parts of running my own business is that I get the loveliest emails from brides-to-be and couples planning their wedding. Sometimes you even send me pictures of the sweet items you’ve been making, often inspired by things I made for my own wedding. Today one such bride-to-be has been kind enough to share her handmade wedding invitations – and the all important details on how she made them – that were inspired by my own handmade wedding stationery.

Becky was kind enough to detail down how she made each part of her wedding stationery and included some of the websites where she bought supplies from. Over to Becky to tell you about how she made her handmade wedding stationery…

The Invitations

Our wedding reception is taking place in a tipi in a field on our friends’ farm which is overlooked by the forest where Tom proposed, so we wanted the stationery to reflect this natural and beautiful setting that is so special to us.

I found a previous post on The Natural Wedding Company blog where someone had used card made out of elephant poo for their invites, which I loved the idea of, so I ordered some of the paper from The Green Stationery Company with matching envelopes.

Charlie

Exquisite embroidered wedding scrolls from Upsticks Boutique – alternative wedding stationery or keepsake

Charlie

There are so many beautiful wedding ideas out there, but sometimes something pops into my inbox that just seems that little bit extra special. When Caroline from REloved Boutique in Nottingham emailed me to tell me all about the beautiful embroidered wedding scrolls made by her friend Sally I was intrigued.

From her shed studio nicknamed Upsticks Boutique, Sally uses recycled, reclaimed and vintage fabrics to create what I can only describe as art – in particular, she makes these beautiful wedding scrolls with your wedding date and details hand-stitched into them.

They have a variety of uses, from a keepsake of the day (particularly beautiful when framed) to actual wedding invitations to be sent out to your guests. She’s also started making ‘save the dates’ in a similar style, and is keen to expand into all elements of wedding stationery.

Charlie

Quirky and playful illustrated wedding stationery with a mixture of modern designs and old fashioned charm

Charlie

When I came across the wedding stationery created by illustrator Victoria Whincup I was certain that you would all love to see her designs too. I got in touch with Victoria and she told me that she first started doing wedding invitations when she made them for a friend, and since then hasn’t been able to stop! “I love to hear a customer’s idea and then translate it into a design. I have always drawn and painted, it’s all I’ve ever really wanted to do.”

Victoria uses paint brushes and pencils to create her designs, telling me she believes it gives a much more personal feel to the invites. “I’m a great lover of typography, so all of the text is delicately hand drawn. Colours are also definitely important when it comes to my designs, it’s nice to subtly tie in the colour theme of a wedding, or perhaps the season. Most of the tones I use are quite muted, but I am a fan of a splash of vibrant colour here and there.”

Charlie

Rustic shabby chic wedding stationery with brown card, lace and luggage tags

Charlie

Some of my favourite emails are from you lovely readers, sending me pictures of your wedding stationery that has been inspired by my own wedding invitations or save the dates. Today I get to share with you Hollie’s wedding stationery, which was also inspired by ours, with a few tweaks and her own stamp on it.

She combined our two ideas, turning her wedding invitations into a larger version of our sealed save the dates. I love this idea, I can imagine it would be lovely to receive one of these in the post and to unfold it.

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

Our wedding stationery inspired this reader to create her own handmade invitations

Charlie

One of my lovely readers, Eulyn, got in touch to share her wedding invitations with me after being inspired by the wedding stationery we made for our wedding. I can’t tell you how lovely it is to get emails and pictures like this, knowing that something you did inspired someone else – and a photo of another couples hard work.

If you’ve been inspired by the ‘save the dates’ or stationery that we created for our wedding, do send me an email – I’d love to hear from you and attach a couple of pictures so I can see (and maybe even share on the blog) what you’ve created – it would make my day. It can get very lonely blogging away, sharing ideas and inspiration, so hearing that you were inspired by something you found here really makes me happy.

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

Handmade wedding stationery from a natural wedding bride-to-be

Charlie

I swap emails with some lovely girls who are planning their wedding, and often they share with me some of the handmade details they are making. Following on from these lovely floral luggage tag ‘save the dates’ from reader Charlie, I have some more wedding stationery to share this evening.

Image: Allister Freeman Photography

These invitations and envelopes are made by Caroline, one of my readers and bride-to-be, and her fiancée Mark. Firstly a big congratulations – they are getting married next week on 8th October!

For their invitations they used these free printable bunting invites from Wedding Chicks – you can even select your own colour scheme. They decided to stick the invitations into cards, and also included a photo from their pre-wedding photo shoot (see all the photos here) that had all the RSVP information on the back of it.

The envelopes they lined themselves, with husband-to-be Mark busy with the tube of Pritt Stick. Caroline told me they even had someone ask them where they got the envelopes from – a sure sign you’ve created something beautiful. Although Caroline said that they wanted their friends and family to realise it was in fact their hard efforts on Friday night that had created these pretty envelopes!

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

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