Wedding Crossword Program!

The wedding program - often one of the last things on a bride's to-do list. In this case, it was the groom's responsibility. He was a smart one and enlisted the help of my husband who crafted a beautiful arrangement a mere 2 days before the ceremony.


Picture this: You arrive early to a wedding and are seated next to the amazingly attractive cousin of bride. You are desperately wishing you had something to spark conversation and avoid awkwardly introducing yourself or using some horrible one liner. Remember that pencil you were given with the program? Open up your program, ooo and ahh at the wonderful design...


Now turn it over to the back and take a look at the crossword puzzle! I think it's an adorable way for guests to mingle while waiting for the ceremony to start! You never know who's going to have the answer to 13 Across: Color of Bride's car.

Lifesize Wedding Painting

So I just realized that I have about 2 weeks left to finish this wedding painting before we have to package it up, stuff it in the car and drive 8 hours to Nebraska for the nuptials! I used to work on this mainly on the weekends when I'd have the most natural light coming in the windows, but now it's crunch time, folks. I'm guessing it's about 75% finished now, but the last 25% will contain those perfectionist-finishing touches that I cannot escape.

Once the background was finished, we took the 3 boards apart so it would be easier to paint because clumsy me knocked it over and bent the hinges. But it ended up being easier to paint, especially the bottom section. It has now taken over my dining room table.


In school, I used to LOVE creating folds in fabric, but back then I was using either oil paints or chalk/oil pastels which allow for easy blending. This time I was fighting with using acrylic paints which dry extremely fast. But somehow the jeans turned out quite nicely, despite a few profanities that were thrown around.

Here's the most recent photo (sorry it's poor quality, it was from my phone). His shorts were difficult because of the small detail, so I ended up using some colored pencils for the lines and small shading. I am really happy extremely thrilled by how fast and well the technique worked! Only a few things to finish! What do you think??

'Tis Wedding Season!

We don't design wedding invitations very often. In fact, the only other one we've designed was our own! But this year my husband set out to design his little sister's wedding invitation. And I think it turned out pretty darn awesome!

The original idea was to have it all be a folded postcard with a tear-away RSVP postcard at the bottom, but ideas changed, time flew by and the end result is slightly different, but still amazing! What do you think?

Summer Wedding Project

Many apologies for the lack of posting! Summer has officially started and I am swamped! Work is picking up and of course so is the social calendar! But I do have some "creativery" to show you today!

I am creating a nearly lifesize painting of my sister-in-law and her husband-to-be for their wedding in August. This is like a carnival piece where the faces are cut-out and people can put their own faces in the holes and take a picture! I think she is going to use this as a guestbook of sorts. Very cute idea.

So, here are a few photos of my process so far. I began by creating a concept in photoshop using a combination of engagement photos and their wedding colors. Then once I figured out the sizing, I went to buy the "canvas" which is three 2' x 4' masonite boards. I painted them white and my lovely husband helped connect them together giving me a final 4 foot by 6 foot blank canvas!
After they were all hinged together, I projected my sketch and traced it onto the boards. It's so much easier than free-handing something that large. Plus it saves me tons of time.
Unfortunately, I could not paint this the normal way one would begin a painting. Paint the entire background first, then add the foreground on top. My projector isn't very strong and I could not see any of the sketch if I projected it on a purple board...so white it had to be and I will be filling in the spaces with a paint-by-numbers approach.

Since the background is very geometric, I was able to use painter's tape and retain my sanity. This was wall paint and didn't dry as quickly as regular acrylic. I was very anxious to rip off the tape!
I used cheap acrylic paint for the blue banner and boy, does that dry a helluva lot quicker than wall paint! I am experimenting with different blending styles for shadows and highlights. So far I like a rough, sponge effect--not perfectly and smoothly blended. We'll see how it goes.
From here we will disassemble the large canvas into it's 3 smaller pieces. It will be much easier to paint and i won't get so much glare from our lights if I can move it around. I cannot wait to begin painting the figures! I really love to paint and work with traditional mediums. It's a great break from all the computer work I do.

What do you think?? Would a cut-out or painting like this be something you'd enjoy seeing at a wedding or other celebration?