Wedding Invitations

John and I wanted our wedding invitations to reflect our character and interests.  We also are using our favorite fictional universes at our wedding reception, so it made sense for the invitations to match.  I have previously posted about this, here and here.  While it was my original intention to make six complete paintings, and as a result, six invitation options, I only ended up using two designs.  I made a Doctor Who inspired invitation, and a Firefly inspired invitation.

In the Doctor Who invitation John is the doctor and I am a companion, (inspired by Donna in "The Runaway Bride" only in that she wears a wedding dress.

In the Firefly invitation, John is Simon and I am Kaylee, a character you all have seen me play before.

I love how both options turned out and of course, we had them printed by Moo.

Save the Dates

My wedding to John is coming up in  just a few weeks now.  You may have noticed my absence here and on Hungry Griffin for several months.  I have been planning and organizing and it has been taking up a large amount of my time and attention.  I will of course have some diy projects to share once the wedding is over, as I have done quite a few in preparation.  As a sneak peak, I thought I would share our save the date cards with you.

John and I have been together for seven and a half years and we have been engaged for the last three.  We are aware that this pace is not the traditional one, but we both wanted to take our time.  We thought we would incorporate that into our save the dates.

This was my original sketched out idea for the cards.  I made it late one night after John and I came up with the idea and I didn't want to lose it.  It actually is quite similar to how the actual cards turned out.

We had a good time with it.  I bought us some "mature" clothing for us at a thrift store, some old glasses (neither of us could see a thing through them, and I bought John a bubble pipe.  The knitting and newspaper were easy.

We had a lot of silly options to choose from, but we love the one we went to and the cards turned out great!  We got them printed at Moo.

TARDIS

Who loves Doctor Who?  I do!

I've been working on a nine inch tall TARDIS.  It's for the wedding, so I won't give specifics on how it will be used, but I can give you some sneak peaks.

I made it from cardboard and paper mache with a top piece made of sculpey.  I gave it a coat of white paint as a primer so that the paint color would really pop.

The hardest part was the lettering for the Police Public Call Box signs.  I printed the sign for the door on the computer.

What kind of crafts take up your time?  What's your favorite TV show?

February

It's February in San Diego, and I feel like I have a lot going on.  It doesn't feel like February in any other place I've lived.

I just got back from a week in Portland with my sister, brother-in-law, and their now five week old baby boy.  It was so nice to see them all, and to feel really useful, cooking, cleaning, and taking care of that little boy.  When I got back, it was to a pile of reply cards from our wedding invitations.  The wedding is coming along.  It is less than four months away and I am really starting to dig in now.  In fact, one of my major projects for the month is sewing tablecloths and napkins for the reception.

The checked fabric is for the tablecloths, the solid blue for napkins.  How do you like my makeshift ironing board.
John and I are also considering a bit of redecoration in order to create better (read tidier) storage, and to maximize seating.  My sewing projects have kind of gotten out of control, even taking over some of the floor now.

I'll let you know how that comes along.
I have a sewing date for tomorrow, so maybe I will have something fun to share after that.

Catching Up

Hello all.  It has been quite a while since I wrote a serious post, and I am sorry for that.  I have been running around the last few weeks and it has been hard enough just crafting, without writing about it.  First off, I spent a weekend at my sister's for her baby shower.  The whole family is very excited for her son's arrival, so a lot of my crafting has been baby-centric for the last few months.  My mother came for a visit after that, and we played tourists for the week, visiting art museums in Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo, and of course the beach.  Then came Thanksgiving which ate a week of my life so easily, and finally, John's parents came to visit at the beginning of December.  While all the visits and trips were exciting and fun, the near month of hosting or being away was exhausting, and I feel like like the ground is finally under my feet again and I have space to share what I've been up to.

I've completed two paintings, this abstract one, and one of the San Diego skyline at night.  I haven't been satisfied with the photos of the skyline paintings that I have been able to take, but I do have these two detail shots:

I am really happy with both paintings, and hope to list them both on my etsy shop when I can get some better photos.

I have also been enjoying making baby clothes.

This cute cardigan.

And this onesie.  The great thing about baby clothes is that they are so quick to make that I finish one and can move onto the next quickly.

I also make a paper mache box and painted it to look like a Super Mario cube.

I expect that we will be using this as our ring box for the wedding because the companion cube is too big to really put in a pocket.

Well, now you are pretty much caught up on my recent crafts.  What have you been up to since I last posted?  Any big Christmas crafts?

Companion Cube Ring Box

So the wedding plans move forward.  Now that we are eight months out it is actually reasonable for me to do all the planning and crafting I have been doing all along.  My most recent wedding related craft is a box for our rings.  As you may have suspected from previous posts (see Christmas Decorations) John and I are a bit geeky.  We love video games, comic books, science fiction and fantasy in print and on the screen, and of course, tabletop games of all types.
When it came to creating something special to hold our wedding rings, I turned to our geekiness for inspiration.  John loves the Portal games and I had a good bit of fun playing the first game before getting a bit overwhelmed by the motion (I have some trouble with queasiness).  I love the dialogue and the characters in both games.  The AI are especially amusing.  Anyway, what better geeky icon that is shaped like a box than the companion cube.  You know, this guy:

Anyway, after a bit of fussing with little pieces of wood, I got a bit frustrated.  Looking around for alternatives, I decided to go the Sculpey route.

 I got this little ceramic box at a Michaels and proceeded to cover it with Sculpey.

 I then scraped the engraved lines in the sides of the box that don't join.

 Then came adding the sculptural elements of the box.  I found using a template and eyeing it from there to work well.

 Once the piece was completely built, I baked it and started to apply the acrylic paint.

 I took breaks to let the box dry between sections.

 Once it was painted I sealed it with a clear spray coat.  While it doesn't have a perfect finish, I love the idea of our rings living inside it for a while.

I still have to make a little bag for the rings, but there is our companion cube ring box.  We probably won't have the heart to incinerate it when we are done with it.

Work in Progress

I am working on another wedding invitation painting.  Anyone recognize this background?  Can you guess who we will be masquerading as this time?

Bridal Jewelry

I had an idea for some bridal jewelry for myself a few weeks ago.  I wanted to create the look of a pearl necklace but in a bit more eclectic a material.  I chose to go with this crackled glass bead from Fire Mountain Gems. 

Wanting to incorporate our wedding color, I decided to go with a ribbon tie closure.  When I had finished making the jewelry for myself, I decided to make a few for my etsy shop as well. They turned out really beautifully.

I made two sets, one in bright blue, and one in navy.  They are in my etsy shop here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/125214845/glass-faux-pearl-necklace-and-bracelet

Craft Date

John had President's Day off, so we had a craft date. 

 Using some wooden dowels, floral wire and a glue gun, we began to build a wireframe.

 Adding sections slowly and deliberately. 

 John had a really cool idea for using ships as table numbers at our wedding reception.

So we built a wire-frame of the Millenium Falcon.

We intend on spray painting it grey before we are done.

What do you do with your loved ones as a cheap stay at home date?

Paper Flowers

Over the last week or so I have been making paper roses out of comic book pages like crazy. 

I am making many of them for our wedding.  I know it's still early, but I am getting a headstart as we will have a lot going on between now and then, and I have given myself somewhat lofty goals for diy projects.  I am basing my roses off of this tutorial.  I got the idea to add leaves to the bottom of my roses to make them more perfect, so I dyed the pages of a book we were going to get rid of and cut out leaf shapes.

After hot gluing them to the bottom of the rose, a swipe of the fingernail curls them outward.  I don't want to give too much away, but I will be including the finished roses in the bouquets, as well as elsewhere in our wedding decor.

I love how they seem very flower-like while still accentuating the comic book flair!

Working on that geeky wedding invitation

It is coming along nicely, although the detail is a little all consuming.

The body of the ship has taken like three days.  And I'm not even done yet!

Wedding invitations in the works.

Here's something I am working on.  I am doing at least six paintings for our wedding invitations.  This is the background for one of them.  The tree took me forever.  All the little leaves.

Engagement!

Well, as some of you know, in February of this year John (the man I've been seeing for nearly five years now) proposed.  This statement does not do it justice.  I said yes (!) and so began our engagement.  Now, being crafty, I use this fact as another reason to be creative.  Recently, I put together a scrapbook for my future mother in law.  Scrapbooking is not one of the crafts I have much experience with, so I found it somewhat overwhelming.  I went to a cute little scrapbooking store in the same building as my studio space.  The Crop Shop is a little shop run by a very nice woman who was extremely helpful.  She put me at ease about the whole experience and I left with a kit for making an engagement themed scrapbook.  (Actually she is in the process of moving to a new street level space in the same building!)
My favorite part of this scrapbook is a decoupage wedding couple I put on the last page.

I made them from pieces cut out of magazines and made them to resemble us.  I love the way the wedding dress came out and I just hope my real dress is as elegant.

A close friend of mine, Jenn, took the pictures at the Highline Park in Chelsea.  I love them so much and my scrapbook is better consequentially.