What you see here is the first wedding invitation that I’ve fully designed. I just got mine in the mail yesterday, which is a pretty good sign that Angie doesn’t hate it to the point of uninviting me T-T

***I don’t mind you using the design for your own project but please ask before you use any of the illustrations, like the bird frame, map, cabin, pine cones, etc. These are all copyrighted and commercial use without permission will not be tolerated.***

Ang really liked the idea of a step-layered design. We also decided to stay loyal to her wedding colors. As I’ve mentioned before, this would be an outdoors wedding and Angie wanted something that was rustic and earthy but simple and clean. After many careful edits, our final mockup looked like this:

My ambitions got the best of me for this design because I wanted something that looked polished and professional, even if it was meant to be a DIY project for the bride. The DIY aspect was still very much possible but it was a LOT of hard work. Angie somehow managed to pull it off while juggling other wedding preparations, a busy school and work schedule and, of course, entertaining me on mybirthday weekend and trying to overall be a contributing member of the human race. However, she decided that all this wasn’t driving her crazy enough and has now commenced carving her own cake topper. I suspect she’ll also be chauffeuring all the guests herself and chiseling her own ice sculpture, too, but not before she builds a chapel in which the wedding will take place.

The scalloping was tough! We used paper punches for this and they were not meant for cutting card stock. We went through three punches, eventually breaking every single one. Craig, the hubby-to-be, got so fed up that he scribbled P.O.S. on one. I had to tell Angie’s sweet fobby Japanese mom that it meant “Property of [his last name that starts with ’S’]“.

I didn’t like any of the silhouette frame clip arts I saw online, so I drew these on Photoshop.

We decided to use the Gocco to add very thick embossing. I’m pretty thrilled with how the frames came out. I seriously want to EMBOSS EVERYTHING, EVERYWHERE, ALL THE TIME.

I really wanted to put a QR code to their wedding site here but Angie pointed out that most of her guests would be old and not have barcode reader on their phones. I told her old people suck, that they’re generally terrible dancers and that she should do a whole other wedding just for the younger crowd.

Angie, thank you so much for choosing me to design and illustrate your invitation and save-the-date! It means so much to me that you believe in my skills. Also, thank you for your patience with this design. I hope you and the doctor have a wonderful wedding followed by endlessly wonderful memorable years to come!

Incidentally, I’ve decided to take on a new client for the coming fall and winter. If you know someone who needs an illustrator, feel free to send an email to alienman at goldfishcake dot com.