Last weekend I ordered a few bits from the internet to start on my wedding invitations and thought I’d post up how I’ve made them.
For this you’ll need:
- White pre-scored greeting card – I’m using 135mm square white card for this
- Washi Paper, available from good paper suppliers and origami shops
- Coloured card to match washi paper
- Mizuhiki in 2 colours- Japanese paper cord available from some origami shops and Japanese goods shops
- Paper Inserts – the lengths should be slightly shorter than your card (in this case mine is 26.8mm x 135mm)
- Pritt Stick or other lightweight paper glue
- Glue Line or similar
- Guillotine/Rotary cutter & Cutting Mat
- Ruler
- Scissors
Cut your coloured card to the same length as your card front (135mm here) and about 60mm wide, then cut the washi paper to 40mm x 135mm. Glue the back of the washi with Pritt stick and position in the centre of the card.
Next apply a line of Glue Line around the perimeter of the back of the coloured card and position in the centre of the card front.
Meanwhile form the Mizuhiki into a knot of your choice. For this I used 2 cords but you can build it up with a few cords following the same lines for a thicker knot. Mizuhiki can be a bit tricky to work with so if you find you knots are coming apart use a small piece of Glue Line to hold it in place while you work. For this card, the purple cord should measure 210mm and the silver 380mm.
Use a small amount of Glue Line along the length of your Mizuhiki to attach it to the front of the card, leaving enough cord to wrap around the card.
Next make a small hole in the back face of the card near the crease to thread the Mizuhiki cord through. Attach it to the inside of the card with more glue line and bend the other side of the cord around the front of the card and attach to the inside in the same way.
Finally, to complete the card either print or write your message on the insert and using yet more Glue Line apply a small line to the back inside face of the card (avoiding where the cord pierces through) and attach your insert.
You should now have something along these lines:
Each card takes around 5-10 minutes and costs around £0.30 to produce.
Since my last post I had a hard drive failure and lost all my work since July, including the two drawings I posted recently. So, I decided to redraw the dandelion image.
Last time I used tile clones but looking back on it the positioning of the fluff was far too geometric,
so I got rid of the tile clones idea and redrew each seed instead of generating them. I think this looks more natural.
Not quite sure what to do with the stalk yet.
Here’s another possible table number doodle and an experiment in tile cloning. I can’t figure out whether I like it with or without the leaves better. I think for the real thing I’d have to tidy the leaves up a bit. Maybe it looks too plain without them?
Wow, two posts in a row. I’ve surpassed myself.
Today I’ve been messing around with Inkscape. I made these spirograph flower designs and thought I could use it for table numbers for the reception. I’m not set on this but I thought I’d post it up anyway.
I’m trying to avoid the traditional look without looking too childish or too homemade. It’s hard.
When will I learn my lesson about being in drunken charge of a camera?
My first mistake was drinking 6 glasses (I should really say plastic cups) of champagne while helping Gemma get ready for her wedding. The photographer wasn’t around much while she was getting ready so I got my camera to grab some pics of her before the ceremony. Then more champagne.
The ceremony went well and I got lots of nice pictures of them walking in, exchanging rings, signing the register etc. I also got plenty of photos of the drinks reception, some family shots, the speeches, cutting the cake, the first dance. During this time I managed another 2 glasses of wine and 2 (or was it 3) more of champagne. Oh dear. I didn’t notice I was drunk.
Then I had the bright idea to change the format from large jpg to raw. Oops, did I just press “Format”?! Nooooooooo! Everything gone, cleared off the card. I was so annoyed I actually cried. The shock had sobered me up by at least 2 glasses of wine and thankfully I had the presence of mind to swap cards before taking any photos.
I borrowed another CF card and got some more pictures of the reception.
After some research on the webbernet it was begining to look hopeful. We were able to copy the contents of the card onto Tony’s computer and pull pretty much all the images out from there. I think a few may have been missing but thankfully nothing important was lost. Tony’s computer runs Ubuntu and in case you’re interested he’s working on a write up at ten.ynottony.net
I didn’t try recovering it on the mac but I was interested to try out one of the many free recovery programs for Windows (that computer runs 2000). For that I used “Art Plus Digital Photography Recovery”. I found it on download.com. The results were pretty good. Not quite as good as on Tony’s computer. Some of the images came in with coloured bands and it was quite slow but it did find a few that were missed the first time round. I’d recommend if you’re using it to run it through a few times and choose a new folder each time and then compare them. It was very simple to use if the linux way seems too scary.
But anyway – what a relief!