We previously covered the process behind Sally and Ben’s custom invitation suite here, as our featured project. Now that we’ve shown you the wedding paper we created for them, we are excited to share with you a little glimpse of Sally and Ben’s colorful big day in Australia! This beautifully colorful wedding was featured on Amini Concepts, an events styling company based in Australia.
Sally and Ben’s outdoor ceremony stayed true to their original vision of vibrant colors with a vintage feel.
Absolutely love these hanging vases!
Our menus and name cards paired fantastically with table styling, making everything have that unique, handmade feel.
Congratulations to Ben and Sally on such a gorgeous wedding day, and surely many happy memories with friends and family! Please check out the rest of the photographs on Amini’s website here. To see our photos from Ben and Sally’s whole invitation suite, swing by our photo gallery.
It’s time for another behind-the-scenes peak into another wonderfully fun-to-create custom project! Sally and Ben were looking for a package that would reflect their interests as a couple while incorporating all the elements of a traditional invitation and then some. When I first spoke to Sally, she told me she wanted something ‘modern vintage with bright colors’ and showed me paintings with bold pen and ink with vibrant splashes of watercolors that she was inspired by.
For inspiration, they chose images of devastatingly cute floral arrangements with quirky vases that imparted a vintage air. From looking at her moodboard, it was truly exciting to dream up something for her, it was a visual style that was both bold yet dreamy and romantic! We came up with their save-the-dates first, thinking of Jane Austen infused with a modern bright palette. The result was a crisp, creamy handmade paper with subtle texture and deckled edges that gave it a very special handmade-feel; once folded, the card also served as the envelope and it was topped off with a classic wax seal in a bold teal hue.
Everything else quickly followed suit; for the invitation, we did a more elaborate fold, using the vertical span to emphasize the tree and the hanging vases that were drawn from the theme of Sally and Ben’s outdoor ceremony. Of course, the invite wasn’t complete without including the couple’s two dogs! The bottom portion doubled as a RSVP card, so guests could easily detach it from the invitation and pop it in the mail.
Matching name cards, menus, and table markers were hand-lettered and painted by hand in a technique that made it look ‘dipped’!
Last but not least, the bride and groom wanted to include a personal touch on their thank you notes by using a photo from their wedding day and we combined it with a simple flower motif from their invitation and their save-the-dates and brought it all full-circle.
For more photos and detailed shots from this featured project, check out the gallery. Stay tuned for Part 2, where we will unveil photos from Sally and Ben’s BIG day!
I am so excited to show you the results of the collaboration between Sarah of Hip Ink’s studio and mine (see post on sketches awhile back here). We do create custom illustrations on request for specialty purposes outside the studio but this is the first one that is actually a wedding invitation, and it was so much fun to do!
(Image above: Originals wrapped in glassine ready to be shipped out to the client in Canada.) I love the romantic, wintry wedding setting in Chateau Frontenac, Quebec City. When Sarah and Lorrain first showed me pictures of the venue and time of year, I instantly fell in love with the idea and couldn’t resist visions of vintage watercolor illustrations of the 1800s with their cobbled town streets, horse and carriage, women in fur coats and men in top hats! I envisioned it as an evening scene blanketed in snowflakes with an almost ethereal feel from another time, the warm glow of light from indoors bathing the sidewalks sparkling with snow.
HIP INK has a modern, clean and delightfully fresh approach to invitations and stationery in a style that is very different from mine and I was really excited to see what Sarah’s approach was going to be in the final suite. It was worth the wait-I love the gorgeous letterpress and combination of fonts that she chose and the paper is simply beautiful, thick and luxurious! All in all, a really elegant, classic, timeless suite that her clients must have been thrilled with, great job Sarah!!
Here’s what Sarah has to say…
(Excerpted from her HIP INK blog post, photo captions are my own thoughts)
Lovely soft winter colors; Photos by Corina V. Photography
Danielle and Stephen’s Chateau Frontenac/Old Quebec winter-themed pocketfold invitation, featuring a mix of letterpress printing and beautiful hand-painted illustrations by Amy Tan of The TreeSpace Studio.
They were immediately drawn to our Paris invitation at a bridal show in January, and knew they wanted something with a similar feeling, that would incorporate two specific illustrations – one of the Fairmont Le Cheateau Frontenac (where Danielle and Stephen’s wedding was taking place) and one of a wintery streetscape of Old Quebec. They wanted something soft and romantic, with a pen and ink/watercolour feeling, and I knew exactly who to call – in fact, I remember blurting out in our first meeting, “I know the perfect illustrator!”.
The perfect illustrator was Amy Tan from The Treespace Studio - Amy is an invitation designer in her own right as well, creating some of the most personal and beautiful invitations out there, and I knew her amazing style was perfect for this project (and I was right!).
We had used letterpress to create Danielle and Stephen’s save-the-dates, and I thought it was the perfect mix of modern and old-world for the wedding invitation as well. But…I knew that letterpress was definitely not going to work for the illustration portion of the invite. So, just like peanut butter and jelly, we made two very different printing methods the best of friends – first we sent off the invites and inserts to be letterpress printed (on Crane Lettra cotton stock), and then once we had them in studio we reproduced Amy’s beautiful illustrations on our in-house photo printer (and I caught up on Pinterest while I hand fed each one!). And here is the result:
Sarah is so good at typeface selection! Her font combination is flawless and elegant.
The illustrations so beautifully captured the Chateau in winter, with a warm glow emanating from the windows and a snowy Old Quebec street scene, with the bride and groom making a special appearance.
Loving the letterpressed light grey....!
While the colour scheme was a very traditional silver, white and dark blue, we added in shades of lavender to both the illustrations and the belly band, as well as the warm yellow-orange that added warmth to the illustrations and overall piece. Read the rest of the post here on Sarah’s HIP INK blog!
