pretty paper. true stories. {and scrapbooking classes with cupcakes.}

I know, in scrapbooking terms bunting is seen as a huge trend. And maybe on the wedding scene too. But I firmly believe that bunting is as British as a cup of tea and when I discussed this by email with a friend who qualifies as a real Brit rather than a poser like myself, she replied with just an image of a family having a picnic in the middle of the war, with bunting hanging between two Anderson shelters. That says it all to me: the British will hang bunting even in the middle of the blitz.

So clearly we need some for the wedding. (Which had nothing to do with the blitz. But say blitz out loud. It’s a rather cool word to say. I digress.)

When I made our bunting, I made it in the easiest way possible, pretty much, and it turned out exactly how I wanted so hurrah for that. No hemming. No measuring. These were the steps:

…Gather fabrics from the ‘I really am going to sew something with this someday’ pile in shades of blue or black and white.
…Iron them. Fold them with the wrong side on the inside — the print on the outside.
…Put on a DVD and cut all that fabric into tons of randomly sized triangles, arranging them by pattern on the table. (Cutting both layers at once so the print is on both sides of the triangle pair, yes?)
…When things are cut and DVD is done, sit at the sewing machine, making sure both spools have as much thread as possible, and pick up one pair of triangles. Start sewing with a straight running stitch, across the wide top of the triangle.
…Continue to sew and just pick up another triangle pair at the end of each one and keep right on sewing. Don’t worry about what order the patterns go in or if the big triangles are all together or anything. Just pick them up as random as humanly possible. Keep sewing until they are all in one long string.
…Realise that this has essentially created one giant knotted string of bunting on the other side of the sewing machine.
…Put on another DVD and untangle the whole mess.

And seriously, I think the last step was the hardest.

Once it was untangled, it was just as perfect as could be, and it graced our dessert table at the reception. (I had hoped to string it across the room or the terrace, but it turned out our venue didn’t really have any way of hanging anything from overhead.)

Since the wedding, the bunting has racked up quite a few miles, as it’s my go-to decoration for pretty much anything. The guest room, the Christmas tree, displays at craft shows — it always works. Since it isn’t hemmed at all, it has frayed and since it’s only one row of stitching holding it together, it does sometimes break. But both things are benefits in my mind — the fraying has given it much character now and the stitching is so easy to mend that I don’t mind pulling it apart to make it just the right length for any given space. Sometimes I even staple it back together for displays and it works just fine.

So yes, bunting. Oh how I love it. And don’t worry: I will dish more about the desserts later in wedding week, I promise. I’ll even share the recipes.

xlovesx

PS: I am curious as to how many of you actually said blitz aloud!

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Two years ago, this Monday marked the start of one week of excitement and insanity leading up to our wedding. It was a very crafty, DIY affair in many ways, and at this point there were still skirts to hem, bunting to sew and cherry amaretto jam to stew, not to mention friends and family to collect from the airport, deliveries to make and dinner dates to keep! Oh, and the little extra insanity that I knew I only had one day between the wedding and the first day of this annual online class.

I loved every minute of it, but I didn’t really get time to blog very much of it. A few things have appeared here and there on scrapbook pages, but most of the projects remained just snapshots on my hard drive after the big day. But between that upcoming anniversary and constant crafty talking and planning for the September weddings of two of my favourite friends, I am back in wedding mode, so it seems the right time to share. So welcome to wedding week here at shimelle.com! (Don’t worry – I promise there will be some scrapbooking things this week too.)

Today I’m starting with one of the very first crafty things we finished: our invitations. They were very much a team effort, which is what made them so perfect to me.

We had quite a long engagement and didn’t really start planning straight away. Or actually, we did start planning in quite a traditional sense, like going to wedding fairs and such but I had a really horrible experience and went away knowing that pretty much all I knew was that I didn’t want some sort of template wedding that was chosen out of six options in a brochure, which was seriously what was being pushed by those vendors. So we backed off and let things happen as they did. (Yes, this is also known as procrastination. Shush.)

In that window of time between engagement and a real outline of the wedding, we turned a work trip to the Seattle scrapbooking convention into a holiday with a road trip through Washington and British Columbia. That included a day spent with the fabulous Joy Madison and her family. Now, Joy is an awesome photographer (and scrapbooker) and her husband Jon has this wicked-crazy street photography style that I love. So we spent the day eating Japanese food, getting leaves in our hair, chasing geese and standing in the middle of traffic while he took our pictures all over Seattle. Seriously: so. much. fun.

And the shot of our feet above became our wedding invitation. I love how it’s a slightly insecure picture with the body language. Not that we were insecure about getting married, just that we are both people who can be very shy and quiet at times and it was just very natural. We added the text to the wall and sent it off to an online printer, ordering plenty of these at 4×6 with a white border.

Ordering the photos was the easy part. Then there was the hard labour. First we letterpressed the letter N onto pretty much anything that didn’t move. (In case you haven’t ever guessed from the background of photos in our house, my married name starts with N! It just ended up easier to stay with Laine in the scrapbooking world, especially since really I just go by my first name so much of the time.) The various letter Ns came from a variety of market stalls around London, and we used a reinker bottle of Colorbox pigment ink in Colonial Blue for all the letterpressing. One big N on the front of the RSVP envelopes and a different big N on plain white 4×6 postcards and a swirl design on blue scalloped postcards for the RSVPs. Lots and lots of letterpressing.

The plain white 4×6 postcards were then glued to the back of the photo prints, and instead of bulk printing the details, I wrote everyone a personal note with a fountain pen. It was actually quite therapeutic but it was far, far more time-consuming than I ever imagined. But each person got their very own note written with my very own hand. Oh, and each card included details about the dress code wherein we asked everyone to wear their best black and white. (More about that later this week.)

The RSVP cards were screen printed on our Gocco machine with black ink over the tone-on-tone blue design that we letterpressed. I loved that some of our guests dressed them up when they returned them, so we had some with gems, some with fancy silver lettering and some with very sweet notes. I kept them all – every single one.

The photo cards with the notes on the back were then bundled with the reply card and the return envelope and tied up with black sheer ribbon with white polka dots.

And then we sat one night and punched and stamped and stamped and punched until we had one of these little ‘and they lived happily ever after’ circles for everyone, and we attached that to the ribbon with a brad and a flower and packed the entire little set into a blue envelopes with more letterpressed monograms and sent the entire stack flying away in the post.

…and that is how we made our wedding invitations! But my favourite part of the entire process was when we both sat on the floor of our flat with tons of stamps and inks and ribbons and photos and we mixed and matched and pasted and punched until we found something that we both loved. Why didn’t I take a picture of our fifty half-finished drafts?

I have no idea.

xlovesx

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These two girls will never really know just how grateful I am. At the time it seemed silly: two fifteen year old students laughing at their teacher’s sudden shyness around a certain employee in a record store. They said I was flirting. I said I wasn’t. They said I should give him my number. I said I wouldn’t.

So they did.

And that was that.

Quite how these two became so wrapped up in my social well being, I’m not too sure. Cassie was actually never in my class, but she was on the cheerleading squad I coached. She was the energy and the organisation that kept everything going. I really do believe she secretly cornered girls who thought about skipping practice and made sure that one way or another, they showed up. Beks was certainly in my class. She was one of those students that made me come home and study because I needed to have more than just what was in the lesson plan. If you ever want to talk film critique with a fresh perspective, oh my goodness this is your girl. (She is also the girl that comes to school with a stack of DVDs, sits them on your desk and says I cannot believe you haven’t seen these. And now in retrospect, I can’t believe I hadn’t either.)

Somewhere between cheerleading practice and this summer, they grew up. They now laugh at the silly adventures we have had, from last-minute study sessions in Starbucks to meeting Busted) (and more importantly, Busted’s grandmothers!). But they have serious lives with universities and bills to pay and yet they are still the loveliest of friends. With that perfect little balance of not being so alike that they always see eye to eye, but being alike enough to care and understand and goodness, they are just lovely.

So now I feel pretty darn lucky to still know them and even luckier that they were my bridesmaids. They are now going to separate universities — one east of our house and one west of our house. It has not gone unnoticed that this means our house should be a central meeting point! (They have also checked out and endorsed our local pub so I think this may help the cause.) Because aside from gushy scrapbook pages (and blog posts), I like to tell these girls that they are fabulous to their faces. Because they are. And it never hurts to be reminded. They have certainly done the same for me over the years. It’s what we do.

Oh: I should explain. This starts a random series of wedding posts with photos, scrapbook pages and the words on those pages. To be continued as time & scrappish inspiration allows! Pretty wedding photos by Ben Roberts Photography.

xlovesx

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With a bit of luck, we will get a DVD in the post tomorrow filled with our official photos. They are not very much in the formal of official. We love this.

Tomorrow is also the day when the first eight rolls of thirty-six pictures will be ready at the developers.

To go with the 75 polaroids we have in a jar on our coffee table.

And we have eight more rolls of film that we need to finish because they still had a few more frames left.

Modern technology? What’s that?!

But if you’re all about the modern technology rather than the polaroid, you might want to check out the People Imagery workshop from Cheryl at Feel Good Photos. Class starts today so go quickly!

Also: thank you so much for the well wishes. We haven’t stopped smiling yet!

xlovesx

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Indeed! Saturday came and went and eeep, there is so much to tell. And although there were ten million cameras present, I only have a couple pictures at this point. So there will be many notes and many photos and many crafty wonders to share.

As soon as I have pictures to put with them!
(Thank you Bev for this one!)

Until then: eeeeeeeeee!

xlovesx

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Shall we talk about the dress? After all, it is quite difficult to not be entirely giddy when you get to see this purple carrier bag in your very own hallway! And no, I am not showing you or telling you what it looks like. The bag will have to do as teaser enough.

The dress has been a giddy experience from the start. It’s actually a wedding present so that took a bit of the stress away, which I was grateful for after the wedding show experience when we first started planning.

Wait. I haven’t told you about the wedding show. Let’s start this entire wedding-blogging-thing properly then.

We’ve been engaged for quite a while — since December 2006. So you would think this meant we had plenty of time to organise everything! (There was no magic reason for such a long engagement but it worked rather well for us as The Boy’s brother got married last September and it was nice to have time to celebrate their wedding before we really had to get serious about our own.) But I did do the traditional newly-engaged tradition of going to a wedding fair or two. One was a tiny local affair with just one vendor from each category. Most of the people there were sweet but they only worked locally and they weren’t really our style…but it was nice to see what was out there. In most instances, our early planning involved deciding what we didn’t want rather than exactly what we wanted. We needed to narrow things down. A great deal.

It was the second larger wedding fair that broke me. A big London affair with a big enough whack taken at the door for the privilege of going in. Lots of vendors doing the hard sell and really pushing stereotypes. It wasn’t a hugely convenient time for everyone (and I quite like to shop alone when I am in thinking mode) so I went on my own and I couldn’t count how many times vendors asked to talk to someone else who obviously wasn’t there — the groom, the mother of the bride. Once would have been a fluke but repeatedly asking to speak to someone who clearly isn’t standing next to me just made me think that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be making these decisions. Just generally disheartening. And then came the kicker — I was grabbed on the arm by some sort of makeover vendor and used as an example in her speech to a crowd. And well…there is nothing like being used as an example of how not to look to make you never want to book a makeover artist for your wedding. I just started to type out what she said exactly but then I realised it ruined one of the little surprises of the wedding. So I’ll tell you that bit after the day. In short, it was a mostly rubbish day at the wedding fair and with one exception, I left feeling pretty dejected and thinking there was no one out there who catered to unique weddings. Everything was package a, package b or package c. And we kinda wanted package ‘Shim & The Boy’, which didn’t seem to be on offer.

So we essentially stopped planning for an entire six months.

When we hit a magical day where we looked at one another and said ‘We have to Plan This Wedding!’ we started again and didn’t waste time with any packages. We were upfront with vendors and said if package was the only option, we weren’t interested. We wanted to have one party that was exactly what we wanted and we weren’t prepared to dilute our ideas just because no one had done it before. And you know what? Suddenly we had great people on board who understood us.

The fabulous girls who made my dress? They understood. I’m actually a little sad not to be stopping by their shop anymore, even though I was probably a little terrified the first time I went in. But no one else has seen my dress, not even my maid of honour. It’s been our little secret and we’ve talked about handbags and vintage shops and all those little wedding conundrums that happen. And how apparently it is bad luck to make your own dress (and making three bridesmaids’ dresses has been enough to keep me busy anyway) and well…it is a lovely place.

And inside that bag is a very lovely dress indeed. To me, anyway.

xlovesx

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