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Wedding Update – DIY, flowers & favours
Well we’ve only got a couple of weeks until our wedding now, I don’t know where the time has gone! We’ve had such a busy summer which has been lovely but time has been tight and if I manage to get all my DIY wedding jobs finished in time then I think it will be nothing short of a miracle!
I have just spent the weekend making our wedding favours with the help from my lovely mum…well I think my mum probably did most of the work. I’m pretty excited about them but I’m going to keep quiet for now about what they are. It’s been tricky trying to keep things a secret, I want all our friends to walk in on the day and be ‘amazed’ by all the decor and handmade touches! I know not everyone will even notice these little details and the day isn’t all about that, but it’s important to me!
If you follow me on Instagram you might have seen my little sneak peeks, but here are a few, including the beautiful flowers that are currently growing in my dad’s allotment and will form the rustic, colourful centrepieces for our tables. I’m getting very excited now! Just going for my dress fitting tomorrow, I hope I still like it…seems ages ago when I chose it!
Lizzie & John 23.07.15
We had the pleasure of travelling up to the Lake District for the wedding of our friends Lizzie & John, which was at Storrs Hall near Windermere. The ceremony took place outside (luckily the weather stayed fine all day!), just in front of the lake, and the bride arrived by boat! The colour scheme included gorgeous rich purples and the flowers looked beautiful.
I designed John & Lizzie’s invitations and using elements of the design, I made the table plan and a welcome sign. I was really happy with how these turned out, the tables were named after gig venues where they’d seen bands which was a nice personal touch.
We got to stay in one of the beautiful rooms at the hotel which was a bonus, a fabulous day and again – amazing food!
Lots of Lace!
The past few months have involved a lot of lace – hundreds of metres of lace actually! Including save the dates, invitations, table plans, place names, bookmark favours (love that idea!) and table names too, it seems my luxury lace designs have been hugely popular this summer.
This is probably because lace has a timeless, classic feel to it that can be elegant, vintage and rustic. Lace is obviously really popular for wedding dresses too now which might be why a lot of people to carry on the lace in their wedding stationery too. If you’d like to send out a bit of paper and lace luxury for your wedding invites then please do get in touch!
Steph & Ryan 04.07.15
The wedding of our lovely friends Steph & Ryan took place at the Riding School at Calke Abbey in Derbyshire which was a beautiful rustic venue, with the ceremony, reception and evening do all under the same roof. I had the pleasure of designing the stationery for this wedding including the invitations, menus, table plan and place names. Steph was having a mint and coral/peach colour scheme and I used a kraft effect to give it a rustic touch.
There was so many pretty decorations and finishing touches to this wedding, Steph really worked hard to get the whole rustic and pretty feel to the day and the big illuminated ‘R & S’ looked fab in the room. The food was a simply amazing, huge sharing platters and another trio of puds!
Congratulations to the new Mr & Mrs Morgan and have a fantastic honeymoon in Mauritius xx
Caroline & Steve 27.06.15
2015 is definitely the year for weddings, we have got 5 wonderful weddings to attend this year, in fact that is just within the space of 2 months, ending with ours in September. And as I love weddings so much I thought I’d write a little blog post about each one!
Starting with Caroline & Steve who got married on a lovely sunny June afternoon at the Hepworth gallery in Wakefield. I was honoured to do a reading for the gorgeous couple, who I actually ‘helped’ get together 12 years ago…before the days of Facebook stalking which made it so much easier to track people down!
The Hepworth is a big concrete building with some amazing exhibition spaces featuring modern art from some of the most significant British artists of the 20th Century including Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. This venue suited Caroline & Steve down to the ground – sleek, minimal and a little bit urban.
Caroline made her bouquet from laser cut white plastic flowers, wore a stunning 2 piece wedding gown and some Fendi sandals! The food was delicious – posh sausages & mash and a trio of desserts (I always like it when you get a selection of puds!). I didn’t take many photos of the day, think I was having too much fun, but I did manage to get one of that amazing cake…
My Own Wedding Planning!
It feels very strange (but exciting!) to be finally planning my own wedding after years of working with couples to create their dream stationery. I don’t want to give too much away here as I want everything to be a big surprise on the day for our guests. But I can’t ignore the ever-looming big day!
We have set the date for 4th September – this year, not 2016! I think a few people think we’re a little bonkers choosing to get married this year when we only got engaged on Christmas day, but we didn’t want to wail until next summer and it’s not impossible to plan a wedding in 9 months!
So we’ve chosen the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield to have the ceremony and reception at, a place we actually went on one of our first dates back in 2010 🙂 It is a modern, light, airy venue with acres of gorgeous Yorkshire scenery and the added bonus of loads of cool sculptures for us to have included in our photos!
So far I have ordered my wedding dress after a very quick shopping session, made and sent out save the dates (obviously!) booked our photographer (very important) the amazing Emma Boileau and booked the DJ – another important factor to the day. I have loooooads of creative ideas for decorations and table centres, Pinterest has become my best (and most annoying) friend.
The weeks are whizzing by and I’m doing bits here and there, mainly in the evenings after spending all day creating stationery for my lovely couples! So I am pretty much living and breathing weddings at the moment but I am enjoying it very much! Here is a quick look at what our save the dates looked like, a simple hand drawn, rustic design with some tissue confetti to give a few clues about the colour scheme (which will be very bright and colourful). The invitations are almost designed, I have felt under pressure to design something quite special as a stationer designer should do!
Liverpool Vintage Wedding Fair
After the success of exhibiting at the Manchester Vintage Wedding Fayre last month, I was excited to be doing it all again, this time over in Liverpool. It’s only a quick drive down the M62 for me and I knew there’d be some fab vintage loving brides attending, along with some amazing wedding suppliers.
The fayre was held at The Florrie, a stunning Grade II Victorian community heritage venue located in south Liverpool, you can actually get married in this beautiful building. It was a lovely sunny day and as always, I came home tired out from chatting all day long about my favourite thing: Weddings!
A little shout out to some of the amazing fellow wedding peeps…
So Coco Rouge – award winning bridal hair & make-up
Belles Bridal – stunning wedding dresses
The Big Booth – huge illuminated letters, photobooth and DJ services
Love Lane Wedding Shoes – beautiful selection of wedding shoes from leading designers
Christening Invitations
Did you know that as well as wedding stationery I designs and make invitations for any occasion?
My Christening invitations have been very popular over the past few months. A simple, sweet tag card design, hand finished with pearl and ribbon detail. Here I have shown a baby boy and a baby girl version in blue and pink but I am able to adapt the colours to anything you like. I have also made Christening invitations in my popular Summer Bunting range.
So if you’re planning a big party, Christening/Naming Day or any other event that needs extra special stationery, then please do get in touch!
My new studio assistant – Ziggy!
Since starting back at work after the Christmas break I have had a new assistant to help out in the studio, a very hairy but very cute assistant in the shape of this little King Charles Cavalier puppy called Ziggy! (Named after the very fabulous Ziggy Stardust). He was actually a surprise for me just after Christmas (it wasn’t just the engagement that was a surprise!) and after the initial shock of “Oh my god we have a got a dog”, I have grown to adore him.
Working for yourself from home does get a little lonely sometimes so now I have some company! Even though he’s not much of a conversationalist. He has brightened up our lives with his cheeky, cute characteristics and he will certainly keep us fit with all the dog walking we are now doing.
Manchester Vintage Wedding Fayre
I was lucky enough to exhibit at the Vintage Wedding Fayre in Manchester at the weekend which was held at the People’s History Museum, right in the city centre. There were brides with their mums and bridesmaids queuing up outside as we were setting up and it was pretty much non-stop all day which was great!
Hayley who runs the vintage fayres only picks suitable suppliers to exhibit, so if you’re a bride that is looking for vintage, quirky, boho, crafty, retro, unique wedding ideas then this ideal for you! I had a great day, I always love asking brides when and where they’re getting married and finding out any other details, simply because I love talking about weddings! I was planning on having a good look around as a bride-to-be but it was so busy that I didn’t get a chance. Big shout out to some of the fab suppliers, including my favourite, The Case of the Curious Bride and how amazing are those huge light up letters from The Big Booth?!
I shall definitely be returning to this fayre in the autumn!
Save the Date
I have been working on lots of new Save the Date designs recently, these are all a mini A7 size (approx. 74mm x 105mm) and come with lovely kraft envelopes. They’re perfect for sending out as soon as you’ve booked your wedding date to make sure guests have plenty of notice, especially if you’re getting married in summer when people will be planning their holidays or if you’re getting married on a weekday which is quite common now.
These designs are just a small sample of the kind of things I design, I can adapt the colours, fonts, wording and layouts to suit your wedding. There is a range of gorgeous card stocks to choose from and I always like to add a little element of hand finishing with the rustic twine!
You can buy a sample of these from my Etsy shop or you can drop me an email to discuss your requirements.
Engaged!!
Very excited to announce that my boyfriend James popped the question Christmas Day!
Super happy, excited and looking forward to all the wedding planning that we’ve got to come. I can’t believe I will get the chance to actually design my own invitations, I am feeling the pressure already to design and make something totally amazing and creative…you’d probably have thought that a wedding stationer would have it all planned out but I really don’t! The only thing I’ve always ever known about my wedding is what cake I would have!
I will try and post a few updates about my wedding planning over the next few months 🙂 
A Great Year!
It’s been another successful year for Paper Fudge, working with some fabulous brides and grooms and seeing my greeting cards collection expand and being sold in actual shops!
I can’t wait to get back to work after the Christmas break to work on some new designs! Here are a few of my fave bits of work from the past year…
My Etsy Shop
Since opening my Etsy shop last year it has grown and grown with customers as far as Australia and America. It’s ideal if you want to order a sample of one of my save the date cards or invitations and my full range of greeting cards are available to buy here. Check it out!
A Hand Drawn Tee-Pee Festival Wedding
I absolutely love working on a bespoke design for a wedding that’s a bit different, the kind of wedding that I would love to be a guest at and I think the design for Emily and Kevin’s invites are probably my favourite of the year so far.
The wedding will be a weekend long celebration held on a farm in Wales where the guests will be camping on site and it will be full of rustic, outdoorsy type fun including a tee-pees, fire pits, an afternoon tea party, live music – everything you’d expect from an outdoor/festival/farm/camping wedding.
Emily asked me to use my quirky hand drawn style to produce an invitation/leaflet as there was so much information to give the guests. I loved having the chance to use lots of hand lettering and little illustrations, with lots of colour thrown in. The invitations was a square, 3-fold invite which had 6 sides of information on. I don’t think I’ve ever produced a wedding invite with a hand drawn cow on or a slice of pizza! I was so excited when the invites arrived from the printers, almost as if they were my own invites! I would welcome the opportunity to work on another wedding invitation design such as this one.
Bunting and Country Boutique Invitations
My best seller of the year so far has to be the handmade stitched Summer Bunting and Country Boutique design, in both save the dates and wedding invitations. Quite a simple design but perfect for outdoor, farm, barn, festival style weddings. I have also made order of services, menus, table names and table plans, all with the stitched bunting effect. Prices start from £2.00 for a one card save the date, please get in touch for more information.
Rose and Lee Boutique
On 17th August Rose and Lee Boutique in Prestwich, Manchester opened it’s pretty sage green doors for the opening event for friends and family, which I was lucky enough to be invited to!
I met Fiona a couple of months ago after she expressed an interest in my greeting cards and design skills. I knew Rose and Lee were a big name in Manchester vintage, refurbishing and selling vintage furniture and home wares from their Radcliffe based showroom. But Fiona told me she was opening a very special vintage boutique in Prestwich, somewhere customers could pop in any time, pick up anything from a small gift, to a piece of lovingly restored vintage furniture. And she would like to stock my cards in the shop which of course I was more than happy to!
Fiona also makes deluxe fragranced candles and along with a few other local makers making products such as cushions, soaps, prints and mugs, the shop would be full of very special, unique items. I couldn’t wait to see everything on display!
The shop is simply stunning, the opening day was a huge success and I was very happy to be a part of it. Definitely worth a visit if you’re ever in the North Manchester area.
Artisan’s in the Palm House
A couple of months ago I was asked if I’d like to participate at the Artisan market held in the Sefton Park Palm House. I checked with my personal Liverpool guru to see what the event was like and she highly recommended it. So on August 1st I packed up my vintage suitcases full of cards and off I went to sell!
In their words, the Artisan’s event has something for everyone, with the emphasis on quality & value. A treasure trove of products that won’t be found on the High Street, wonderful world foods prepared by chefs, refreshments including locally brewed beers & ciders and entertainment for the kids.
I had a great day and sold lots of my doodle cards and took many enquiries for my stationery too. A busy day selling was exhausting but luckily I left for a mini holiday in Portugal the day after so it was worth all the hard work!