Last weekend...

This is how our dining-table looks lately. There's just too little space on my working desk and I always create a huge mess while working. I just can't work without this mess. ;)



Finally I'm going to finish the invitations this week. I'm very excited to show them to you. :) :)

Last weekend I also prepared two swaps, ready to be shipped!! Thanks so much for the patience.

One for Aafke: Selfmade tags, an origami bunny, some stickers, a stamp, a shell, some seeds for her garden...



And one for Blanca: Selfmade tags, pretty purple paper, origami paper, some stickers, a crocheted little basket, bakers twine, a pen...



The weather is so sunny and wonderful since the weekend. This lifts everyone's spirits. :D
Wish you all a lovely week! :)

Finally the design is decided on...

It's already April and finally the design of the invitations are almost done. :) With the help of my MOH I worked a lot on the invitations. While she was spending her time cutting and folding the folders, I designed the content and started sewing the invitations together.

Here are the folded and partially sewed folders.



My fiancé and I chose fern for our wedding symbol, as its shape is versatile and we love its playful look. :) So I carved lots of fern stamps for the invitation:



I also created a little logo with the first letters of our first names. :) We wanted it simple with little scrollwork, so it wouldn't be too corny. ;)



I loved carving the stamps. But I still have problems to carve letters. They never turn out as good as the drawn one. If anyone has a good advice for carving letters, please let me know!! I had to carve our logo 5 times till I was more or less content with the result. I'm a perfectionist...I know. ;)



And finally I finished drawing the program and the map.



Now everything has to be scanned, put together on the computer, printed out, cut to the right size and embellished with stamps!
I'm excited how the final invitation will turn out and looking forward to showing you the result. :) We want to send them out in the middle of April, so 1-2 weeks to go! :D

March snail mails

In March I received two wonderful swaps! :)

This one was from Aafke. She's prepared a wonderful package for me, full of nature. :) She's sent me some self-grown hay, carrot seeds, self-made tea...



...a pretty shell and a cute letter. I loved her idea to use natural things as stationery. So the notes were written on leafs and the letter was written on a soft tree bark!!



Thank you so much for the sweet swap! :)

The second one was from Blanca. Her package was filled with pretty little things. She decorated the envelope so beautifully with self-drawn things and stamps!
She's sent me a letter and some tags and butterflies. :)



She's also sent me tea related things: Her favourite cookies, tea and some candies! :) I love that she wrapped everything so prettily.



I love the pretty paper she's sent me (in the back), the cute stickers (I love stickers!) and the cute little beaver! :D



Thanks for all the treasures you've sent me, Blanca!

I really enjoyed both swaps! Unfortunatelly, I still didn't had the time to answer yet, but I will prepare something nice soon! Thanks for the patience!!

Invitations in progress...

Today I would like to give you a little insight into the design progress of our wedding invitations. :)

There are two things I would like to include into our invitations: the colors we chose and a symbol I would like to design for our wedding.
We chose colors that match us, natural (neutral) colors, like brown, cream, beige and other pale colors. And as we love plants and gardening, we chose green for our contrast color and a plant, leaf or tree for our symbol (still not decided, which one).

I also want to add my love for crafting to our wedding. Therefore I want to sew parts of the invitation together and I want to embellish everything with self-designed and carved stamps. :)
So this is the material, we're going to use: kraft cardboard, natural white paper, green thread, white-green bakers twine, ink pads and possibly green washi tape.



These were our first attempts to sew cardboard. ;) I'm not a great sewer, so if anyone has a good advice for sewing cardboard, please let me know!



I wanted to make a folder to keep everything together, so my made of honor and I made some prototypes. We started folding the folders, or better say, she started folding, I was still designing the content. ;)



This weekend I'm putting a lot of effort into the design of our symbol and the content of the invitations. :) I'm looking forward to showing the results to you!

March and exciting news

I'm sorry for the one-sided posts of last month. But I'm full of energy and looking forward to this month (even it's already halftime...)! :)

It was hard to decide what to choose for my next project. There is just so much going on, I don't think I'll have enough time for a separate project.
As I don't want to reveal too much of my personal life on my blog, I did a lot of thinking. But in the end I decided to tell you, as it will affect a lot of my private time in the next months. :)

As you might've guessed by the picture, this year is going to be an extra special year for my boyfriend and me, as we're going to start a new chapter of our life together. ♥ ♥ ♥
It happened very unexpectedly in the middle of December last year and turned everything totally topsy-turvy. :) :) After a lot of searching we've found a wonderful location and after my travels in February now the REAL wedding preprations started!

I don't want to include this too much into my blog, but as I want to make and decorate a lot by myself, I'm going to show you everything craft related in this blog. :)
I'm very excited about it and hope, you'll like the little change too. :)

So in March I'm going to work on our wedding invitations, which is going to be my project for this month! :)

Lovely mail from Whitney

I'm back from my trips. :) Florida has been lovely, we've done so many wonderful things, even though we had to work, and Turkey has been great too. Work went well, so I'm happy and ready to face March! :)

During my absence I got a lovely package from dear Whitney, which made me sooo happy! :) Right now she's living in Korea, but is going to leave Korea soon. She's made me such a wonderful package full of precious things. Opening the package and browsing through all those korea typical wonderful things reminded me so much of my visits to Korea, when I was young. How overwhelmed and totally amazed I've felt when seeing all those wonderful things in a craft store, hardly believing it's not just a dream. ;)

Everything was packed up in a lovely envelope. :) I love the little map and this bird mobilee and I'm excited to put it together and hang it in our home.



The package also included a lovely self-stitched post card from Whitney, wonderful washitape and some snail mail supplies.



She's also send me lovely post cards from Seoul and a cute book for all my thoughts and project plans. :D



It really felt that she packed everything with great care and love. :D Thanks again, Whitney, for all the wonderful things you've send me. I appreciated every little thing of it so much. I hope you'll like mine too. :)

Soon I'm going to tell you about my March project. I'm really looking forward to this month, it's going to be exciting! :D

A snail mail to Celine

Preparing a snail mail for Celine was so much fun! :) I'm a big fan of her lovely blog and the wonderful inspiring pictures she's always posting. :) :)

She surprised me with a wonderful christmas mail in the end of last year! I blogged about it here. So I wanted to send her a snail mail full of hopefully inspiring and creative pieces too.

I tried to stay with soft pink and purple colors and embellished pretty paper with golden stamps. I also folded her a mini origami book made out of one paper. :)

I also made her some tags and added some stickers.

She already blogged about my mail on her blog. Thanks Celine for the wonderful post and the beautiful pictures of my mail! Please don't compare my pictures to hers, I really have to improve my photography skills...;) Celine has such a gift in capturing the details.

This is my last post about the swaps I prepared in February. :) Soon I'll be back to Germany and I'm very much looking forward to the next month and the things to come. :)