Purple Wedding Card

Hello crafty peeps and welcome to my crafty nook!  The best man from our wedding and Chris's best friend Les married his long term partner Jill yesterday (though as I write it's actually Monday the 21st not Sunday the 27th!) By the time you read this post the wedding will be over though the reception might be ongoing *winks*. Hopefully though I'll actually be tucked up in bed getting some sleep before facing travelling back to Bridlington from Leeds (Otley doesn't have a train station). Obviously as I've been super organised and have written this blog in advance and set a schedule for it to be posted, I've no idea how the wedding has actually gone but I'm sure it went well. Chris is the joint best man and I'm planning on helping him with his speech later this week but he's very nervous about making it bless him. I'll admit to be rather nervous myself, I'm not good at meeting new people and I've only met Les twice (at the wedding and he came to our flat for a few hours last year) and I've only met Jill once very briefly at our wedding five years ago. It'll be challenging being in a room full of strangers while Chris goes about his best man dues but I shall face my fears and enjoy myself. At the very least it's been the perfect excuse to make a wedding card (I don't go to many weddings) and I've treated myself to a couple of new wedding themed goodies to make it too - bonus!

I love this purple that's become very popular for weddings in the last few years and it's the perfect colour for a late autumn/early winter wedding. To be honest I wasn't sure if purple was the wedding theme colour as the invite had purple hearts and pink hearts on the front but I checked with Jill and it turned out to be mainly purple (which I'm glad about as there were a lot of shades of pink on the invite which may have been tricky to match). The purple card for the card blank and the diecut gazebo and sentiment piece are Centura Pearl cardstock from the darks collection. I love the rich colour and shimmery effect when you tilt it to the light. I also used some Centura Pearl white card with a hint of silver shimmer finish to it for the inlaid die cut pieces of the gazebo and the bride and groom die cut piece. The groom was also cut out using a scrap of black card and cut to the right shape for his suit, shoes and hair (the hair looks a bit strange though!) The stitched oval dies and the wedding dies are all new purchases from eBay and came from China. They are so cheap that it's jaw dropping, the wedding set was only £2.11 and the gazebo is 5" by 4"! I'm not sure how much  the nesting stitched ovals were but they were less than £2.50 and there are 5 sizes altogether. The other card came from a mixed pack of larger than A5 card from Tattered Lace. The bow was made with one of the thinner cards using a die that came free with a magazine sometime this year and I added some Papermania gem bling to highlight certain areas of the card because who doesn't like a bit of bling? I used a couple of Flexmarkers to colour the bride and groom. The sentiments are from a Crafter's Companion Sara's Signature Wedding Collection stamp set and the silver printed vellum came from a gold and silver mixed pack of vellum from the same collection. I think how this card was made is pretty self explanatory so I won't go into details apart from saying that the the Gazebo die was die cut twice once in purple and once in white. I added double sided tape to the main parts of the white outline and kept the purple version in the die so I could poke the negative pieces out individually to place in the relative space on the white version until all the spaces were filled. It's a lot easier to do it this way rather than just poking them all out at once and trying to guess what belongs where.

I'm really pleased with how this card turned out, it wasn't at all how I'd imagined when I was in the planning stage but I love the beautiful gazebo and how it looks cut out in Centura Pearl card. Fingers crossed the weather will have improved for the wedding as the venue is set in 45 acres (I think!) of beautiful woodlands and it would be a shame if the couple didn't manage to get some outdoor photos due to either the rain or boggy conditions. Although I won't be able to see much of the area it'll be quite pleasant to go back to Otley as I used to live quite close to it as a young child.

Hopefully I'll have a few more cards to share with you when I get back (may need a day or two to recover though!) so I hope you'll keep an eye out for a new blog post soon. As always if you have any questions or comments then please leave them in the usual places and I'll try to respond within a few days if required. I hope you all have a brilliant Sunday and until next time - keep crafting!

Love and crafty hugs,

Sarah xxx