Shiny! Part 2!

So. We've talked earrings. Now it's time to think about bracelets! I'll stop talking and just get on to the pictures. Remember to wipe the slobber off your keyboard when you're done!

via DUTCHPEARL's Etsy shop

via lolasJewelry Etsy shop

via Exquisite Bridal Etsy shop

via eminjewelry Etsy shop

via Lulu Splendor Etsy shop

via TZTUDIO Etsy shop / Direct link

via Ami Designs Etsy shop / Direct link

via Sahara Amaya Etsy shop

via Sahara Amaya Etsy shop / Direct link

via Kirsten Kuehn Etsy shop / Direct link

via Londonxox Etsy shop / Direct link

via dmalia Etsy shop

What's your favorite?

Invitations: Envelopes May Be Brighter Than They Appear

I ordered our envelopes from EnvelopeMall.com. They sell them in packs of 100 for the lowest prices I've found online. I really like the envelopes we chose.

If you're making your own invites, please please please please get samples before you spend the $18+. They are only $1 apiece, and it is pretty much the only way you can guarantee that you will get the correct colors.

We knew we wanted one of our envelopes to be pink and the other, maroon, but there were a couple of options for each. I ordered samples for the following colors (the following four images are from the EnvelopeMall site):

Stardream Metallic "Mars"

Astrobright "Pulsar Pink"

Carnival "Red"

Eames Furniture "India Pink"

Kids, this is why you order samples:

That color on the far left? Yeahh, that pretty and light "Pulsar Pink" is NEON. It doesn't look that way on the Web site! (The others, from left to right: Red, India Pink, Mars. India Pink is a tad brighter than the picture looks, but it's pretty close.) Mars was the only one that looked exactly the way I thought it would.

If you don't know approximately what size envelope you want, you can order different sample sizes, which is probably a better way than I did it. I looked up the dimensions for envelope sizes and got out my ruler and drew a bunch of envelope-sized boxes on a single piece of paper. Way to be confusing, self.

I ordered 100 of the 4-bar size in India Pink for the RSVP envelopes (NOTE: THIS IS THE SMALLEST ENVELOPE SIZE YOU CAN MAIL THROUGH USPS! Don't try to mail anything smaller than 3.5 inches by 5 inches!) and 200 of the A7 size in Mars for the outer. Since we're putting together about 93 invitations, this gave me a little room for error, and now I have matching envelopes for thank-you cards too, once I design them.

Once you've got the envelope size and color chosen, you can use this handy dandy chart to figure out what dimensions you need to make your invitations so they'll fit in the envelopes. Maybe make them a tad smaller if you're going to have several enclosures. Ours have a couple o' pieces to them, but they fit just fine, even with an envelope liner.

I don't have a good question to put about envelopes, sooo ... talk amongst yourselves. :)

Invitations: Font Failure

Our invitations are in!!! And I'll do a little sneak peek soon ('cause I can't keep 'em secret for long!), but first I want to give a little insight into the design process, starting with the fonts.

I'm that girl who can look at a font on a sign and tell you what it is. But I took the lazy way out on our invitations. And I couldn't be happier!

Oh, imagine the horror: all the fonts in our invitation suite ... were already standard on my computer!

Let's put it this way: I could have spent hours upon hours browsing dafont.com or Fonts for Peas or 1000 Free Fonts. To be honest, that probably would have been fun, but I just didn't have the energy. I work in marketing, and most of the time, the standard fonts work fine for any project (Myriad Pro is EVERYWHERE, ya'll!). At my last job, my computer had 11,000 fonts on it, and I never had the time or energy to search through even HALF of those. Even with all those choices, we used the same five for almost every project. As much as I love fonts, I can't bring myself to go searching for them.

Regardless, I am very pleased with the way the invitations turned out. THRILLED, actually!

The fonts we used are:

If you're doing your own design work and don't have the time or patience to look online for fonts, there are a couple tricks you can do with your fonts in Photoshop to make them look cool.

First of all, play with variations on text. Just bolding, italicizing, condensing your font of choice can make it look totally different.

Second is the Swash tool, which I recently discovered! This works best with fonts that have "Pro" in the name.

In your character palette, click the drop-down menu on the far right (next to those double arrows that look like a fast-forward button).

Scroll down to OpenType, and select "Swash."

Now your text is fancy-fied!

This is just a subtle thing you can do to make your fonts look more unique. There are endless things you can do with fonts, even standard ones!

Are you designing your own invites? Do you have any cool text tricks?

(All fonts I've used are standard in Adobe Creative Suite 4, on a MacBook Pro running OSX Snow Leopard. I have no idea what fonts come standard on any other OS or version of Creative Suite.)

Joy

I've decided that I no longer need photographs that look straight out of a magazine. (That is the dream, right?) Pictures aren't beautiful because of the aesthetics. They're beautiful because of this:

(source)

(source)

Pure joy. Absolute ecstasy.

Thanks, APW, for keeping it all in perspective.

Do you have any images saved that make your heart smile? You should share. :)

Shiny! Part 1!

It's time to talk wedding jewelry! I don't like to over-accessorize, so when I started looking, I was looking for some very simple, pretty jewelry that was either rhinestone or pearl (the beading of my dress has both sparkles and seed pearls).

The accessories I've already picked are my veil, garter and shoes. In addition, I would like a bracelet and some sparkly, dangly earrings. My dress has enough going on at the top of the bodice that I think I can get away with not wearing a necklace. (I don't want to take away from the dress either.)

Although, isn't this cool????

via Bridesmaid Pearl Jewelry Etsy shop / Direct link

Oooooooh ... I do love a good statement necklace! If only I were cool enough to pull them off. :-\

Anyway, onto some earrings!

via Plumb Crazy Etsy shop / Direct link

via Roxy's Jewelry Boutique Etsy shop / Direct link

Normally I'm not really into vintage-y stuff, but I think these are so pretty!

via HeKnowsMyName Etsy shop / Direct link

Something blue!

via Sweet Bird Designs Etsy shop

Aunt Hyena offered to let me borrow a pair of earrings that was really similar to these, but they were yellow gold and I'd prefer to go with silver or white gold for the wedding. 

via Something Jeweled Etsy shop / Direct link

Are you rocking any statement jewelry at your wedding? Or keeping it simple? I want stories of sparkly things. :)

I Heart Pianos

I've just GOT to share some music I discovered! The contract with our church specifies that our ceremony music should be fitting of a Christian worship ceremony, and we needed some kind of pre-ceremony music. We're not planning to hire ceremony musicians, so our music will be done through our church's sound system.

While planning Bridesmaid A's wedding, I discovered *clouds parting in the sky* the Vitamin String Quartet. VSQ is a group of musicians who cover current pop/rock songs using only string instruments, and they're faaaabulous.

VSQ's cover of Paramore's "Hallelujah," which I want to play as a "Everybody pay attention, we're about to start the wedding" song!

I love VSQ, but Mr. Hyena isn't such a fan (I probably went a little too nuts before A's wedding). Also, I don't think they have covers of religious songs. I didn't know where to start looking for instrumental Christian covers, so I went over to Pandora and started a Vitamin String Quartet channel. Along the way, a few religious instrumental songs popped up, and I jotted down the artists' names so I could look them up on iTunes later.

And that, dear friends, is how I discovered this magic:

And this too:

I am so in love with piano music. I put together some mock ceremony playlists heavily featuring misters David Nevue and Jim Brickman, followed by the awesome Paramore cover and ending with "our song" — Rascal Flatts' "Bless the Broken Road" — which we're using as the processional (this is the live version, we're using the CD version):

You guys, I love it! And yes, we only have one song for the processional. As you can see, it's about four minutes long, and our church's aisle is ... about 20 feet tops. Everyone can just walk down in the same song, and I'll walk in when it gets to the dramatic musical interlude. :)

For the recessional, this is what Mr. Hyena wants:

Boys. :) I'm giving him this one. He hasn't asked for much. But I'm making him ask our pastor if he'll allow us to use it.

What music are you using for your ceremony?

How to avoid wedding projects and influence no one.

Remember when I was working on our boutonnieres, and I was all gung-ho about getting the corsages done too?

Pile o' crafts

Yeahhhh ... I had been effectively avoiding this project for weeks while I tried to figure out what I should do with them. See, I got about this far in the project:

... and then I didn't know what else to do. I wanted the flower to face outward instead of upward, but these flowers are a lot bigger than I think most corsage flowers are. I was stuck, so instead of coming up with a solution, I let my one sad lone corsage sit. And sit. And continue sitting a couple weeks more. I showed it to Mom Hyena via webcam. I showed it to MIL Hyena. One suggested I make wrist corsages:

One said she didn't want a wrist corsage because they look too much like something you'd wear to prom. But I didn't want to have a monstrous flower chillin' on anyone's chest either, and I didn't know how big was too big.

Why hello. I'm rocking this big-ass flower.

But something was still missing! Finally, this weekend I got to show Mom Hyena the One Corsage to Rule Them All in person, and she thought they needed more than just the one flower to look complete. I added a smaller ranunculus bulb, got her stamp of approval and then proceeded to make the other four corsages we will need. HALLELUJAH, finally a project complete after weeks of nothingness!

The completed corsages:

Two moms, two grandmas and one aunt that would kill me if she didn't get one.

The only difference between these and the boutonnieres is the added flower and no ribbon wrapping. Also, because the backs of the corsages were covered in spiky stems of "baby's breath" and "berries," I covered them with felt and hot-glued that down too:

I'm thinking this will make it easier to pin to clothing as well, since no one will have to look for a good place to jab a pin though the back of the flower itself.

I apologize that the cost breakdown will have to wait a bit longer, because today Mom Hyena and I discussed her opinion that the church altar decorations will be too small. More flowers may be added, and our budget continues to whimper in the corner.

Have you taken on any projects that were a pain to complete?