Spadina House watercolour

I thought I was busy before but it's getting even busier! These days we've been doing chores most of the evenings. One frustrating chore (that thankfully Bradley is taking care of) is getting the permit to serve wine. It's involved five trips to the LCBO so far, with maps, forms to fill out and letters needed for five different places, including the fire department, police, city clerk, public health and building division!

And of course at the same time we're preparing for our two week honeymoon in France ending with a few days in London, England. I'm so excited to go to France, I've been to England a few times but never to anywhere else in Europe. We're spending five days in Paris, then visiting Lyon and thereabouts including the Alps! Bradley has been all around Europe and he's so great at making the arrangements.

I get to do the creative things, such as the watercolour painting above of Spadina House which I used for our rehearsal lunch invitations. We've invited people to have lunch at the same place that is making our wedding cake, Dessert Trends. I did the watercolour using the photos I took back in April as a reference. Back then there wasn't much greenery yet so I added that in myself. We have a book about the history of Spadina House and I noticed in the historical photos that there were spiky plants in the middle of the flowers in the large urns and it's still like that today.

Japanese Crafts book treats

Still not much time to make new crafts to post so I thought I'd share some pictures from my Japanese crafts books - I've been meaning to do this for ages! I'll try to pick pages I haven't seen on other people's blogs yet. I'll dedicate this post to Andrea, who loves cats so much :-).

The first page I'll share in this post is from the very popular nuigurimi style, ISBN4-05-604179-2. This page is covered with some very charming cats. The pair at the top of this post are my favourites, I love the plaid dresses. I think I like the character on the left the best, she has marvellous colours and such a friendly sweet face. The picture below is a scan of the whole page, but I thought I'd show each picture close up since all the cats are so wonderful.The two cats below have such realistic poses - can't you just see a cat looking inquisitively up at you like that? I don't have a cat of my own but I've looked after tons of them. My favourite cat belongs to one of my girlfriends and his name is Bicir (pronounced Bidger). He's very clever and while he was staying at my house he learned how to climb up the ladder into my IKEA loft bed in about two minutes.
And finally, of course, I had to show the two cats getting married. What a handsome couple.
Well that's it for today - more Japanese craft book scans to come soon!

Busy days

Things are very busy for me this month as I've taken on a full-time design/layout contract for August. And as most of you know I'm getting married in September. I haven't had as much time for crafts so I'll post more pictures of my invitation - as requested by one of my talented fellow illustrators, Paula. The outer envelope was cream, with a return address label that had part of the berries and leaves from the invitation. And yes, I am a nutter and I did make the pink tissue paper envelopes myself by hand. I've always loved cut and paste...
This is a close up of the text and the lovely ribbon we found to tie it to the card with. It was an embroidery ribbon from Mokuba on Queen West. While we were there we bought some brown gingham for the boutonnieres and found some dark pink grosgrain ribbon at another sewing store for the bouquets.

This is the back of the postcard which had a map, and underneath the card you can see a peek at the return address label.
The reply card was another postcard with a small detail of the illustration and room to write a note on the right side. It's been lovely seeing those pink envelopes in our mailbox! I added a little mailbox icon - we had just seen the movie The Lake House, and it reminded me of that. I liked that movie a lot... Did anyone else notice she had really really pretty applique cushions in her room? Similar beautiful cushions in The Breakup too - well, how gorgeous in general was their decor? I loved that wallpaper in their bedroom!
Anyway I'm rambling. Thank you everyone for all the nice comments about our invitations. It was definitely a labour of love and worth the effort.

And finally I am doing a little bit of knitting, I've almost finished my Peppermint Twist sweater. I'm doing the decreases for the first sleeve now and the front and back are done. I really like this pattern (from Debbie Stoller's stitch n' bitch book.) I'll be sure to show it off once it's finished!

One last swap

I realized recently I haven't done a swap in ages - it's been very busy these days - and in fact I probably won't have time for another until after our honeymoon. So this last swap was with Sarah (hip to piece squares) who agreed to swap her polka dotty circles pouch (above) for one of my bird needle books (below). I loved the colour scheme so much, such a great fabric, and then she had added nice details like the ribbon zipper pull. And I was dazzled by the extras in the package she sent me!This is the box of goodies she sent - I was so surprised because I didn't expect this. I just sent the needle book and some fabric together in a gingham drawstring bag (eep). We both sent two squares of fabric tied with a ribbon, but she sent so much more!This is the inside of the pouch - a great olive green stripey fabric:
These are the fabric squares:
And I love this cute tape measure so much! The end of the tape has a tiny little movie ticket too. And notice the pretty pink ribbon in the background:
This is the back of the tape measure. Because what is a trip to the movies without the snack bar?And finally a little birdhouse set of chimes:
Thank you so much Sarah for the lovely package!!

Wedding illustration

Well our wedding invitations have all been mailed so now I can share the illustration I created for them. It's another in my bird series. I chose robins because I love robins, I think they're so handsome and charming and I always like seeing them around. Like most birds they are monogamous, and they love to eat ashberries. Of course they like to eat worms too, but I thought an ashberry tree would be more picturesque.

The full design is like this:
And I had a white piece of paper over the top with the invitation wording on it, and a tiny ribbon that tied it in place. The invitation itself was in a pink tissue paper envelope, and it came with a matching reply postcard with pink paper envelope. It's been lots of fun getting those pink envelopes in our mailbox and knowing what it is!

It was very time consuming making them, but I've had lots of compliments and it was fun to do. Today I'm working on sewing my veil. There's not a lot of information about making your own veil online. So I've kind of had to work it out for myself. I could share the how-to with you guys, is anyone interested in that? Ok, back to my sewing now.

Illustration Friday - topic: Clean

I think this one kind of speaks for itself. I made this watercolour as a spread to submit as a sample to Babybug, so this is a cropped version. I haven't worked out my poem for it yet. I haven't heard back about my Rainy Day poem submission to Babybug, but I did get a rejection letter for Sticky Food. Too bad... I'll keep trying though.