Arty, Owlie Wedthings

Now that invitations have officially gone out, I'm ok with posting the real thing below. They turned out so well! There is a man here we know through the Crossroads Film Society who owns about two or three old (seriously, old) letterpress machines and we found the owl face in one of his dingbat books. One of QB's friends at work designed the RSVP card and the map for us - and he did a great job.

I, personally, love owls because I've had a couple of run-ins with one in the neighborhood while I was doing a lot of my inner transition work and intensive life coaching last fall. QB and I saw one flying through the trees in our neighborhood park, so our little Hugo is around and watching over us. We think owls are great woodsy creatures and perfect for a fall wedding.

Also, here is what I've been diligently working on the past couple of weeks, so that people will find pretty invitations in their mailbox...I mixed two ink colors together to get a pretty brown metallic ink, bought a calligraphy pen set, a small paint brush to fill the resevoir of the nib and practiced a good bit first. Naturally, my technique became better the more invitations I wrote, but overall I'm proud of how they turned out and got lots of compliments.



Our "guestbook" at the reception is a great idea that QB came up with, which is for people to sign cards and "mail" them to us. That is a nod to his mom and step-dad (and other family members, as a matter of fact) who both work at the P.O. We bought a standard mailbox at Wal-Mart and my idea was to get vintage postcards off of Ebay, so that they could write special messages to us and stick them in the mailbox.

Below is the message:

My sign initially started out on one side of a Manila folder (above) and I was wondering if maybe I could cut it with pinking shears with a pattern, but then an idea popped in my head! I've been cutting out owl shapes from sheet music that I plan on hanging at the reception...why not cut out an owl shape for this sign as well? I had to draw and adjust for the size, but unconsciously I had written everything in a shape conducive to the owl shape! What fun! So, here he is! Isn't he lovely? :)