The Chinese Themed Wedding Invitation Cards

Clients loved them! Very important that. And they were involved in the process too, which made quick work. The whole point was to keep the cost of the invites down. Points I needed to consider...

• The print run was low, 70 pieces. No commercial printers are willing to do that without charging you an arm and a leg.
• The clients requested different RSVP dates on some of them, which printers are willing to accommodate that I tell you?
• I want the clients to have hands on involvement, always nice to know you made it, or part of, for your wedding.
• Colour themes of red and gold.
• Tags for the money pockets that to be included with the invites.
• How to reproduce the double happiness character without breaking the bank.
• Clients like the printed on parchment/velum paper look for the text and all in caps.

This was the final sample that the clients agreed to. The idea was for a double happiness character printed in the center on a beautiful textured red card with bits of gold in it with the text on top.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything like the card in this region. So, I modified and adapted what was available to me.

What was left of the stencil after using it 80 times...

The Card

• I designed the invite on a 15 by 15 centimeter square.
• I decided to make a stencil of the double happiness character instead of making a stamp initially.
• Printed out an outline onto tracing paper and stuck it onto a thin acetate to make the stencil.
• In hindsight I should've made at least two.
• It took me 6 hours to stencil onto 80 pieces of red card and dry brushing all over each card to get the gold streaks on them.
• Used up a whole small jar of gold paint.
• Started at midnight and went to bed when the sun came up.
• Amazed I didn't get bored as I did them in one sitting.
• Listening to stand up comedians helped.
• Only had an hour's sleep after that as the whole day was packed with agendas.

The completed invitations

The Text

• The layout was done few days after the initial meeting.
• Lots of emailing back and forth of the design.
• Clients happy with layout.
• Three different sets of RSVP dates according to guests numbers in various quantity.
• Printed everything out onto tracing paper in one afternoon.
• Dropped them off to clients with instructions on how they should be cut.

Gold on the edges of the cards

Putting Card and Text Together

• Came over with the already stenciled red cards armed with a bottle of spray glue.
• Set up gluing station and work station.
• Clients amah became a 'christmas tree' as amah referred to herself as I stuck on the already glued up text on her to transport them to other side of room to the work station where clients are busy eyeballing sticking them onto the center of cards.
• Did same thing with text for red packets.
• We got everything glued down in record time.
• Clients very pleased with results.
• Clients also very happy with newly acquired spray glue.

Poem on the back of the red packets

The Red Packets

• Raewyn emailed the following poem.
• Layout for text arranged and printed.
• Cut and stuck down onto the back of the red packets to be included with the invitations.

Isn't the angle on the envelope cool...

The Envelope

• Keeping with theme, pink is the way to go.
• Gave clients a cheap and simple option creating an envelope from an A4 paper.
• Did demo.
• Did a step by step with clients how to fold.
• Bought pack of mini double happiness character stickers to stick onto back of envelopes.
• Clients very happy with outcome.

keeping everything all in one spot

So all they need now is to write their guests names down and mail them out. I had a fun time hanging out with them as we made their invitations. Lovely couple they were, beautiful inside and out. They're from New Zealand and been living in Brunei for the past two years teaching here and they loved the fact that the rest of south east asia is within arms reach, and because of that decided to have a chinese themed wedding for their big day to commemorate their time of living and travelling in this region.

A friend of theirs recommended me to them and it was a challenge I was willing to take up, something about making editions that always intrigues me. Thank you Yann for introducing them to me and thank you Raewyn and Stewart for believing in me to make your invitations and loving them.

Oh, the invitations, they came out to about 70 odd cents each, it would be less if the spray glue didn't take up 1/3 of the total cost. Either way, still good.

At Work

This is what I'm staring at currently sitting at my table, it's a diagram to help me map out the subject units for the Art & Design course currently writing up.

Yes, I have butterflies in my room.

Welcoming The Year Of The Tiger

This year the chinese side of my family are not celebrating because of the recent demise of my late uncle and grand uncle, tradition dictates if there is a death in the family, there will be no celebration of any sort for a year or three, depending on which group you follow. So on the first day this year was a more mellow celebration and leaves us ample time to visit friends who are celebrating.

Our first stop was a friend whom we hadn't seen in months and spent a couple of hours at his place catching up on news and meeting the rest of his family and having yummy food, then found out a family friend whom we planned on visiting the day after was having a lion dance that day that I just had to go see!

Lovely decorated cherry blossoms at the foyer entrance, I so love how people really decorate for the CNY, I can't seem to achieve the same festive look when it comes to decorating for Eid.

A pink lion! How cool is that! I've seen them in reds, blacks, greens, blues but never pink. And it was joined by...

This orange yellow lion. It was in the middle of doing an MJ tribute here from the looks of those legs. Right behind it are the troops with their loud drums and clashing cymbals. It was great to see the lions dancing and performing in the compound as well as inside the house, symbolising to bring in good luck for the year.

I read my horoscope what lies ahead for me this year, from the looks of it, it's best I keep my head down for the first half and lie low, after that I can roar! Although more along the line of hearing the baby cry by that time...

Another chinese-y related news, I am currently helping a New Zealander couple with their wedding invitation and they wanted it to be chinese inspired. Needless to say that's one wedding I'd like to see the wedding pictures of after hearing the plans from the bride, so fantastic, and her dress is gorgeous!

Work In Progress: Long Overdue...

What do you do when you have a limited amount of material but an abundance of frames and boards to cover...? You get all creative and really small seam allowance.

Buku Hantaran: As long there's green in it...

I'm not sure if the camera was able to pick up the true colour since I took the shot at night... the background was a beautiful shade of olive green. I used up the last bit of the textured paper for this that I had saved for over a year. It worked well for this particular piece with the floaty gauzy bow.

I don't really like doing last minute order but this was my first order from the guy side, usually previous clients had always been the girls that does the ordering so I obliged letting him know he'll be picking it up only the day before he needed it. He said he wanted it to match what he'll be wearing, which was olive green. And I promised him it'll be pretty and it is truly in real life.

I contrasted the olive green on the outside with pink, beautiful isn't it, makes the colours stand out against each other.

When he came to pick it up, it was very strange, because I wrapped it up to protect it from getting dirty, he thought that would be what he'll be giving at his function. Uh, no, dude. Then after he realised it was a wrapping and took it off, he tried opening the folder without untying the bow and wondered how was he suppose to open it! By then I was in a stunned-shocked-silence type of mode and after a minute I just pulled the end of the ribbon to release the bow. I explained where he's suppose to put the list, closed the folder and he attempted to tie up the bow. He failed. Told him he got all night to practice making the bow as his function was the next day. I wondered how it went...

Side note, I made a little book for his sister as a thank you for she was the one who recommended him to contact me. I hope she liked it... I hope he gave it to her in the first place...

My Studio: The Books

I figured I'd take a shot of my references... These are the books I refer to for most things made in the studio and also for work for the curriculum I'm writing up, isn't that great, they get to do double duty!
The big grey ones on the left are all my Keith Smith books, I managed to get them in with the help of a good friend. It took me a while to really appreciate them because they're very dry and technical, but once I got the hang of reading them, there are bookmarks all over the pages. The rest are my design books and other 'interesting' books I picked up.

My stack of origami books! There are more, but these are the big ones. I used the 'Angelfish to Zen' as my main reference book when I was writing my dissertation for my undergrad, I borrowed it from the college library and renewed it three times when I figured it'll be easier to get my own copy. Some of these books are half my age or older and I still refer to them. Others I picked up throughout the years. One of them is totally japanese, once you know how to read origami diagrams it doesn't matter what language the book is written in, but you miss out on the interesting snippets included in the book. I like the geometric side of origami hence you don't really see any 'how to make animals'.

These are just some of my paper and books books, handmade books with pretty images in them, pop up books and my paper engineering books, and more design and reference books.

And it's ever growing, there are some books from my last trip out of the country that I still have yet to read through and find space on the shelves. I'm out of shelf space...

Work In Progress: The Sandwich

Just a sneak peak behind production, most of the time I'm trying to make everything flat...