Save the Dates
The biggest thing with the save the dates is that they had to go out fast. I was engaged on May 19. On May 20 I booked a Dec. 11 date at the venue. On May 21 I bought I dress (I’ll do a post after the wedding…). Save the dates generally go out 6 months before the date. That is June 11, just over 2 weeks since after the engagement. I elected to go with a simple magnet. They were cheap and easy. We ordered from Vista Print and they came out to just under $0.25 each. Plus a card and a $0.44 stamp. The total ended up being about $80 when it was all said and done. Stefan’s roommate happens to be a quite good amateur photographer. We went to see some sights in Boston for a quick engagement shoot for a photo to put on the magnet.
I sketched out an idea of what I wanted and translated that to a photoshop image. If you don’t have photoshop, I recommend using Microsoft powerpoint. It does a surprisingly good job at laying out these things.
We got size A4 or 5.5Bar invitation envelopes because they are exactly ¼ a sheet of standard US paper. It just makes things easy. We printed the cards 4 to a page and used a paper cutter to cut them. Hot glue does a pretty good job of affixing magnet to cardstock. It has the added benefit of being super fun and easy.
We used Microsoft Mail Merge to print the addresses. We elected for a nice serif font. I know the invitations have to be hand addressed but the Save the Dates are fair game I say. Overall, we managed to get them out and mailed by mid-July which was quite an accomplishment considering the magnets had a 2 week lead time. If I could do them over, I would have designed the magnet and card together for a more unified look. I didn’t even use the same font. I got confused and I didn’t have the magnets when I was printing the cards. I don’t think many people noticed though.
I also highly recommend getting the magnets printed somewhere. It is seriously cheaper than printing them yourself and they look better I think.
What do you think? What would you have done differently?
Sarah
Let me fill you in…
It has been a long time since I’ve posted. I sincerely apologize. I will try my absolute hardest to not let it happen again. It is just that so much has happened since my last post on May 12. Has it been that long already!
I promise I’ll fill you in on the last little bit of the Oil painting class but first I have big news. I’m Engaged! Stefan and I will be tying the knot in December. I have TONS to do to get ready for the wedding but I’m at the lull time between booking all the vendors and having to meet with them.
So, let me fill you in on the details: Stefan proposed on May 19. My mother and sister were coming in on the 20th to visit a couple venues and do some preliminary wedding dress shopping…prematurely I know. I kind of knew it was coming but I really didn’t think it would be so soon! Stefan surprised me with dinner, steaks, and flowers. He had bought a ring we looked at earlier in January and he bought it in February…what was going on between Feb and May I’m not sure but I wouldn’t change anything! It was perfect just as it was. I get to be Mrs. Wolpert and spend the rest of my life with my super amazing Stefan. For your viewing pleasure and my bragging rights pleasure, here are some pictures of the ring. I’ll do some more posts of other wedding projects!
First half of Oil Painting Course
The first lesson started off with a Burnt Sienna and white painting of boxes. I went into more detail in a previous post here: https://www.diysarah.com/?p=60
The second lesson was a reverse painting where we put down burnt sienna
and then pulled it off to make the highlights. Clearly, these were both exercises. The bags and that white bottle were the difficult ones. I’m quite proud of the paper bag though. The corner was crinkled in which I wasn’t really able to capture but the side seems to convey what’s going on pretty well. The white box is a little off and the background is blah but I’m getting the hang of things.
The third lesson was our first foray into color. We painted with a limited palate but again, more boxes, that stupid bottle, and some difficult red cloth. The yellow box is messed up. It is not right. I ended up doing alright on the fabric though. It also looks like I forgot to put a shadow on the white bottle. Oops. The background is streaky again but that fabric looks like it is coming off the box and wrinkling on the table which is exactly what it was doing. The shadows on the ball aren’t quite there either.
Yay Color in the 4th lesson. My drawing is actually worse than usual in this
one. I think I got too excited about coloring in and I didn’t quite get the drawing right. That orange is floating weird. Shadowing on white is really hard. Everything gets streaky in a hurry. That blue box does not look good. The pitcher isn’t bad but it needs some highlights that I didn’t ever add. I think that is the real thing, we focused really only on adding lowlights and not highlights.
The 5th lesson is one of a 2-part-er. We blended everything with brown and made it all kinda blah. We are going to let it dry and go back and paint over it so don’t judge too harshly yet. There is a metal bowl in the still life. That is that weird grey blob with colors in it. The instructor promises it will get better.
-
Art Classes | | Craft, Decor, Art, Garden, and Dessert
[…] First Half of Oil Painting Course […]
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
Getting Started with Crochet
I started this morning with no real knowledge of how to crochet. I wanted to get up and running fairly quickly and I think I did it. In about 3 hours, I went from yarn and crochet hook to my very first granny square.
Far from perfect but not bad for as quickly as I was coming up to speed. I tried to find a simple tutorial or directions that would take me from no-clue to getting started on a small project. I couldn’t really find anything but I will piece together my process here for longevities sake.
First, I learned to slip-knot and chain stitch:
http://crochet.about.com/od/learntocrochet/ss/Crochet_Slip_Knot.htm
http://crochet.about.com/od/learntocrochet/ss/Chain_Stitch.htm
I very much prefer picture-by-picture tutorials over video tutorials. I find I have time to compare all of my details with those in pictures.
Then I learned some basic stitches. The single crochet and the double crochet.
http://crochet.about.com/od/learntocrochet/ss/Single_Crochet.htm
http://crochet.about.com/od/learntocrochet/ss/DoubleCrochet.htm
I basically did a row, pulled it all out, and started again. After doing that for the single and double crochet, I got bored and decided to try to actually make something. It’s always the case. I never want to do the learning part, only the making part. I suppose that’s why I’m writing this, to get you from learning into doing ASAP.
I looked at a bunch of tutorials but none of them really made sense. This abbreviation chart was helpful:
http://www.crochetspot.com/crochet-abbreviations/
and this was the best picture tutorial of a granny square I could find:
http://www.purlbee.com/granny-square-project/
Oh, and as soon as I started, I realized I probably needed to find out what a slip-stitch was so I found it by looking at the abbreviations page and heading to the slip-stitch length:
http://www.crochetspot.com/how-to-crochet-slip-stitches-sl-st/
And ta-da! Granny square. It really didn’t take me long at all and I am at least confident that I could do a real crochet project with a little online help. I’ve wanted to learn this for so long and finally got up enough courage. Why didn’t I start this when I was younger? I could have been a pro by now! I never could get the hang of knitting. The string just gets tighter and tighter and I get frustrated. I’ve always heard crochet was faster and easier but I was scared to try. Never again!
Sarah
