Flashback: Studio Choo

When I first featured Small Stump (Now known as Studio Choo) that was back in 2008, they have been busy beavering away since then, working with Kinfolk and Martha Stewart among others creating stunning flower arrangements like the one below.

The thing I am most excited about is their book, The Flower Recipe Book.  I just LOVE this idea.  I have no idea how to arrange flowers (we did do the flowers for my wedding but all we did was buy a tonne of pretty wild looking flowers from the flower market and put them in jam jars) but this book makes me feel like making a pretty decent floral arrangement is now something achieveable.  The book would also make a great Christmas gift.

Big Props

After spending a lot of time collecting items to use to decorate our wedding venue in July, I decided to put them to good use after the wedding by hiring them out.  I had collected about 100 jam jars, 8 belljars, vintage typewriters, birdcage, bunting, easel, vintage china etc etc.  

I have added a page called Props to my website, which you can see here enabling other people to hire out my decorations instead of having to spend ages trawling charity shops or online looking for items to decorate their wedding/party/photoshoot.  

There are lots more items to be added over the coming week or so.

Invite only

My husband designed all our invites/menu/order of service etc for our wedding, including the tea towels we had printed as invites.  The idea for doing the invite as a tea towel came because we wanted something a bit tongue in cheek.  Chris saw a lot of the tacky memorabilia that was bought out to celebrate the wedding of  Prince WIlliam and Kate.  We  came across old tea towel designs from previous royal weddings and decided to do our own which Chris designed and then got digitally printed.

We had a rough colour scheme of yellow/white/grey and pink which we used in the printed materials.  The little bird pegs I made by cutting out bird images from an old bird book and gluing them onto wooden pegs.  I made lots of them for the wedding so guests could pin up their messages and pictures to us at the reception (we had a table with an old fashioned typewriter and an easel with pens and paints for people to type, write or draw messages for us.

Summer Barn Wedding

Some summer barn wedding inspiration from Ruffled blog. There are quite a few wedding blogs out there and a few great ones that I regularly check out for inspiration are Ruffled, Oncewed, Project wedding, i do it yourself.

My little bro tied the knot...

...to a beautiful and lovely lady who I am so happy to call my sister in law. It was a wonderful ceremony with a fantastic party afterwards, all organised in the space of a month! I helped out with a bit of pop pom decoration but really the venue was so fantastic it didn't need much. They chose The Roost, a location for film and photography, for their reception and WOW!! what an incredible place. An old edwardian house in Dalston, set over 4 floors, each room filled with great props and decorated in a different way, all with that faded grandeur look to it which I love. All the guys were given flat caps and the ladeez got fans as the wedding favours which I labelled using an old typewriter and some cheap cloth. A wonderful day had by all. Congratulations Kendal and Michelle, can't believe you beat me to it, we got a lot to live up to now:)

Blog of the Week - Once Wed

I got engaged 2 and half years ago and this year we are hoping to start planning our wedding.  If you are planning a wedding or has a friend who is, and if they haven't found Once Wed's great site yet, go straight there right now!  It features lots of beautiful weddings, DIY ideas for your wedding, second hand gorgeous wedding dresses, great links and heaps of inspiration to get your wedding planning underway.  So now I have no excuse to put off the planning.   

Oh wow!

I came across the fab blog 100 Layer Cake a while back and check it out quite often as it has such wonderful wedding posts, even if you are not planning a wedding its worth visiting just for the inspiration and great photography.  I popped over there today and came across a wonderful post about Mimi of Mika 78, a letterpress designer who created these fantastic gifts for a close friend's bridal shower.  She hunted down the cutest vintage teacups and napkins in flea markets to use as the basis of her designs which she then handwrote (on the teacups) and printed on the napkins and these were wrapped up in little boxes with twine to give to each of the guests.  How fabulous - I'd be over the moon to receive something which has obviously been created with such love and care!