Hand-Painted Weddings

  • Autumn Leaves Escort Cards

    Autumn Escort cards by Hand-Painted Weddings

    Like many couples, my engagement was about 16 months long. It felt like a long time, I’ll be honest, but it did allow me to plan ahead. My wedding was in October, so I was very inspired by the season. In fact, the year before I collected leaves off of one of my favorite trees in the park when the leaves were changing colors and stuffed them amongst the pages of a very large, heavy design book. Miraculously they didn’t crumble throughout the year, and I was able to place one on every one of my guest’s place settings. If you have an autumn wedding that is later in the season you can pick off the leaves right before your wedding, in which case the leaves will probably be more bright than if they hang around for a year. But my wedding fell on a year that the fall foliage held off until November, so I was lucky that I planned ahead.

    If you don’t want to be that “interesting” person picking leaves off trees and putting them in a thick book for a year, you can get the same look by having autumn leaves escort cards. I painted these leaves from real ones I picked up around home, so they look very much like the real ones…probably brighter actually! Autumn leaves escort cards are small yet make a big impression to your table settings at your wedding. As one of my recent bride mentioned in a review on WeddingWire, “I didn’t realize how important these little details could be until I saw them with the rest of the decor the day of the wedding.”

    Autumn Leaves Escort Cards by Hand-Painted Weddings. Contact for ordering.

  • Autumn Invitation with Gold Shimmer Accents

    Custom Autumn Wedding Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings Custom Autumn Wedding Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings Custom Autumn Wedding Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings

    This beautiful custom autumn invitation with hand-painted gold shimmer accents is an extension of the couple’s custom autumn save-the-date postcard that I featured on Monday’s blog post. One of the fun parts of my job is figuring out how to expand and grow a design from piece to piece such as I did here from the Save-the-Date to Invitation. It is much more fun if wedding paper is similar but not too matchy-matchy.

    In this design the intertwined branches on the strong trees of the Save-the-Date design are zoomed into the delicate branches intwining in this loose border around the invitation. These intertwining branches expand and crawl into the edges of the RSVP card. The zooming into the branches is quite fitting from the Save-the-Date to the Invitation as the guest’s get more information about the upcoming wedding. I love how delicate yet strong this design is. I worked with this couple to design their Save-the-Dates at the same time as their Invitation and they were then able to stagger mailing them out.

    Both the Save-the-Date postcards and the invitation had the gold watercolor accents added to them so they had a gold shimmer under the light, which I zoomed into for you in the photos above. Gold watercolor accents are a great alternative to gold foil for a couple that is looking to subtly add gold to their organic designs.

    Custom Autumn Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings.

  • Autumn Save-the-Date Postcard with Gold Shimmer

    Custom Autumn Wedding Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings Custom Autumn Wedding Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings Custom Autumn Wedding Invitation by Hand-Painted Weddings

    Autumn invitations…my favorite! I worked with the bride, Katie, to create her custom Invitation package including their Save-the-Dates. The Autumn Save-the-Date features two trees with intersecting branches which subtly symbolizes the strength of each tree (or person) as they intersect their lives together in marriage. The invitations are an extension of this design and zoom into the branches further…but I will share with you the invitation designs tomorrow!

    Katie chose to have her Save-the-Dates as postcards. One little tip I like to give couples who choose to send out postcards is to ask their local post office to hand-cancel their postcards. Many couples choose to do this for their invitations as well, but particularly for a postcard, you’ll want to add that special attention. The reason I push this for postcard in particular is because some of the machinery that pulls the postcards through for metering tends to scuff up the cards. Not every post office does hand-canceling so be sure to inquire ahead of time, and drop off your Save-the-Date postcards or invitation sets during a slow time at the post office.

    This couple also decided to have a little gold shimmer added to their designs. This is a great alternative to gold foil. I printed the Save-the-Date postcards and painted shimmery gold watercolor accents to the leaves on the front and back of the design. In the light, these gold accents shimmer beautifully!! Gold is all the rage these days, and it is perfect for autumn weddings, so if gold foil is not in your price range and a little too structured in design for you, consider adding a hand-painted gold shimmer to your order.

    Custom Autumn Wedding Save-the-Date Postcard by Hand-Painted Weddings.