Drawing for a Save-the-Date Card

A Mother of the Bride asked me to draw the lovely exterior of her daughter’s wedding venue for the Save-the-Date card. The venue will be The VanLandingham Estate in Charlotte, NC, and it’s a stunning building. The client showed me several other samples of cards with venues drawn in simple line and I loved the classic, elegant look of them.

She sent me a perfect head-on photo of the building and I drew it first in pencil.

A graceful and dignified mansion, is it not? After the ok from the client I inked it in cleanly with black ink and sent it off.

Just a few days ago the Mother of the Bride sent me the finished card, beautifully printed on heavy rag paper. The letterpress printing was done by Scott McClelland, with assistance from Bo, at Paper Meets Press in Glenside, PA. Letterpress is a traditional printing technique that creates a relief of the type and image in the paper – you can feel the depression if you run your fingers across the text. Some of the impression is visible in the closeup below.

I think the finished card is a very stylish and appropriate look for what I’m sure will be an elegant wedding.

Pressed Flower Wedding Keepsake

My daughter was married one year ago at New Year’s Eve and carried a beautiful bouquet of roses and greens designed by the artisans at Doylestown Flowers.  I’ve always loved pictures of pressed flowers, and thought it would be a lovely keepsake to save the flowers from her bouquet. While the happy couple were on their honeymoon I dried petals, greens and stems from her bouquet between pages of large books. Recently I chose some ivory parchment paper as a background and designed a simple picture from the dried items. A mat and silver frame completed the gift for their first anniversary.