A Custom Save the Date Design
I LOVE weddings. Seriously. Anytime a friend gets engaged, I want to know all the details - the dress, the colors, the flowers, the venue, every little nitty-gritty detail. My friends know that I'm the one pal that will NEVER tire of hearing about wedding details!
My love of weddings definitely translates to my work. I love designing custom wedding artwork for brides - it's amazing to be a small part of someone's big day.
BACKGROUND:
Today I'm sharing a custom save the date I designed for a beautiful couple, Molly and Blake. I met Molly through my last job. She's a senior designer for a major interior design firm in NYC, and I was lucky enough to be able to work with her regularly as one of her vendors.
A few months after I opened my business, Molly contacted me and asked me if I could design a custom save the date for her upcoming wedding. I jumped at the chance!
FIRST MEETING:
Molly, Blake and I met up and discussed their wedding details. They're getting married at a historic tennis club, so we definitely wanted to incorporate that into the design. Molly really loved my custom portraits and wanted to incorporate one of those into the design as well.
DEFINITES:
Molly and Blake definitely wanted the following included in their custom save the date:
- Something to do with tennis to reflect their venue
- Custom portraits
- Hand-lettered text
THE DESIGN PROCESS:
Above, you can see my preliminary sketch - I really liked the idea of doing vintage tennis rackets. Molly wanted some greens and pink flowers, so you can see my original watercolors up top.
Once we got the layout right, it was all just the final tweaking/details.
I did the lettering on my iPad using the ProCreate app, because it's just so much easier and quicker to edit! You still get that hand-written look, but if you mess up it's easier to fix. I'm a perfectionist and would spend like ten thousand hours on each letter if I could, so the iPad saves my sanity.
All the other elements were made by me using watercolor and Micron pens.
Scanning watercolors into Photoshop is tough. They look SO good on paper, then when you see them up close on the computer, they don't look as good - you can see EVERY little flaw. It's important for me to remind myself that the color variations are what makes handmade art special, and not try to digitize it too much!
The final image you see on Molly and Blake's Save the Date is pretty much straight off the watercolor paper/original drawing. I boosted the saturation a little bit in Photoshop to make the pinks a little brighter (you always lose a little bit of color when scanning from paper to digital).
I'm so happy with how this gorgeous Save the Date came out! If you're interested in discussing some custom artwork or stationary for yourself, please be in touch!
