Wedding dream team: Vowed and Amazed

Continuing the wedding theme for yesterday, we've decided to tell you aaaaalll about our wedding dream team. Part 1: Vowed and Amazed.

Vowed and Amazed are indeed amazing for a number of reasons. One of these is their smashing great big light up letters and shapes. But our absolute all time favourite thing is their bouncy castle. Because there's no situation that a bouncy castle doesn't make better. Not a single one.

Crafternoon: Wedding Signage

We worked on a very special wedding in September, which involved quite a bit of make and do. One of our favourite projects was the signage, and we thought we'd share a quick how-to for everyone out there who is doing a bit of wedding planning.

We were inspired by this:



But we didn't like the fonts much (too uniform) and there was no way we were going to faff on with cutting out all those shapes. 

Our first stop was Homebase, which has a wood cutting department. This meant cheap offcuts, which was exactly what we wanted. We bought a selection of boards for £1-3 each. We also bought a pot of value white emulsion, a blue tester pot and a tube of black craft acrylic.

Back at the studio we marked out and cut a series of strips, some with a blunt end, some with one pointed end and others with a point and a tail. We gave them a couple of coats of white emulsion (with a little accent of blue mixed in) FRONT AND BACK PEOPLE (it's all about the finish). 

While the base coat was drying we printed out our text - we used a great free font called Sail, found via a nice roundup of fun free fonts here. Then we traced them front and back, and transferred the text onto the - now dry - strips.

The last stage was to use a super fine paintbrush to carefully paint in the text, to give a nice hand finished look. Don't worry too much if your lines aren't perfect, a bit of human error is OK. Don't give a brush to anyone who's too ham fisted though, you do still want them to be pretty. Seal with a coat of watered down PVA if there's any chance of rain (i.e. if you're in the UK).

Then simply tack the signs onto a bit of baton (also to be found in the wood section) and plant firmly into the ground on the big day. Don't forget your camping mallet, you will inevitably want to place the sign in the hardest bit of ground in a 25 mile radius. Love and sunshine and good clear directions for all...

Summer travels

It's cold. It's wet. We've spent the afternoon reminiscing about our travels over the summer while draped over a radiator, draining successive cups of tea through a bendy straw. This naturally led to reminiscing about the summer, in which vein we thought we'd pass on a couple of handy tips we picked up on our travels.

1. FRANCE

Early in the summer we drove to the south of France for a job, couldn't bear the idea of a string of boring identikit hotels and ended up scoring a series of unbelievable places to stay. Our two best finds were via Sawdays and Air BNB.

We just hyperventilated our way around Domaine de Boulancourt. Every turn revealed another adorable feature and the wonderful chatelaine even stocked us up on (very nice, very cheap) local wine and mosquito repellent, both of which we'd neglected to pick up from the nearest shop because we'd been so captivated by the local scenery. We could've happily stayed a week.

Once we'd finally caught our breath we continued on to La Chabanne, where we promptly had another gasping fit. Sometimes you just can't win...



Lesson: when in France, take a punt on independent accommodation. On that note also check out this lovely spot where we've spent many happy overheated days. Happens to have Brigitte Bardot's aunt as next door neighbour (confusingly she's younger than Brigitte).

2. CORSICA

Corsica was our next POA, for a beautiful wedding. Corsicans are a famously warlike bunch, a trait which has it's downsides. One of the upsides, however, is that any rich person trying to swallow up a nice little beach by plonking his or her house in front of it is liable to have the roof blown off in time for next summer. Thus you're never short of a secluded cove, if you know where to look.

Lesson: look out for small, well worn paths at the side of the road. That way lies heaven.

3. CROATIA

Hvar was our landing spot at the end of the summer, for a lovely private event and a welcome escape from the onset of Autumn in London. Can't say we were very taken by the mainland but the second we set foot on the islands we were in L-O-V-E. The clearest, bluest water, the prettiest little beaches and - somehow - barely any people. 

Lesson: we don't have one, apart from it's nice, have a go.