Our lives are pretty chaotic right now, which makes planning for anything difficult. We both know that, ready or not, we will be moving house by the end of March, if not before. Moving is crazy, at the best of times, but is more complicated for us as we have 5 cats (6 including our neighbour's cat who lives with us most of the time) and only a tiny, baby-blue fiat 500 to transport them in. I am already dreading the squeals and squalling.
But plan we must as we will get married some time soon - date unknown - so we can't ignore the details forever.
Which brings me to save the date cards and invitations.
I want to go handmade and simple. So, being crafty, I opted for a linocut design that could easily be stamped on multiple plain cards. I also love the KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON WW2 poster, so I've used that as my inspiration especially as we want our wedding to have a vintage, make-do-and-mend, thrifty feel.
I put in some work trying to find the correct font for the poster, so that I could change the letters and trace around them. Then I realised that I was being very dumb when I found this - The Keep Calm poster generator.
So I promptly made this.
Then I traced it, putting the drawn side down on the lino and rubbing so that I was left with a perfect reversed impression of the design. After that I spent many hours gouging until I made this.
Next step was getting very inky fingers. I still need to mount it onto wood for the final stamp as it is very unwieldy to use. Plus, I'm not 100% sold on the mottled ink effect. Hmmm. I should really decide about that before going on to make the date stamp (date depending) and the mini KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON that I want to be able to stamp onto the back of the card (so it makes sense for those who are unfamiliar).
Here are my inky tests.
Not 100% successful, but not bad either. It is some small progress.