Things have been a crazy whirlwind and it’ll probably be even crazier over the next few months. But the good news is that the date for our big day is set!

There’ll be even more DIY projects to come as we prepare for our wedding and I’m excited to share them with you. :)

First up, a brief version of our save the date card design:

(I’ve removed some details for privacy but you get the general idea.)

More about the design

I love the idea of using photographed items as the background for cards – it adds much more dimension and the details really add to the story. And so I decided to create a little “set” of sorts based on the things we’d be using for the wedding.

As much as I love flowers and all things girly, I didn’t want to flood it out with flowers and leave my fiancé with little breathing room.

He’s an economist and engineer by training (very brilliant, may I add), so adding more geometric shapes to the overall theme would give a nice contrast. Before I go all out on the flowers and various round items which I usually use of course :)

The plate and flowers are going to be used for our wedding so it was nice for them to make an appearance on the very first thing we send out. More on those projects to come!

Making the background

Some people feel that posting behind-the-scenes shots ruin the magic of the final product. But I somehow love seeing behind-the-scenes photos and being taken on the journey of how things get transformed into something even more beautiful.

So if you belong to the first group of people, I’m sorry if this ruins the magic! But if you’re looking to make your own card backgrounds, hopefully this will help you along too.

I didn’t plan to post these photos so they are pretty “raw” compared to my usual tutorial images. The gloominess was real however! There was a huge thunderstorm as I shot this with whatever daylight was left in the evening.

Pardon the grubby table (it’s been with me for 16 years!).

I wanted to layer the triangles that I had cut out at random. Ideally you’d want to use thick card or boards for this, but I tried to make do with what I had in my room. So sketch paper it was, with blue tack to add height below. Without the varying heights, the paper triangles would all blend into the same background. The blue tack spots were cleared using photoshop later on.

Basically triangles were cut at random and where it felt that something was missing, I’d add on till I got to this. A little bit of photoshop magic and voila!

And just to whet your appetite… The coffee filter wrist corsages will be featured in another tutorial coming up once I get the bracelets sorted. And the plate? Why don’t you take a guess :)