Custom Hand Painted Invitations,
a behind the scenes look
at the process involved.
In this blogpost I will be sharing the process of custom hand painted invitations. We will be looking at what it takes to work with a designer on creating a completely original design and all the steps involved throughout the entire process.
When you’re looking for custom hand painted invitations it is though you are making a designer couture dress. Rather than buying an affordable ready made dress for about $50 – $100, you want an Alexander McQueen dress that is completely custom made for your body and designed specifically for you.
Custom hand painted invitations process of design is the same as that couture designer dress. Or even compared to your wedding dress, your hand painted wedding invitations are designed for you and in close communication with you. It is by no means cheap to work with a designer, because you are paying an actual individual “human being” and working alongside him/her to craft a coherent design specifically for you.
Every single piece of artwork is designed by hand, from scratch.
Guess what? There will be a lot of back and forth and a lot of time spent, communicating throughout the creative process and tweaking artwork.
Here below is a final invitation design, featuring the hand painted wedding invitations and inserts all wrapped up in an invitation wrap and sealed with wax.
I will explain, step by step through this article, how I worked with a client to end with this design below.
To make something special for you will take a lot of skill, hard work and dedication and it is equally as exciting to watch unfold.
In this article, I will show you, exactly how I go through this process, step by step.
- Inspiration
- Timing
- Artwork
- Production
Below for the very first stage of the custom hand painted invitations process, a inspiration moodboard is first of all sent to the client to loosely show the direction the design will take on, based on some directives that has been provided. Next, I create 3 design concepts with the (below) colour scheme in mind.
Inspiration and visual images theme – Neutral, white, with accents of burgundy.
- Clean lines and crisp feeling of traditional cotton paper invitation
- Navy and burgundy touches – this can be easily incorporated onto the envelope liner as well as throughout the suite if required.
- Blend of clean/modern and romantic/embellished
I focused on developing some watercolours and acrylic hand painted florals. I focus on white flowers with yellow centres, darker burgundy flowers and design dark blue berries. The artwork took me almost two weeks to develop. The next step was to remove the background from all the individual artwork pieces. This way I have many separate elements to play with and compile a design.
Below you can see that I had to click on each item and manually drag it into place. This was a very time consuming and arduous process that I really don’t enjoy all too much. Yet, it’s part of the process. I also had to create lots of calligraphy for the client to add into the design.
I continued to work away on developing several designs. In total this took me one week to compile. Below you can see the first 3 design proposals that were presented to the client.
Normally, the way I work is to create real physical invitations, rather than digital mock ups to present to the client, see an example of what I mean here. Yet, unfortunately with this case, we just didn’t have time for me to actually produce final items, so I have to focus on presenting the design concepts in a digital format.
The designs below are all in the rough stage and the calligraphy was just a suggestion as to placement and by no means a final version of what the real calligraphy, which was meant to be in gold, not black, would look like.
The client liked the concept of the invitation card from Design Suite one and the envelope liner and rsvp card from Design Suite two. Moving forward, I created another design concept. The new design concept below showed more navy blues in the rsvp card, larger text on the invitation and more filling the gaps at the two top corners.
The client wanted to see:
- RSVP CARD less baby blues and more navy blue berries.
- INVITATION CARD larger text on the invitation and more filling the gaps for the two top corners.
- RECEPTION CARD due to so much text being on the invitation card, a new last minute card was introduced and extra text moved to the Reception card.
Here are some images of the final suite below.
Above you can see the hand painted wedding invitation wrap, with a front and back view.
TIMING:
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Inspiration & Sketches – 1 week to gather and to create and revise sketches with any additions.
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Artwork – To develop artwork it will take anywhere from 2 – 4 weeks, depending upon if you are satisfied or might need more design revisions or changes.
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Production – Once artwork has been approved and all spelling has been checked, production will start. This phase is very intensive, especially if the client is requesting hand painted wedding invitations, it can last anywhere between 3 – 8 weeks all depending upon the complexity, various details and any time consuming elements, such as hand painted wraps etc…
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Stuffing & Packaging – Invitations will need to be placed within envelopes and wax sealed (stuffing) then packaged securely. This can take a 1-3 days to finalise.
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Shipping – International shipping will take from 3- 5 working days, the package will need to be signed for.
Lastly all the stationery will be packaged and shipped off to it’s final destination via courier, which takes anywhere from 3-5 working days.
Do you have any questions, or anything else you’d like to learn that hasn’t been covered? Please comment at the end and let me know, or reach out and connect.
