Have you ever wondered as a luxury handmade wedding cards designer how I find my inspiration and what sparks my creativity?

 

 

So what fuels my imagination as a luxury handmade wedding cards designer?

It’s quite simple – I’m thoroughly lit up by my travels throughout France and Portugal. Paris and Sintra are two of the spots, full to brim of magical Unesco Heritage locations, that hold the most valuable hotspots of artistic creativity. Mostly ornate architecture, from monasteries, renovated old quintas ( Portuguese Villa’s), old family homes, to lavishly decorated palaces that echo back to an era of great wealth. Corners of baroque style and anything that echos regal intricacy gets me going every time.

 

 

I’m Rubana, the British luxury handmade wedding cards designer behind Crimson Letters.  In this post I’ll show you how I translate some inspiration and translate it into a finished high end wedding invitation design.

Finding inspiration as a designer is the greatest challenge of all. Sometimes designs come so easily.

 

The moment is right.

Inspiration and the itch to sit down and create strikes.

Everything flows. It’s kind of a magical experience.

 

 

Last summer, whilst we were visiting family in Paris, we decided to visit Chateau De Chantilly for the day. We generally make a plan to visit a few grand palaces, or stately homes every year and this one was such a magical experience. There was so, so much design inspiration to be had. I went from room to room snapping copious amounts of photos on my iphone.

The black door image above.

That stopped me in my tracks.

This I knew I had to translate into a design.

I choose to use the outer area of gold curves and omit the complexed inner gold emblem, otherwise it would have taken too long to design. I simply created half of the design on a white piece of paper in pencil. next, with an outliner, I drew on some strong black lines so that it would scan in easily.

I scanned it in and copied and pasted a mirror image. Very simple. I printed the finished design onto black paper. You would be surprised at the result but yes, you can just about see the design, black on black.

Continuing on with a calligraphy dip pen, I started to make all of the outlines in gold ink.

After it’s dry, I continue to add different coloured gold paint in other parts of the design and add some watercolour to the background.

You can see the results below!