Summer Wedding. Mattituck

In honor of their union and their wedding this summer, my daughter and her husband created a Family Crest. They included various symbols of each of their histories and interests, combining them to represent their collective lives. Then, they used the crest as a connector throughout the communications and decorations for the wedding. They printed golden crests on Save-the-Date postcards, party invitations, cocktail napkins, The Invitations, anything that would stand still long enough. They stopped just short of requiring tattoos on the guests.

So, it was inevitable that the crest would show up on the favors for wedding guests. I had the crest printed in gold on some cardstock...lots of cardstock... then proceeded to cut out and form 85 TinyBuildings. It was an adventure. At least I had the sense to allow myself lots of time, which I then squandered until I had about six weeks to make most of them. I ended up generating about a half dozen a day. Rough, but driven by love....

The most difficult part was making a variety rather than replicating the same form and format over-and-over again. I always want to form the TinyBuildings based on the proportions and layout of the original material...In this case that was the same 2 inch by 2 inch card with the same slightly-not -symmetrical drawing; with some segments of the image [sketches of their two cats] 'demanding' that I not cut off their legs or heads. Arghhhh! I wouldn't say it got boring, but it was challenging to address each piece of cardstock with the same enthusiasm..HAHA!

But, they turned out wonderful, and everyone seemed thrilled to receive one. We packaged them in small lucite boxes so guests could drop them in their pockets to take home.

So, that's what I did this spring. I don't have, yet, any pictures of masses of these Tinybuildings, but I do have a couple shots, along with the special version I made for my daughter and her husband, which included their Invitation. The black dot on the roof of one little house is the fastener from the envelopes....

c.2008

Wedding Chapel Three. Maryland

The third 'chapel' happens to be an attempt to replicate the actual building, in a vineyard, where the reception was held. It is a beautiful old stone farm building, with a loft space for parties and weddings and such.

This invitation was handmade by the couple, with loads of patience, creativity, and joy, it seems. They used small strips of colorful illustrations from magazines and other sources to create obi-wrapped bundles of paper. The colors they selected evoked the Tuscany-like place they had their ceremony; and were a great contrast with the naive austerity of the printed invitation.

Great imagination to meet a tight budget, and perfect materials for a tinybuilding.

c. 2007

Wedding Chapel Two. San Francisco

This is one of the *gift* chapels for family friends. This invitation is so beautiful-with yummy colors, patterns and textures. I wanted to use the embossed portion as the roof, so the main building turned out sorta large. I added the tiny, tiny outrigger building to soften the scale of the larger 'airplane hanger'; and to add a little tension into the equation.

Nice, huh?!

c. 2006

Wedding Chapel One. San Francisco

This year, a new sub-tradition of the Christmas tinybuildings came into being. My son and his wife asked me to make tinychapels from the wedding invitations of a couple of their friends-as surprise gifts.

They turned out so nice, and it was such a good idea that I backtracked and made them a wedding 'complex' from their invitation. [I should have thought of this myself, right after their 2005 wedding.]

This 'complex' of tinybuildings came about because I wanted to include all the salient facts about their wedding day- the names, date, location- and to attempt to capture the warm feelings and aesthetic tone of the day.

I think the beautiful blue bird on the invitation inspired a tinybuildings 'first'- the arched roofs. Aren't they beautiful?!!!

A nice result from the multiple-buildings format is that they occasionally rearrange the buildings in their place on a living room bookshelf. I hope when they are doing that, it causes them to re-imagine that happy and beautiful day in their lives...