New developments

Just a quick post to let you in on a few exciting things happening at Anouk.

New Faces
First off, we'd like to welcome our newest designers, Dunna Duncombe and Amy Tritton. Donna is a fantastic digital scrapbooker as you can see from her designs over at Nuts4Digi. Amy is a fine artist finishing her honours at University of Tasmania - you can see some of her beautiful paintings on her website. We're so pleased to exhibit samples of the work of these talented artists, and hopefully we'll get to interview them both soon.

Free Wedding Invitations

Yep, that's right - we're a wedding stationery business and we're planning to give away wedding invitations for free. Are we committing financial suicide?

Possibly.

But anyway, we're excited about our new service which will bring wedding stationery well and truly into the Internet era by allowing you to create and send your invitations online, as well as managing your guest list and tracking responses. Did I mention it's free?

Of course, we'll be using some of the same great designs which are available for actual money on our main site.

It's still under development and incredibly top-secret at the moment, but we should be able to show you some more in the next couple of weeks. Our working title for this new service is "enook" - the nook part makes it sound like our name, Anouk. And the "e" of course, stands for "Excellent". I mean "Electromagnetic".... or something. Anyway, it sounds very technological, yet cute. Right?

Print Ads

OK, I can't resist showing off Mel's graphic design skills - here's a small version of our upcoming ad for Bride to Be magazine. Pretty cool, eh?

An interview with designer Briony Boulton

The latest designer to join the Anouk design team is Briony Boulton, a multi-talented designer with experience in comic art, jewellery and...(wait for it)... environmental geology! Of course, she also has a fantastic range of wedding invitations available through our online store.

If you don't already know, the designs we offer at Anouk Invitations are all created by talented local artists. When you buy from us you're supporting these artists, so we encourage you to get to know the

people who design your stationery. I got the chance to chat to Briony about herself, comic art, DIY weddings, and the future of wedding stationery in the interview that follows.

It sounds like you've been making art as long as you can remember! What's your earliest artistic memory?

You know, it’s hard to remember not wanting to draw, create or make something. A couple of my earliest memories of drawing and being creative were at kindergarten, I remember drawing a picture of Ned Kelly, a typical 3 year old stick figure impression, but my mum totally loved it, and has kept it all these

years.

So have you always been an artist?

I've actually just recently left a professional career as an environmental geologist. I was involved in investigating, monitoring and remediating contaminated soil and groundwater on industrial

sites such as factories and service stations (a far cry from anything creative!). After 6 years, I realized that it wasn’t for me, and that the little artist inside me was not going to rest until it was free!

That's great news for us! So getting back to weddings and invitations, are there any trends you're noticing?

I’ve noticed a lot of what is available for invitations at the moment is simple, elegant and classic.

Do you think anything's missing, or could be done differently when it comes to the wedding stationery that's generally available?

I don’t think there is a lot out there to cater for everyone’s personality. I’d like to see more fun, bright and abstract designs for those who want to add a bit of flair to their special day. I think weddings in general have changed a lot over the years from their traditional origins and therefore wedding stationary should also change and adapt to match the whimsical and creative ways in which people these days are getting married, and I think Anouk is really starting to fill that void.

You've obviously thought a bit about all this wedding stuff. Are you married

yourself?

Yes! We tied the knot in November last year and it was the most thrilling experience! Apart from the most torrential ra

in we’ve had in years (after all, we’re in a drought!) the day progressed flawlessly and it really didn’t matter that it was raining. We got married at a small chapel at a local reception venue on a large property with beautiful scenery. It was the perfect backdrop and fortunately the rain cleared up long enough for us to get our photographs taken! We honeymooned in gorgeous Fiji and then went on a camping adventure through the high

country of Victoria and southern NSW.

So your wedding planning paid off and it all went smoothly in the end - that's great! So I want to ask you... apparently we're going through a recessio

n at the moment - do you think this is a good opportunity for engaged couples to get creative with their wedding planning, maybe do a bit of DIY and save money at the same time? Do you have any tips or suggestions how they can do this?

I wanted to be hands on for my wedding, and I chose to DIY a number of things, not only to save money, but to give me a sense of ownership and pride over t

he details of my wedding. I went for a bit of a vintage theme, so I handmade all my wedding invitations, name tags and order of service, printing onto an art nouveau style vellum and attaching it to a golden brown card, which accented the bridesmaid’s colour.

With the cost of flowers I definitely thought about buying loose flowers and putting them together myself, but didn’t really want that added stress on the day and opted for a florist to do it! I did however, make a posie of imitation flowers to throw, similar to the real ones in my bouquet, so that I didn’t have to get an extra bouquet for throwing, and so that the lovely lady who caught the bouquet, would have something to keep forever.

I also shopped around for bridal shoes for a long time, trying to find something that I liked that was not hugely expensive and in the end, I couldn’t find what I was after so I bought a pair of standard (non-bridal!) shoes and added a bit of bling to them myself. I saved hundreds of dollars, and got the shoe I wanted. I was also very fortunate that my mum has spent years cake decorating, as she was able to make and decorate our wedding cake for us. I think people can definitely DIY a lot when it comes to weddings, especially if they think outside the square a little and realize they do not have to just be limited to what is available.

It seems written correspondence is becoming a thing of the past as we do more and more communication online. Wedding stationery seems to be resisting this trend, but do you think people might start emailing their wedding invitations instead of printing and mailing them?

I have been the recipient of an emailed wedding invitation in the past, and it made sense for the couple who sent it, as they were overseas and had friends from all over the globe attending. I do think though that there is something special about opening up a hard copy posted invitation, and call me old fashioned, but I think you lose some of the charm and importance when you email something. People tend to me more casual and forgetful about opening and replying to an email than having a hardcopy invitation in front of them, and for something as important as a wedding, it is critical that you get the RSVPs back and that no one forgets the date!

So getting back to your artistic style... I love your black and white ink work that has that comic-book look. Are you a comics fan?

I do love comics. Having done a short course in comic art a few years ago, I can appreciate how much time and skill goes into creating a comic strip, graphic novel or animation and would one day love to embark on a graphic novel myself. I love the balance of light and shade, and how a dimensional image can be drawn using only a black pen, accentuating shadows and leaving just the right amount of white in the right places to give the appearance of light. As you can imagine, I have been influenced by all the classic stuff, X-Men, Wonder Woman, Superman etc and anything by Frank Miller (creator of Sin City & 300) whose comics are not only skillfully drawn but also have a darker side.

So will we be seeing some comic-style wedding invitations from you?

I would absolutely love to do some comic inspired invitations. Hmm… actually I think that will be next on the agenda!

Looking forward to it! I love your Pink Butterflies design too - I don't think we have anything like that in our collection yet.

Thanks. I guess the inspiration for that design came from the wedding trend of releasing butterflies during the ceremony. I felt that butterflies were a lovely image for a marriage, symbolizing new beginnings, good fortune and joy. It is said that the butterflies that are released carry forth the good news of your love and commitment for each other, so I decided to take that message and translate it into an invitation depicting butterflies flying, whilst giving it a more modern, funky edge. I decided to do a soft pink and brown color palette to give the sense of romance without being too over the top!

Thanks Briony!

Thanks for asking me, I feel quite honoured to be featured on your blog!

Do-it-yourself weddings

DIY weddings can be loads of fun and make a huge impact if done right, not to mention saving you heaps of money. The difficulty is knowing what to DIY and what to outsource. You need to play on your strengths and acknowledge your “not so strengths”.

Flowers and decorations

Tissue paper flowers

More tissue paper flowes

If floral arranging is your bag, then do your own flowers. You could even have a working bee to get this done the day before the wedding if you don't mind the last minute pressure. However there are other cool alternatives.

How about making your flowers out of tissue paper, it’s so blissfully quirky and will blow your guests away. They can also be made months in advance which will relieve some of the on-the-day stress, it will also save you a fortune without looking like a cost cutting measure. I found these in Martha Stewart Weddings Spring 2006 and am seriously considering doing this myself.

Paper butterflies

Another alternative would be to make tonnes of paper butterflies out of different coloured papers that suspend above the room by fishing line. Quite an impact!

Origami flowers

Origami flowers for the tables are a fabulous idea but I made one of these and it took me AGES! I’m sure this gets easier after the first 100 though :)

My wedding

I’ve decided that for my own wedding in May I’m going to embrace the DIY theme, bearhug it actually. It may take a lot more time to prepare but my guests will hopefully appreciate the effort and I get to have a wedding that doesn’t feel like it’s templated.

Handcut placecards - Martha Stewart 2006

I’m running with a theme of paper and birds. The flowers are likely to be made of tissue paper al-la Martha Stewart Spring 2006 (if I’m dextrous enough to manage it) and I’ve found these handcut placecards (also in Martha 2006) that are ADORABLE!

Birdseed bonboniere by Nature Favors

And the piece-de-resistance will be these birdseed bomboniere by Nature Favors that I found on Etsy, this I will outsource, but the little Bride and Groom tags I will tackle myself.

Wrens stationery available at Anouk Invitations

All this ought to be all tied up with the Wrens illustrated stationery design, of which I’ll use the invitations, menus and thankyou cards.

New designer: Alexis Andrea

We're really excited about the newest addition to our design team at Anouk Invitations! Alexis Andrea is an incredibly talented artist, illustrator and designer, and we're very proud to display her fresh take on wedding stationery as part of our design offering.

So to help us introduce you to our favourite new designer, Alexis has been kind enough to answer a few questions about herself.

Tell us about yourself!

My name is Alexis Andrea, and I am from Western Sydney, NSW. I am 24 years old. I come from a very creative family of 6, and I’m the youngest of 4 girls. We also have a very funny and adorable tamed budgie named Noah who loves to sit on your shoulder:) When I’m not designing invitations, I’m creating new patterns, drawing, illustrating, writing, making or designing artworks, or my favourite... laughing and telling funny stories!!!

Tell us a bit more about your artistic background

I started drawing and painting at a very young age - like a human photocopier I liked to look at something and I drew it as a I saw it. I studied art throughout high school and then Visual Communications at Uni. I thought I was going to be a graphic designer, double majoring in graphic design and illustration, only to drop my graphic design major in the first week of second year to take up more illustration.

I started working pretty soon after graduating in 2006, which didn’t leave me a lot of time to focus on what I really wanted for myself. So I decided to take that big step and put myself out there as a freelance illustrator/graphic illustrator, and to also give myself more time to illustrate my own material. I also do have a signature style of drawing which is a part of a range of pretty ladies with pretty hair and rosy cheeks (like my portrait pic on Anouk). I also post a range of different types of artworks I've done on redbubble if you wanted to check it out!

What are your favourite techniques/materials for creating your art? What do you enjoy working on most? Where do you get your inspiration?

I love doing intricate artworks - especially collage, textiles, pencil and ink. Pointillism for example with proper ink and nib would take up to 50 hours to do an A4 size artwork (provided you don’t spill ink and have to start again) but the results are great! I really enjoy working on projects that really require your time and concentration. I also love doing a bit of photography just for fun, especially underwater :)

I hear you're working on authoring and illustrating children's books. How's that going and where can we buy them?

I left my job earlier this year which I’d been at for almost 3 years as a graphic artist, to concentrate on my illustration career. So I don’t have any books published yet, but I’m very excited to. I’m working on a few books at the moment, all children’s books, with lots of pictures!

Your wedding stationery designs are fantastic! How would you describe their style and who do you think they would be suitable for?

I like to work with a few different styles depending on my inspiration. I would probably describe most of them as feminine/girlish with a modern/youthful take on it. At the same time I do get inspired by vintage/olden day publications, packaging and stationary, and patterns - like wallpaper, polka dots and stripes - so you’ll see a lot of that coming across in my work. For the work I do for Anouk I pretty much just try to put myself in the bride-to-be’s shoes (and they feel great! haha) and aim to design something simple yet beautiful that she’ll look back on in 50 years time and still have no regrets. At the moment my designs have been influenced by seasons like summer, autumn, winter and spring.

Have you ever been married?

No I’m not married/engaged yet:( hahahahaha actually its really not that funny.... *still laughing*

Had you made wedding stationery before designing for Anouk?

I designed my best friend's wedding invitations, which we hand made also. Her colours were dark brown and pink with a vintage influence and a cherry blossom theme. Rose Birch (coming soon on Anouk - check here to see all Alexis' designs) was actually inspired by her invitations. I have also done a few invitations for anniversaries and birthdays - a few of the graphics from these I used to create Blue Winter and Parasol.

Do you think anything is missing or could be done differently when it comes to the wedding stationery that is generally available?

Just like bonbonnieres, I’d like to see wedding invitations which are also practical, that just don’t sit collecting dust afterwards. Or even a please recycle sticker on it will do ;)

Designers wanted!

Are you a professional graphic designer or artist? If you are, chances are you've been roped into designing wedding invites for a friend at some point in your life.

Probably more than once.

Maybe you noticed the demand and even thought about setting up a business to do it. Big mistake! Just kidding, but we did it and we can tell you: setting up a business is quite hard.

But what if you could sell your wedding stationery designs without having to worry about all that business-y stuff? That's exactly what we're offering you. Anouk Invitations can manage all the nitty-gritty details of order processing, advertising, customer service, printing, order fulfillment (and the list goes on) so you can concentrate on unleashing your creativity on the canvas or computer monitor. It's a great opportunity to make some ongoing passive income on the side.

How does it work?

1. You send us your wedding stationery designs.
2. We love them*, and we agree to sell your designs on your behalf.
3. We include your designs in our online store for wedding stationery, along with your designer profile.
4. People love your designs**, and order them from our store.
5. We pay you generous royalties every time one of your designs sells, and handle all the customisation, printing, packaging and delivery of the stationery to the customer.

What do I need?

1. Original, unique and high-quality wedding stationery designs
2. An ABN (Australian Business Number)

Sound good?

If you're interested, we'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email at service@anoukinvitations.com for more information.

*Us loving your designs not guaranteed

**Other people loving your designs not guaranteed

10 tips for planning your wedding

Firstly, welcome to the brand new blog from the team at Anouk Invitations! We hope this will become a useful resource for everything wedding related, but particularly wedding invitations, since that's our business.

So, to kick things off, here's our top 10 list of tips when it comes time to start planning your wedding. This is based on advice we've gathered from people who have been through the process. If we missed something we'd love to hear from you in the comments below!

1. Set goals. They'll be hard to stick to and the planning may sometimes seem to spiral out of control, but if you've set clear and achievable goals from the start, it will be easier to stay the course. The last thing you want is become a "bridezilla". It's an excellent idea to set these goals with your partner so they can help you stay focussed and much less stressed. It'll also make him feel more involved in the process.
2. Have a risk management plan. Be sure to discuss with your partner any foreseeable risks, like family or friends that don't get along and discuss strategies to cope with this.
3. Open a high interest savings account for the wedding. If you do this when you start planning you'll be glad you did when the expenses start rolling in.
4. Pick a theme very early in the process. This will cut down a lot of the decisions by eliminating many of the options and will provide you with a focus. For ideas, you could check out some of our wedding stationery themes, like bluebells or orchids - these are great for coming up with colour schemes.
5. Get writing! Write a list. They are an excellent way to feel in control of your planning and help you avoid feeling overwhelmed. There is also a great sense of achievement every time you get to cross something off.
6. Keep it simple. Don't create a nightmare for yourself by considering too many options. If you find something you love and it suits your theme - stop there.
7. Don't reveal too much. When calling to reserve the function and get quotes on flowers, don't mention the word "wedding". Ask for a quote for "a function" and don't be afraid to discuss your budget with the function centre operator, they may be able to suggest areas where you can save money. Quite often avoiding the word "wedding" can save you a load of cash.
8. Chill out! Don't forget the reason you're getting married in the first place. Although the wedding day is important (and exciting), it's not the be all and end all. Brides place far too much pressure on themselves for everything to be perfect but you can't control everything. You don't want people to remember your wedding because you had a tantrum. You also don't want to do any damage to your relationship. A chilled bride is a beautiful bride.
9. R18. Don't want to invite children of your guests? Shift responsibility to the venue management. Polite wording for the bottom of your invitation may read: "By request of venue management, please no children".
10. Consider the celebrant. Are you getting married by a minister or priest? It is customary to include them in the invitation list. They usually don’t attend the reception but they appreciate the thought.