Not Your Everyday Wedding Card...

Here I am on a Sunday again. :)  Due to some custom projects I've been working on lately, my posting schedule is still a bit hit-or-miss, but I'll soon to be back to my Mon-Wed-Fri schedule.

Today I'm sharing a wedding card I was asked to make for a friend. Her daughter is getting married soon, and she asked me to come up with something "different", something "shabby/cottage-y," incorporating lots of gems, the wedding colors (coral/navy) and flowers (coral daisies), and a spiritual message.  So I pondered for a bit, and came up with the idea of a card that opens to a shadowbox inside...and then I got to work making it happen.  I first had to come up with a pattern for the pieces I needed, and to be honest, that went through a couple iterations before I came up with the exact dimensions I needed to make sure everything fit together in the end product. But it all worked perfectly, and now I have my friend's okay to show it off!  :)

So pull up a comfy chair, grab a cup of your favorite beverage, and sit a spell, because I have lots of pictures to share with you today of a one-of-a-kind wedding card. I'm going to explain a bit of my process as I went along, but if you're not interested in that part, just skip along merrily looking at the pics.

Here's the front of the "card"...the lacy die-cut border adds another 1/2" to all three sides. You'll note there's no sentiment on the front...you'll see as we go along that it was unnecessary to put one here.

Here's a view from the side.  There's a 1" spine to accommodate both the shadowbox on the inside, and the embellishments I put on the outside edges of the shadowbox (you'll see those farther down the post).  The base of the card is cream, and it's topped with navy cardstock, then a coral dotted cardstock.  All these layers make it a nice, strong "book cover" base...

Here are some detail/dimensional photos of the front...there are lots of layers here. There's an additional layer of cream cardstock on the front, between the navy and coral. Then there's a layer of navy floral heavyweight paper that is beneath the layer of cream and coral damask papers, that are die cut to allow a die cut lattice display the navy floral beneath. (Phew! Got all that?  :) )

Now on to the fun part...decorating the front and weaving the embellishments in and out of the lattice layer in the center. Try as I might, I just could not find any coral daisies, the main wedding flower. So I picked up some white daisies from the local craft store, pulled the layers apart, and colored the petals with a Pale Peach Marvy LePlume II pen.  For the centers, I pulled a large round brad from my stash, dyed some white Flower Soft to a bright yellow, and glued that to the top of the brad.  After reassembling the flower with the brad in the center, I circled the center with tiny pearls.

The jeweled stick pin started with a Maya Road heart pin, with silver and gem spacers and white pearls added...

Die cut flourishes in navy and cream, and die cut leafy branches, form the base for lots of tiny white and small coral flowers, navy ribbon bows, and lots of pearls and clear crystals scattered about. Here's the center of the front...

And the lower right corner...

And on the upper left corner, more branches, and pearl flourishes wound on and under the lattice layer...

Moving on to the inside, here's a view of the inside shadowbox.  The depth of the shadowbox is 3/4" (remember the 1" spine on the outside pieces?).  By making the depth of the inside box 3/4", it left room for embellishments around the outside of the shadowbox, and still allowed the card front to lay flat when closed.

(I specifically designed the shadowbox card to stand upright like a standard card, and didn't want to have to use any type of closure on the side, like a ribbon tie or band.  I wanted the card to be able to be displayed so the front and the inside could both be visible while the card stood upright without anything dangling from the sides.)

The large daisy was put in the lower right corner for a couple reasons...one, because it offsets the daisy in the lower left corner on the front of the card, and two, because it wouldn't get in the way of the spine when the card is closed.  

The fun part about decorating the shadowbox was being able to put embellishments both on the outside edge, and on the inside of the box, to give it lots of dimensional interest.  Here, the daisy, ribbon bow, and a couple of the leafy branches and tiny flowers are adhered to the outside layer.  The white doily piece and the cheesecloth are also adhered to the top/outside layer of the shadowbox, but glued to the *underside* of the cutout...

In the center, the flourish is also glued to the underside of the outside edge, and pearls and tiny flowers are glued to the distressed navy blue cardstock paper that's the background for the shadowbox...

Here's what it looks like under the large daisy...looking in from the top of the card.  The orange flowers are adhered to the background of the shadowbox. You might not see all of them looking straight on when looking at the card, but you do see parts of  them "peeking through" and adding some color beneath the white doily and cheesecloth above the large daisy...

This is the flourish to the left of the large daisy...and the flowers and vines adhered to the shadowbox base beneath the flourish in the lower left corner of the shadowbox...

Up in the right corner, just a few little flowers and leaves to accent the beginning of the verse layer...

Here's a closeup of the verse.  I found a verse online, and my friend changed a few words, then I changed a few words, and after a few back and forth emails of "what about this?" we ended up with a verse she really liked... 

After all this, you might be thinking..."where do you SIGN the card?"  Never fear, I thought of that, too.  As I said, I designed the card so that it could stand upright and show both the front and inside. But that would mean Mom and Dad's personal message to the bride and groom would be visible.  So I made a small envelope from patterned vellum, and die cut a "message card" where my friend and her husband could enclose their private message, and attached it inside the front cover.  The little envelope is held closed with a small BasicGrey magnet beneath the tiny orange flower.  When the front is closed, that little flower falls into the empty space over the verse, so it doesn't interfere with the embellishments around the verse...

And now, the final question...how to present the card?  It won't fit in an envelope - it needed some type of box. Several possible solutions came to mind, but I had to remember that I needed to mail this to my friend without it costing her a fortune in shipping costs, so decorating a wooden box seemed a bit excessive. Some type of decorated, lightweight box was in order.  It took some hunting, but I finally found a box that had two 5x7 wooden frames in it...and the box itself was still in pristine condition....score!  It had a cutout on the front of the box...so I had to think about how to treat that.  In the end, I covered a few of the sides with the same coral cardstock I had used on the shadowbox card, die cut some doilies with the same edge as the lace edge on the front of the card, and diecut a piece of the same lattice as on the card for the cutout...and now there was a matching gift box to present the card in...

Supplies:

Patterned papers:   Paper Loft Well-Worn (navy blue floral and distressed  navy solid inside shadowbox);  

Bo Bunny Coral Dot;   Prima Almanac collection (coral damask)

Dies:   Spellbinders Grateful Lattice, Grand Labels Four, Decorative Labels Eight;   Sizzix Flowers Branches & Leaves;   My Favorite Things Faux Crochet Border and Decorative Doilies Duo;   Memory Box Elegant Scrollwork

Punch:   Martha Stewart 3-in-1 Hydrangea

Sweetheart Blossoms:   Wild Orchid Crafts          Daisies, fabric flowers, lace, ribbons:   local craft store

Pearls and crystals:   Recollections and K&Company          Sentiment stamps:   Fiskars

Miscellaneous:   Polar White Flower Soft, cheesecloth, patterned vellum, Wilton doily, handcrafted stick pin

It's not often I have this long a post, but every now and then it's fun to have a larger picture show - I hope I haven't left you on photo-overload. :)

Thanks so much for visiting today...I'll be back in a couple days with another Lili of the Valley card for you to see!