Felt making!

Why not get creative and make something gorgeous while spending a great day with friends & family on our vintage inspired craft workshop days. You’ll get a complementary glass of bubbly and lunch is just £10 each (including a delicious afternoon tea and cake!)

 ..or why not bring a picnic!

Emma has been running vintage craft workshops at her studio in Nottingham and has now come together with Hummingbird to offer these wonderful ‘vintage crafty’ hen parties for you and your friends.

Creative sewing…

The parties are from 10am to 4pm and Emma will inspire you with lots of ideas, guidance and all the equipment you need to create a gorgeous masterpiece!

Embellished & embroidered vessels

How about something for your wedding such as a memory book? Or learn a new skill with your hens and have something beautiful to take home to remember the day!

Free machine embroidery

Emma has lots of courses to choose from; memory and keepsake books, creative sewing, free machine embroidery, embellished & embroidered vessels and (her favourite) felt making!

Keepsake books

For more information and to a get a sneaky peek at Emma’s course guide, visit emmalearoyddesign.co.uk or contact Emma at emmalearoyddesign@hotmail.co.uk or on 07970 121955.

Enjoy!

Yasmin le Bon was quoted as saying..

‘NOTHING GIVES ME MORE JOY.. than finding a beautiful hand-painted teacup and saucer.  My husband Simon is obsessed with making traditional tea, and I like having tea parties with lots of different cups.’

After collecting some beautiful bone china tea cups for our vintage style wedding I just had to do something gorgeous with all my favs! So some have been turned into candles (the most perfect little gifts) and others are holding some of my treasured vintage jewellery on my dressing table.

This then got me to thinking about all the other beautiful creative ideas that artists had been inspired to do with teacups and Jennifer Collier and her vintage paper teacups came to mind. These stunning pieces of artwork are simply amazing.

Jennifer talks a little about her process on her website:

‘My practice focuses on creating work from paper; by bonding, waxing, trapping and stitching I produce unusual paper ‘fabrics’, which are used to explore the ‘remaking’ of household objects. The papers are treated as if cloth, with the main technique employed being stitch; a contemporary twist on traditional textiles.’

The end result, I’m sure you’ll agree, is amazing.

The HB girls have decided to have a tea party next year in aid of our favourite charity, it’s also a wonderful way of having a traditional afternoon tea and getting the teacup collection out of storage (we’ll keep you posted!)

You can find out more about Jennifer Collier at jennifercollier.co.uk

Have you been swept off your feet ?

Happy Valentines Day & Congratulations to everyone who’s become engaged today

from all of us in the Hummingbird Studio!

X

 51 Amazing Ideas for your Wedding

launched early this morning  as an ebook on Amazon.

 Hummingbird Cards were lucky enough to be asked to contribute & George the ‘Wedding Fairy’ wrote a lovely feature on us – here’s just a little part of it:

‘Drift off into stationery heaven with this dreamy portfolio of absolutely everything you will ever need to set the right tone for your big day celebrations. The team at www.hummingbirdcards.co.uk have created a collection of wedding day stationery that will truly captivate and excite your guests from the moment their invite arrives on the doorstep. For me, this stunning range conjures up a true mix of fairytale and romance which ultimately, is the whole point of a wedding invite that so many other stationers miss completely?! Beyond the initial RSVP, everything is covered from the orders of service to table plans, allowing you to de-stress on this often most neglected yet essential part of wedding day planning. On top of all this, the British design work behind these little stunners is second to none. Fly the flag people!’

Find all his other 50 gorgeous wedding ideas on Amazon

Thank you George!

x

We get asked to do so many different ideas for invitations so when we were approached to create a Christening Invite with a bespoke quote we just adored the idea as soon as we saw it!

‘So let it out and let it in, Hey Jude, begin’

(The Beatles, 1968)

For of course, Baby Jude! How lucky is he and he’s got a pretty amazing name too!

Hot off the press, the invites arrived in the studio today & we immediately knew we just had to give you a’ sneak peek’ at these wonderfully unique invitations.

So here’s the thing – whatever your idea and how ever mad it may seem, there’s nothing more personal & individual than creating your own ideas. So if you have a quote that means something special why not let us create Personalised Wedding invitations, Christening, Birth announcement or Anniversary cards just for you.

Just get in touch and we can make it happen!

As soon as we’d decided to hold our wedding reception at home we knew we wanted a garden party theme for the day. This started with our invitations & was carried through the day from our choice of a marquee to all the vintage crockery I had been madly collecting.

Here’s a few tips for creating a real garden party themed wedding:

- Jam jars! I used jam jars as vases for the table flowers. My Mum & her friends were collecting them in the months before the wedding & it was such an easy way to bring a  garden feel to the tables. By doing it ourselves we saved a fortune! Each jar was then tied with a raffia bow. With every table having different jars and flowers they all looked so pretty & individual.

- Country flowers. Getting married in September limited the choice of flowers I could use a little but I still tried to pick flowers with a country garden feel to them.

- Tea cups! I love vintage crockery & using it for our wedding was a perfect excuse to invest in just a few more beautiful vintage tea cups & tea plates. Everybody got one in their place setting which (aside from being useful when it came for tea time!) really made the celebration feel like one big afternoon tea party.

- Vintage Cake Stands! Lots of them in old glass and china for our table of delectable & scrumptious delights. We wanted to create the look of an old fashioned tea table stacked with pastel coloured Macaroons, Chocolate Profiter rolls, Ginger snaps, cup cakes & mini Creme Brulle.

Next – organising where everybody is going to sit.

This is rarely a simple or easy task. Everybody from family & friends are going to want to give their opinion on where they & everyone else should be sitting! There isn’t really a quick fix solution to sorting out your table plan. In the end you & your partner just have to sit down together with a large piece of paper & go for it. You’ll never please everyone!

One thing which we’ve found a lot of people like to do is to use table names instead of numbers.

I did this for my wedding & it worked really well. It has the advantage of making the day just that little more personal.

Deciding what to use as table names can be really fun too. We see so many different names in the Hummingbird Studio – everything from places couples have been on holiday together to all the streets they have lived on. Emily‘s sister even used sweeties (accompanied by a large bowl of the corresponding sweet in the middle of each table!)

Dan & I chose to use the names of all our Grandparents. This was particularly special for us because none of them are still with us & it was a way for us to still include them in our special day.

For a table plan we decided to use a ‘table plan tree.’ The willow branches worked really well with the garden party theme of our wedding & we were able to turn it into a memory tree later on in the evening when the tables had been cleared. It was lovely for our guests to be able to leave us messages.

All of the photographs in this post were taken by the very talented Gill Taylor. You can contact her via her website.

]]> http://www.hummingbirdcards.co.uk/blog/2012/01/the-wedding-diary-table-names/feed/ 0 http://www.hummingbirdcards.co.uk/blog/2011/12/christmas-wishes-from-hummingbird-x/ http://www.hummingbirdcards.co.uk/blog/2011/12/christmas-wishes-from-hummingbird-x/#comments Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:26:15 +0000 Sally-Ann http://www.hummingbirdcards.co.uk/blog/?p=936

‘Vera Ellen in White Christmas’

We’re leaping into the New Year with lots of new & exciting ideas we can’t wait to tell you about.

Just to let you all know, the Studio closes today & will reopen on Tuesday 3rd January 2012.

The HB girls are going to take some well deserved time out to recharge the batteries & the studio pup is hoping to get a few long walks!

Please still send us any emails or messages & we’ll get back to you in the New Year.

Have a great one!

From all at Hummingbird x

Writing your Order of Service can be a pretty daunting task.

If you’re having a religious wedding service then it can be a little easier with guidance from the person conducting the service but it can still take a lot of drafting & re-writing!

We married at a local church which was special to my family. The Reverend talked through which service we would be using & suggested some bible readings we might like to use. This gave us the basis of our Order of Service which was really useful, from there though we added to it & made it our own.

Here’s a few tips which might make things easier if you’re in the process of  writing your Order of Service:

- Don’t be afraid to be a little different with your readings! Although 1 Corinthians 13 is a beautiful bible reading it is often used! We chose a passage from Song of Soloman instead & it was lovely that people didn’t necessarily know it too well beforehand.

- Why not put in a quote or passage at the beginning or the end? We had a quote from John Lennon that is special to both of us.

- Generally, secular wedding services are shorter than religious ones & there is much less that needs to go in to your Order of Service. With non religious weddings we often get people choosing to have an Order of the Day instead. This allows you to put in lots more information – the running order of the day, which rooms are being used etc.

- A really lovely touch is to put a place for ‘thank yous’ in your Order of Service. You could thank everyone for joining you on your special day & take the time to list the members of your wedding party. It’s also nice to do this so people can see who everybody is.

- Don’t try to put too much in your Order of Service. You don’t need the words of the marriage service or all the wording that the person conducting the service will use. It’s nice to keep some things as a surprise for your guests!

Hope this helps a little! We can guide you through the process of creating your Order of Service here at Hummingbird & we’re always happy to provide your with samples to give you a little inspiration.

All of the photographs in this post were taken by the very talented Gill Taylor. You can contact her via her website.

We’re really delighted to have won the ‘Special Touch‘ category for the East Midlands region in the 2012 Wedding Industry Awards!

This award ‘recognises & rewards excellence in wedding suppliers across 19 categories, both regionally & nationally.’ This means a lot to us here at Hummingbird, not only because this award is given by those in the wedding industry but also because votes were only allowed from couples whose stationery we have made. This means that it’s your feedback & votes which have helped to win us this award, this makes us twice as grateful! Thank you!

As winner of the East Midlands ‘Special Touch’ award we now go forward as a nominee for the National ‘Special Touch’ category. This is decided by a panel of judges, all of whom are experts in their respective wedding industry fields.

The National awards are announced on Wednesday 18th January 2012. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!