My yearly Christmas cards! Unfortunately, my poor Epson printer broke and had to be sent away (a replacement took a few weeks to come) which meant I did not have a printer to make the Christmas cards. I decided to think of something that would utilise my circuit cutter (craft/cutting machine). I decided on a design and drew it up in Affinity Designer. The white 210g matt card is cut, backed with green metallic card. I then cut red vinyl circles which were placed on top of the card to create the holly effect.

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The content below showcases a beautiful and cohesive setup for our wedding reception, with a nice combination of purple and grey colours. The use of the same flowers and illustrations as on the wedding invite helps tie everything together. We chose the colours because I love purple and Iain loves grey and both colours work well together. The addition of the custom-made Lego cake topper adds a personal and fun touch to the celebration. (I used set 40165 and series 7 mini figure bag pipper). I have used a combination of foamex, matt 210g paper and vinyl to create the below items:

• (1) 1x A1 Welcome sign A1 (a combination of matt paper and vinyl).
• (2) 2x A4 Welcome signs for Bar
• (3) 10x A5 Wedding Schedule
• (4) 9x A6 food and cake options mounted on foamex
• (5) 20cm x1 (squared) Wedding card box
• (6) A5 x1 Guest book
• (7) 1x A1 Mr & Mrs Dallas sign
• (8) 3x A1 floral boards for the windows
• (9) 120x 5x14cm sweetie bag/stickers

To welcome a new little one into the world, I used a photo of her feet to personalize this card, it’s drawn in Procreate, and then silver vinyl is added to as a sparkle. I really like how this came out, very similar to the idea I had sketched out.

Drawn in Procreate on the iPad finished in Affinity Designer on the Mac, sparkly silver vinyl added, printed out on koala A4 Matt card 210gsm folds to an A5 to finish.

In September 2023 (23.09.23) Iain finally proposed (after a year of pestering) I didn’t want to wait any longer and had lots of ideas. I picked the flowers for my bouquet for the wedding and then drew them out as I wanted everything to tie in. The flowers were drawn as separate elements that I could then move about depending on what they were going on (to brand each stationery item). I was thinking of the bigger picture; invites, A1 welcome board, card box, cards for food, A5 table schedules, A4 welcome boards and A1 displays for the windows.

The flowers are drawn in Affinity Designer on the iPad with partial work on the Mac for the finishing touches. This allowed me to use the Apple pencil to draw (much like Procreate). The advantage of using Designer over Procreate is that it is vectorized (not pixels). The vectors would then be scaled to any size which allowed them to be applied to all colateral.

For a girl who likes green and is turning 30 what better way to celebrate than a blingy number card, drawn in Procreate then set up to cut in design space and an extra 5mm bleed to create the gold cut shape and all stuck together with 5mm foam.

Drawn in Procreate on the iPad finished in Affinity Designer /design space on the Mac, Sparkley gold vinyl stuck to card and stuck with sticky fixers, printed out on an A3 Gloss card 260gsm Koala matt folds to a square around 24cm to finish.

I had an idea of cut-out butterflies, I cut one butterfly out then scanned it in duplicated it to make a butterfly collage, and cut out gold vinyl for the top to create a sparkle.

Created in Affinity Designer on the Mac, Font is created then cut on the Cricut, printed out on an A4 Matt card 210gsm folds to an A5 to finish and gold vinyl is applied to the top.

Continued to play with my printer and cutter to create a t-shirt of Mia (Nic’s dog) and I drew her (my) fav animal a panda for her birthday card. I wanted the panda to look like it was a colour pen drawing and procreates extensive brush choice always comes through. I also made up a box and wrapping paper via Epson Creative Print Centre.

Drawn in Procreate on the iPad finished in Affinity Designer on the Mac, Fun font treatment (pop art), printed out on an A4 Gloss card 260gsm folds to an A5 to finish. The Tshirt is done on Koala transfer paper and finished with gold vinyl (heat melt).

Totally obsessed with my new Cricut cutter! The first thing I did was order t-shirts (to put stuff on), inkjet transfer paper, and glitter vinyl. The Koala Dark transfer paper came out awesome it works with inkjet/pigment ink so my Epson is perfect. I can’t believe how strong the color and image came out especially as the baby goat is white. The glitter heat vinyl was also very cool but a wee bit harder to work with, I love the end result. The boxes are from Epson Creative Print which allows you to pick a print to go with the template.

For my other uncle, I decided to go for an oriental bird as he spends half his year in Asia so I wanted to tie in with that. I saw an image of a beautiful purple Japanese bird and thought a pen drawing would work well for the front of this card as I wanted it to be bold and bright. It is framed in red and backed in a off-mint colour to tie everything together.

Drawn in Procreate on the iPad finished in Affinity Designer on the Mac, bold print, printed out on an A4 Matt card 210gsm folds to an A5 to finish.