Late last year, my friends Andrew and Katie asked me to illustrate their wedding invitation. The imagery was to be in soft woodland tones, as above, but they had ambitious plans: a three-layer popup card with a woodland scene.
Here are Andrew’s notes from a meeting at the Pancake Manor.
I then did placement pencil sketches, so that Andrew could print them out and make sure they all fit together as he envisaged (since I, having only admiration for Andrew and Katie but a strong sense of self-preservation, was only doing the art, not the construction!).
The illustration, as you can see, was in three separate layers, each paler than the last to add a hint of atmospheric perspective. The layers would only be 1cm apart, and I didn’t want the layers to fight with each other. I then inked and scanned in the final drawings and coloured them in Photoshop.
I provided the finished art to Andrew and Katie, together with a selection of spare deer, leaves, twigs etc for additional ornaments.
The designs were printed double-sided and cut out by laser.
And glued together by hand (all construction photos are courtesy of Andrew and Katie).
Andrew put the frame together with the spare leaf matter I had drawn.
And here is the final, three-layer pop-up invitation (these photos are from the wedding photographers, Trent & Jessie Rouillon).
They also printed a giant simplified version of the frame to act as a set for the wedding, and squirrels and deer lurk in the background of wedding photos.
Photo by Trent & Jessie Rouillon
It was a beautiful wedding, and they were a joy to work with – it was tremendous fun to illustrate a project with such clear ideas of construction and dimensions but also with the freedom Katie and Andrew felt to adapt images to many uses – there are even life-size deer and squirrels lurking in the background of wedding photos!
And here they are striking the same pose as on the invitation, although I’m guessing Katie’s wearing heels here, because I remember we had to rework the invitation a couple times to get the relative heights correct!
Photo by Trent & Jessie Rouillon
Andrew and Katie have very kindly agreed to let me put some of those individual elements up as designs on Redbubble.
The images above will take you to the current “fairytale” collection. The individual pages are: Squirrels, Woodland, Flowers, Deer, Hedgehogs (that one is stickers only).
Kathleen Jennings 
This is probably the best wedding invite and arch combination ever seen!
Thank you!
That is so beautiful and awesome and clever and cool.
Thank you Tansy!
I love this so much! Your gorgeous art suits the design idea perfectly.
Thank you Marianne!
This is incredible. What a gorgeous theme to carry throughout – and so very well done!
Thank you so much! I loved how they were able to just run with it.
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