This Saturday, Paul and I were at the wedding of a wonderful couple who are both good friends and colleagues of Paul’s. It was a beautiful, heart warming, romantic, and very fun wedding celebration. Definitely very inspiring for us bride and groom to be. And of course, we took lots of notes. ;-)

The setting of the ceremony, the style of the wedding party, the very environmentally friendly decor, and the entirety of the atmosphere all strongly reflected their personalities and their amazing creativity.

The photo above shows part of the invitation and is a glimpse into their unique style and theme. In lieu of the traditional guest book, they enclosed a piece of cloth for guests to create “prayer flags.”

“The flags do not carry prayers to “gods’… prayers and mantras will be blown by the wind to spread goodwill and compassion into all pervading space… Please place your well wishes on the cloth we’ve enclosed. Feel free to get as artistic as you want… don’t be afraid to bust out the glue, glitter… or anything else you have lying around… Part of what makes this what is is, is the fun you have while making it.”

Ours was indeed very fun to make.

There is not a more fitting blessing and prayer that we could think of for such a loving couple than the Chinese character for “Double Happiness.” It is a blessing always prominent in Chinese weddings. The symbol consists of two individual characters that each mean “happy.” This notion of the joining of two happy individuals to produce “double happiness” is symbolic of love, unity, and great lasting joy. If you look closely, there is even a visual resemblance of two people (wearing hats) holding hands.

I covered the entire cloth with fabric paint, and backed it with red velvet as red is symbolic for good luck in the Chinese culture.

Coming soon… as soon as I can get some photos that Paul took of me while I was painting, I will post step by step instructions. I’m working on retracing my steps and breaking it down so that anyone can reproduce such a painting.

This is a portion of a montage I just created in Photoshop using several of my photographs and drawings.

It has been such a long time since I’ve had either the time or the energy to do what I enjoyed so much. I dug out my little art bin, went to A.C. Moore to take advantage of their 50% off coupon and sales and restocked on a few basic necessities such as PrismaColor color pencils, good pencil sharpener, kneeding eraser, and graphite pencils for sketching. I’d given away much of my supplies to brother, niece, etc. over the years who were starting foundation art classes.

It feels wonderful to be drawing again.

I just started this color pencil drawing of an apsara, a Cambodian celestial dancer. I find apsaras very fascinating because they are icons of beauty in the Cambodian culture.

The last thing that I’d drawn till now is this oil pastel from February — a petal from the beautiful two dozen roses that Paul had given me on Valentines Day. Before this, I had not really drawn anything in … probably seven years.