Earlier this year, Etsy put out a call for entries for their first ever “Etsy Design Awards” or “The Etsies”. I submitted my custom house portraits to the contest, and then went on with my summer. Between keeping up with commissions as they came in, and making sure I had inventory for my summer events, […]
Reflections on a year of house portraits
March marked the 12-month point from when I created my first paper house portrait. Since March of last year I’ve delivered 24 custom house portraits to art lovers in 7 different states. The commissions range from a famous church in Greece to a girlfriend’s childhood home in the Midwest, to a family’s vacation home in […]
It’s Pumpkin Craft Season!
Fall is my favorite, it has always been. I’m a sucker for back-to-school season and its emphasis on stocking up on pens and paper. I love apple and pumpkin and cinnamon any day, so it’s pretty delightful when those flavors are suddenly everywhere I look! Fall crafting is pretty great, too, because it’s such a […]
Paper House Portraits: A Story of Beginning
A little over a year ago, August 2017, some friends asked me for some ideas for a special gift they wanted to give. Their old church was closing down, and they wanted something special to give to the pastor to remember and celebrate the community and the building. I totally winged it, found paper approximately […]
Windows: A riff on Victorian-era architecture
I’ve been obsessed with houses and architecture since I was a child, always staring out the car/bus/train/plane window, paying attention to what the buildings look like where ever I go. I never actually studied architecture, though, so it just became an observational past time. When Brian and I moved to the east coast about 10 […]
Welcome to the neighborhood (of little paper houses)
I launched my little paper villages last spring, and didn’t really have a plan for them. They were an evolution of my generic little paper house design. I was selling them singly or in sets, and people seemed to really like them, and be interested in more variety of design. The first village combined a […]
Fun, Free, and made of paper!
I discovered Mr. Printables when I was collecting ideas for my Paper Fun Pinterest board. There is a TON of content on the site. They have everything from calendars in the shape of a weird accordion rabbit thing to 3-dimensional paper alphabets to decorations for every conceivable holiday. I’ve tried a few of the free […]
#100daysofpaperfun My 2017 100 Days Project
If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve likely seen me posting random paper projects for the last month or so. This random little goat “faux taxidermy” piece I created on a whim was sort of the impetus for the project: A post shared by Abigail McMurray (@yeioupaperobjects) on Mar 15, 2017 at 5:01pm PDT I […]
Wedding Invites that your guests might want to keep even after the wedding!
Some people can’t stand the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard, or the squeaky noise that styrofoam makes. Some people get aggravated when they see garbage on the ground, and some people get annoyed by poor grammar in an email from a colleague. We all have our pet-peeves, our things that people around us probably […]
A Real Party at a Big Fake Wedding
At the end of September I got to participate in a really amazing event called the Big Fake Wedding. The event is a fresh take on a bridal show built around the idea of showcasing wedding vendors doing what they do best -- putting on an amazing wedding event for a real couple. The night features a ceremony of vow renewals for a couple and then a huge party reception. The "wedding guests" are brides and grooms to be!
The event featured invitation and paper goods designers, like me, photographers, florists, clothing and jewelry providers, caterers, DJs, live bands, photographers, and videographers. Everyone together did what they do best and put on a truly amazing event!
As you may have picked up in my wedding invitations and what comes next series, there are a lot of paper goods to consider for your wedding! For the Big Fake Wedding, I designed a full invitation set, as well as guest favor boxes, dinner menus, and table numbers. It was really fun to design for the the "Autumn Harvest" theme--it happened to tie together my favorite season and some of my favorite colors, so I basically took this as an opportunity to design my dream wedding invitations.
You might be aware that most of my work is actually in designing and creating unique papercraft kits. I LOVE to make paper do unexpected things, so I took this opportunity to think outside of the box a little! When you pull the invitation out of the envelope, you see a standard pocket enclosure, with the primary invitation text adhered to the flap where you would expect. When you reach into the pocket to pull out the traditional assortment of cards that tell you how to RSVP and which hotel to stay in, you realize that they aren't cards at all! I created a garland of watercolored paper leaves that contains all of the important information, and can serve as a seasonal decoration (and reminder of the wedding), or at least a worthy commemoration of one of the most important days of your life!
