A Party Under The Stars

So as the D-day approaches, I find myself being suitably busy. Clothes, venue, décor, catering etc etc for two occasions, had to be planned. And whew God! It’s over.

But then the invite for the party that we are hosting after our marriage, had to be done. Since this is an offbeat marriage and only our select friends were to be invited, I didn’t want the traditional wedding invites printed. I wanted to make the cards myself. Well, it was easy to say….but surprisingly it all just fell into place the way I wanted.

I had to first think of the theme of our party. And since it was to be in one of the famous addresses in the city, I didn’t have much to do but to milk the setting for what it’s worth. So, ‘party under the stars’ was born.

That meant I needed a ‘star’ theme. Lots of ideas swept over me. At last I settled for a bright starry invite. It was not a dark, mysterious night party card; more so it was a bright, cheery starry card. Yeah…I know you must be shaking your head saying ‘weird’. But hey it is my party! (I know I sound like a spoilt child) where as the groom in question, S, also had given his consent to this idea. Whew. Thank god. Coz without his steadying hand, I think I’d probably be still going around trying to figure ‘that’ card.

I finalized the words for the card, decided the font and toyed around a lot with the kind of clip art I wanted to put on the paper. Oh! the paper. Darn. I had to decide the kind of paper I wanted my invite to be printed on. But then opportunity presented itself in the form a trip to Pondicherry. (I have posted about it in the previous blog). S and I chanced upon a store selling lovely handmade papers, which is one of the popular industries in Pondi. So we bought a few bundles and some hand made paper covers to put our invite into. It was all so…I don’t know…ethnic? I just felt so sure that this was what I wanted as my invite.

And instead of pasting some clip art of abstract stars on the invite, we suddenly got the idea of pasting a 3D star on the paper. The hunt was on to get these and where did I find them? In a dusty lane in Pursawalkam, in a tiny shop crammed with all kinds of stuff used for arts and crafts. There were crafty items of all shapes and sizes – shiny buttons, wooden buttons, round/disc shaped/ tiny bubble shaped buttons or crystals or chamkis, of all colours. It was dazzling, even though they were winking trhough dusty plastic bottles. Well….I am drifting away. Let me get back to the task at hand.

I got these little lovely stars with fat stomachs (I know, I know, more weird. It’s the wedding I guess) and I had to have them! So with industrial glue to paste them on to the papers, S and I left the place.

So children, before we start our project, let’s have a look at the items needed.

That picture my friends is courtesy my new Canon SX130IS Powershot. It is such a pleasure taking snaps with a good camera. In fact my next post is going to be a showcase of all the picture projects I have taken on. Okay…Ok now to the work at hand.

The papers you see in the picture were actually A4 size sheets, which I had cut to this size in a local printing shop, as I wanted it to resemble cards. Of course, the pot pourri is purely for making the picture look er…decorative ;). That glue that you see, is real good. The stars were stuck on the paper in seconds and didn’t look like their relationship with the paper would end anytime soon. Real good glue.

But before we could start off, we had to print the words onto the paper. After some wild goose chase, S andI managed to get the words aligned and printed. Here it is.

Once that was done, it was time to get the elves in place. P and S. You can see P’s bent head, as she works diligently - sticking the stars with precision, while I played photographer.

Actually I was taking a break from all that creativity. It's not easy trying to stick the stars in a ahem...random artistic fashion (Now I know how much work goes into the carefully messed hairdo that celebrities sport). No, really, it's not easy. Why do you think P has wisely chosen to stick them?!