Julia and Liam Save the Dates

Julia and Liam are getting married next year January and asked me to design their digital Save the Date cards.
They knew exactly what they wanted: a romantic, elegant design with an earth colour palette. They also asked for an illustration of a willow tree to represent life, family, strong roots and growth. And continuing with the symbols, a butterfly (to represent Julia's brother) and a shamrock (to represent Liam's Irish mother) who unfortunately are no longer here but in spirit to celebrate with the bride and groom.

I tried to make the design work around the tree. The butterfly is flying around the dense leaves and the shamrock growing at the feet of the thick trunk while the text is in the shade floating beneath the leaves. A combination of 3 different fonts and an organic and relaxing colour palette just finished off the design. 

I hope you also like it...♥♥♥

Illustrated Bookmarks

So finally Friday has arrived but unfortunately I've been sick these lasts day and still not 100% percent. Hopefully I can recover soon so can enjoy this coming beautiful days...
Here are some bookmarks I've done some time ago but that I still love and use a lot. They all have printed Mocho's original designs on 300gm Curious Metal paper and finished with a cotton-silk ribbon. I hope you like them...
Wishing you a happy weekend! ♥♥♥

Save the Date Bianca and Stuart

Bianca and Stuart are getting married in March next year and they asked me to design their Wedding Stationary. Bianca has dreamt with a wedding for a long time therefore she wants everything to be like taken out from a classic story-tail, stylizing their wedding with a romantic-elegant-vintage look.
Here's a preview of their Save the Date design where I combined a cream and pearl pinks palette with calligraphy looking font-faces and elegant floral details.
I hope you also like it ♥♥♥

Crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies

Were did the sunny days go? Suddenly winter is back and together with it a craving for sweets and chocolate that just make me desperate... So what to do this weekend when you can't go hiking or have sundowners at the beach? 

Chill at home, watch as many dvd's as you can, drink wine and just relax. But if you are more of a doer, baking is my answer... 

I actually haven't baked in a very long time, I think that it must have to do with the fact that the oven of my old house wasn't really good for baking. (awesome for pizzas thought) I tried to do once banana bread but it was completely a flop and since then my baking days were forgotten. Until today that I realized I no longer have excuses as my new oven works like a charm... So being really out of practice, decided to ask my friend Emma from Munch food and cakes for a simple but delicious recipe that I could do this weekend. 

Emma not only got engaged recently but also started her own catering company a few months ago focusing mainly on small functions. So if you are organizing a dinner or tea party but feeling lazy to cook, you know what to do...- of course your guests don't need to find out that everything was home-made not exactly in your kitchen ;)

So anyway, here's the recipe she sent me: Crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies.... as she describes it: authentic american style chocolate cookies and not what passes as a chocolate chip cookie in South Africa.

Hope you also give it a try and have a great weekend!!! 

Crispy chewy chocolate chip cookies by Emma from Munch food and cakes

"It’s difficult to know how many cookies this recipe makes, since I eat so much of the raw dough when I make them (salmonella be damned). And also so many of the warm cookies, before I even have time to count. More than 24, definitely. Probably closer to 36."

You will need:

2 c cake flour

½ t baking soda

1 t salt

¾ c butter, melted

1 c packed treacle sugar

½ c white sugar

1 tb vanilla

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 c dark chocolate chunks (I use chopped dark chocolate, usually Bourneville)

1 cup chopped nuts of your choice - optional

Sift together the flour, soda, and salt. In another bowl, whisk the melted butter and sugars. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla and whisk until light. Add sifted ingredients and blend, then add chocolate chips, and nuts if using, and blend. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper and drop tablespoonfuls of dough 3 in apart. (At this point, I like to sprinkle each cookie with a generous pinch of Maldon salt. I like the salt with the sweet, but maybe I just need all the salt to offset – slightly – the massive amounts of sugar I consume when I bake these cookies)

Bake at 165 C for 10-12 minutes, and remove from the cookie sheet to a cooling rack.

If you want to check more recipes from Emma or order some delicacies, check out her website here.

New little books

Here are some of the new little books I've made. I think the binding is coming better and better every time and soon they will be out for sale. So stay tune because soon one of this 100% made with love little note-books could be yours.  ♥♥♥

Elegant Save the Date

Natacha and Philip are having a very traditional elegant wedding and they wanted to reflect this on the Save the Dates. They first thought on sending a digital card and only printing a few ones for the elderly. But once they saw the printed version, they decided to do printed Save the Dates for everyone. ♥
For this design I used the idea of old medieval letters look but adapted to contemporary times. The colours chosen where ivory and soft silver-grey. I used a mix of two typefaces: one curly and very elegant for the names  combined with a clean and sober font for the body information. The card is finished with pattern border details and the envelope wax sealed in bordeaux with the initials of the bride and groom which finishes off the elegant look and style.
I hope you like... ♥♥♥

Beautiful World

I feel so lucky to live in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Is true that there's nothing like home and even more when you live in such a magical place...
On Saturday we went for a hike guided by my beloved friend Whitney... Darren, Cody and Arri (who was difficult to convince) also joined us and we all had an amazing time. We walked through different landscapes, from jungle looking paths with waterfalls to dry Cape fynbos surfaces. It was such an soul-uplifting-amazing day! I feel completely recharged and happy!!!
Sometimes we get lost in work, duties and things that just make us loose our track... Is always nice having a day with nature and connect with ourselves again... I ♥ my friends!!! I ♥ Cape Town!!!
Wishing you a beautiful week!

Loeries Awards

I've realized that all I've been posting is mainly graphic design work I've done but that's not all I like doing: I love doing motion graphics too. Here's a little preview video of the work we did with Inka and Noel from IIIEIIIE for the South African Loerie-Awards ceremony night last year.
I was in charge of all the content material and the girls edited it beautifully for the ceremony night. Almost everything was handmade with papers, wood blocks and all sort of materials. We shot most of it in stop frame and combined that with illustrations and post in After Effects.
This is just a preview video I edited with some of the content for the ceremony night. The song I used to edit it is Animal from Miike Snow. Decided to use it because I listened to this album once and over again during those long nights cutting, illustrating and shooting everything for the presentation. I hope you like!!!