Laura Mallaghan Illustration

 Helloooo! What I’ve done this month? Well, I have been painting a card for the long-standing loveable couple, who celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Guess what, this couple is my aunt and uncle! I remembered their summery June wedding in 2003, and I was their bridesmaid. I was 10, I remembered the colour of the dress I wore, the bridesmaid bouquets, my aunt’s tropical bouquet and her creamy satin dress, the lovely weather on their special day! The meanings of the swan, flowers and colour I’ve painted on this wedding anniversary, with the mute swan they represents together forever, strong bond and family. As well as they’re very elegant bird, especially they can makes a heart shaped with the long neck. There are two flowers surrounded the swans, the little purple flower is aster, the reason to use this flower is because in modern day for a bouquet, also became the traditional bouquet, a gift for someone’s 20th wedding anniversary. Even though there a variety of colours aste...

It's the first weekend of November, the leaves are starting to change colours quite quick as well as starting to fall off the tree a lot, and the temperature went colder. Getting close to winter! In the last week of October, my next-door neighbour has got married! A few weeks before their big day, they have asked to look after their cats while they're away for a few days, agreed to do this for them, that's what nice neighbour do, hehehe. Throughout weeks, I thought I should do a handmade wedding greeting card using the painting as my original artwork, quite like a personal handmade. To use the bird that represents being together for life, I chose the swan as they're, of course, elegant and make a soft look on the card. Using white on the light background was quite difficult, even though I was using a cream card. I don't want to use too much white as it will make it look too heavy, adding water ended up too washy, hence I have been experimenting for quite a while. In...

Galentine's Day may not be an official day but got to spread your love to your favourite ladies. What I gave to my special No'1 gal, my best friend Cheryl, a cute handmade greeting card of the female blackbird and female chaffinch (that represent us by sizes, I'm tiny and my bestie is quite tall, hehe).  Card size in 10.16cm by 15.24, painted in watercolour, handwritten "Happy Galentine's Day" with V crossed by G, in red. I posted to her house on the day, she got the card after work, she loved it and her comment on this 'it's so sweet'. LOVE YOUR GALS. 💖

On the fourth research seminar as a small group we selected some examples of handmade cards. We thought this genre, handmade, was rather easy to find, however, from finding, we struggled to collect many brand kind of handmade cards. Other than that, I have quite an unusual collection obsession of birthday and Christmas cards, as my memories collection. So then I searched through them hoping to find some handmade and research the brand or shop that may be a handmade business or collection section of handmade. After I found some handmade cards, I tracked down four brands. Another brand that I thought of are creative shop, which includes a majority of handmade cards. The first shop brand, Paperchase. I noticed there are some pop up cards, hand printings, layering and collages, cut out/laser-cut style and 3D tags stick on. I thought Paperchase is a popular shop selling collections of handmade cards. These cards cost very slightly more than affordable card shop companies, certainly i...