Recently I had the pleasure of working with Courtney at Detroit Design Co. on place cards for a 30th Anniversary gala, and I am so excited to share the design and process with you! They wanted to have a leaf at each place setting that said “30th Anniversary” as well as some special place cards for certain guests. When I found out that there were 500 of these leaves to be done, I was a little nervous since I had just had baby Otto, but turns out they were so much fun to create!
First I had to decide which pen to use. They wanted gold ink, and there are a variety of choices out there. Ultimately I chose Pentouch in Gold. It had a nice shine and stuck nicely to the leaves meaning I didn’t have to do a second coat. I also tried the Sharpie paint pen in gold and the Decocolor in gold, but ultimately found that the Pentouch worked best.
As Courtney is a florist, she supplied the leaves and was kind enough to wipe them down for me in advance, saving tons of time! Wiping them down is important so that dirt doesn’t drag your ink. Also, since they were going on the napkin at the place setting we wanted them to be as clean as possible. The biggest concern with writing on 500 leaves is that you have to work quickly and close to the event date because you don’t want your leaves to wilt or brown. Luckily my basement studio keeps pretty cool and we didn’t have any issues!
Here are some photos of them in process:
And here are some photos of them on the tables at the event:
I think that they turned out great and were a unique touch for this event! I’d love to hear what you think or if you have any questions about writing on unique materials such as leaves!
xx
Meg