Author: BogusRed

Wedding – Telescope centerpiece

Posted on by BogusRed

The very first item you receive in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is the Telescope.

I thought it was a pretty cute item and a fairly easy one to create. First I found a sturdy roll, similar to a paper towel roll, to use as a base. I then covered it with craft foam and added more craft foam to create the edge details (yellow areas). I painted it with liquitex acrylic paints and glued on a few rhinestones. I also covered the red areas with a red glitter glue just to give it some more interest.

Originally, I made the lenses a clear plastic that you could see through. But somehow it just didn’t look right without that little bit of blue from the original artwork. So I covered the plastic with another piece of craft foam and painted it bright blue.

telescope photo montage

 

Wedding – Favors part 2

Posted on by BogusRed

favors with escort card

In my last post about wedding favors, I mentioned I purchased a set of small clear bottles to use as potion bottle favors.

Like the favor, it was also tricky finding reasonably priced candy that would fit within the slim neck of the bottle. What I did find was these candies called Newblers. They are very similar in taste to Nerds and can be purchased in bulk in a variety of different colors. In order to save on cost, I only filled the bottles about 2/3 of the way, which was plenty of candy. I used about 8 lbs for every 30 bottles. It ended up costing about $1.60 per favor for the candy.

I had heard of a cute idea that you can combine your favors and your escort cards. I thought this sounded like a really nifty idea so I decided the favors would each be a different colored candy that matches the table’s napkin color. There’s also an escort card on the bottle with the guest’s name and an icon of their table’s centerpiece so they know which table is theirs.

These colored potion bottles fit right into our Legend of Zelda theme!

multicolored favors

 

Wedding – Are we cosplaying?

Posted on by BogusRed

The very first thing everyone asks me when I tell them I’m planning a Zelda themed wedding is “So are you going to dress up like Link, or Zelda?”

Well, actually, neither! We are not cosplaying for our wedding (though the thought did cross our minds). Cosplaying would not make sense because:

  • Really, who would I be? I’m known for crosplaying as Link, who’s a guy. It just wouldn’t work.
  • Every one’s already seen my Link costume. What I look like should be a surprise!
  • It would symbolize the union of Link and Zelda, not the union of Mike and I.

So if we’re not cosplaying, then how the hell is it a Zelda wedding? All elements of the wedding from the invitation, to the decorations, to the music, to even my dress will be inspired by the wonderful art style of Wind Waker.

The main way we are expressing this Zelda theme is through the dining table centerpieces. Each table will have a wonderfully decorated centerpiece that looks like one of Link’s items from the game. The bomb, bow and arrow, boomerang, ice rod, fire rod, lens of truth, slingshot, and more will be there. I’ll be doing a blog post to highlight each centerpiece in the coming weeks.

…and, well, how would one find a Wind Waker styled wedding dress? Hehehe, sometimes, you just have to make it yourself.

 

Wedding – Save the Dates

Posted on by BogusRed

wedding-std.jpg I decided early on that I did not want to do pre-designed invitations and Save the Dates (STDs). None of them feel like Zelda. Almost all of them are flowery motif crap. So I designed all of my own stationary, instead.

I’ve heard the STDs are a chance to be fun and show your personality, whereas the invitations are more formal. I gave the design a very Wind Waker like style and added a cute drawing of Mike and I on it in a paper cut style. I reused some elements from the website design.

I got the design printed on postcards from psprint.com (fast, cheap, great quality!). It cost $30 for 100 printed cards and shipping (but I only mailed 70 of them). I then purchased envelopes for $25 through amazon.

Include postage and the total came out to about $1.25 each. Not bad, eh?

 

Wedding – Favors part 1

Posted on by BogusRed

lantern favor

Coming up with something for the favors was really tricky. I didn’t want to spend more than $2 per favor, but I still wanted something that reflected our Legend of Zelda theme. I had found a cute set of little tea light lanterns that I almost bought, which remind me of the magic lantern from Zelda. But couldn’t find them at a price within my budget. Note: Some places will advertise a lower price like $1.50 per lantern, but jack up the shipping price. 
 

 

bottle favor But what I found instead was much better. I found these cute round clear cork top glass bottles at only $0.50 each from save-on-crafts.com. These remind me of the potion bottles Link uses to replenish his health. My thought was to fill them with colored candy, something similar to nerds. Guests can enjoy the candy, then reuse the bottle as a vase for flowers or something.
 
A few notes if you do order these bottles, you’ll need to ensure none of them are flawed, broken, or chipped. They also were rather dirty and dusty. I ran all the bottles through the dishwasher and soaked the corks in soapy water and air dried them.
 
More to come on the candy and decoration of these favors in a later post.

 

Wedding – Website

Posted on by BogusRed

fairy Being a web designer, there was no doubt that Mike and I would have our very own wedding website. You can visit it at ZeldaWedding.com (I was surprised no one else snagged this domain).

 
The design draws a lot of elements from the Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker game interface. I loved the papery texture and brightly colored elements that were used and tried to recreate that in the design. One of my favorite elements of the design is this cute little fairy stuck in a bottle. I drew the shapes to be angular so it has more of a paper cut feel.
 
We included the URL to our website with our invitations so guests could visit and see our registry info. It’s not proper etiquette to include your registry information in your invitations but it is ok to include a link to a wedding website. We also included a slide show of our engagement photos there as well as any updates that our guests need to know about.
 
wedding website A wedding website is useful for:
  • before the event:

    • save the date
    • registry links
    • event updates
    • engagement photos and other pictures
    • a story of how the couple met
    • wedding party
    • accomodation recommendations for out of town guests
  • after the event:

    • wedding photos
    • ask others to email you their photos
    • big thank you to guests
We’ll be updating the site continually over the next couple months. Be sure to check it out.

 

Wedding – Theme

Posted on by BogusRed
Mike and I had planned to get married in 2010. But with all of the family stuff going on, we decided to push it out a year to 2011. Thankfully we made the decision 7 months before the original wedding date and all of our vendors were very accommodating. 
 
But now we’re less than a month away from the big day and I thought it was due time to start sharing.
 
Mike and I both love video games, especially Nintendo ones so we decided it would be fun to make our wedding themed after The Legend of Zelda. I’m drawing a lot of inspiration from Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker by making everything brightly colored and cartoony. Mike and I came up with the great idea of having each of the dining tables have a different item from the Zelda games. (more details on that in a later post)
 
In order to best communicate our theme to our vendors, I put together a document for it, sort of like a creative brief. Here are a few pages from it.

Theme brief

This page has a variety of images from Legend of Zelda and gives people a sense of what the game is about and the spirit of what we’re going for.

 

venue brief

Many of our vendors were unfamiliar with our venue, so we provided some pictures to give a sense of what the place is like; outdoors and woodsy.

 

word cloud

Every wedding is different. Some are a formal and elegant affair, while others are more laid back. It was important to me that our vendors understood that this was meant to be a light hearted, colorful, and whimsical event. A word cloud is a simple way to communicate this.

 

color palette

Most weddings usually have one, maybe two colors that are used. But I wanted it to be clear to our vendors that we are using the full rainbow of colors. These are all colors that I thought felt most like The Wind Waker. I didn’t stick strictly to these colors because it’s difficult to get exact matches of fabrics, etc, but I did use it as a starting point.

 

More posts to come soon!

 

The hardest year of my life

Posted on by BogusRed

I’ve probably re-written the following blog entry countless times. I’ve struggled to find the right words without sounding too depressing or long winded.

So let’s just keep it simple…

October 2009 to October 2010 was 12 months of hell. My Dad was diagnosed with Frontal Lobe Dementia and my life had been consumed with dealing with the emotional challenges of seeing my Dad’s mind deteriorate, the stress of pursuing a conservatorship, his objections to the whole thing, moving him into assisted living, clearing out his house, and a financial battle with his siblings.

There wasn’t much time for personal projects or blogging. But thankfully, my involvement now is minimal. He has a professional conservator taking care of his needs and financial affairs.

Now I can get back to wedding planning and get on with my life.

 

Platform Dev: Comments

Posted on by BogusRed

I previously mentioned that I would start rewriting much of my code on PaperDemon to become its own platform. Recently I completed a Comment component. I rewrote the old commenting system completely to be easily configurable, powered by sexy jquery and ajax goodness. I can now easily have one set of code to power each comment section for art, writing, comics, blogs and soon I’ll be adding comments to photos and possibly other stuff too.

A major part of the comments rewrite was to get rid of the pop ups. Previously, when you went to post a comment, a pop up would appear where you’d type up your comment. Popups are annoying and outdated. Instead, it’s now right there on the page when you’re viewing an artwork entry. A major strategy behind this interface change is that by making that comment box readily available, I hope it will entice more users to post a comment.

So far, it appears to be working. But I’ll be watching the data closely as time goes on.