custom | VINEYARD OAK

Alexander and his wife celebrated their first wedding anniversary on September 3rd. By a stroke of genius the first anniversary gift is PAPER, so a few months before Alexander reached out to me to create a special gift for his wife that celebrated their wedding day. He loved the concept of a ketubah as a decorative marriage pledge to grace their family home. Neither is Jewish, but as I wrote before I create wedding keepsakes for all religions and purposes - especially to celebrate anniversaries!

Alexander wanted a design that complimented the beautiful wedding vows that they wrote each other, with elements to represent longevity, stability and bountiful riches, and deep rooted love. Or, in his own words, "We got married under a large oak tree in California's wine country (in Sonoma county), so I was thinking something that included the oak tree, and perhaps some grape vines, in addition to assorted other flowers." The art geek in me just reads into all the symbolism, but it works!

He sent wedding pictures including a wide shot of the oak tree at the foot of which they were married. I was so struck by the beauty of it I decided to make it a central feature and base the entire design around it. After The Heart Tree and California Oak Tree I knew I wanted to papercut the text layer into a "live" tree again - it's so eye catching. I was still mulling over the multi-layered Always & Forever ketubah I created a few months earlier so I really wanted to try a layered design again.

It took three days to complete this ketubah from the tracing to cutting to assembling the layers. It was a bit longer than I expected, but I included a lot of textural details in the design - look at those grapes! - and those take time to cut neatly and correctly. When the layers were done I carefully assembled them together as you can see in the below photo. I used double-sided tape to discretely adhere the layers together across the border and at delicate anchor points so the papercut would still be dynamic but easy to handle. Then on to the final stage of packaging the ketubah to go with a personal note. 

For more photos of this design  GO HERE

For more studio shots GO HERE

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