Happy New Year!

New year again? Where, oh where, did the last new year go?! Seems just yesterday that we were gearing up for 2010 and in the blink of an eye it's gone and we're welcoming in 2011!! Note to self: must try and keep up this year ; )

So happy, happy new year to all our lovely clients, past present and future! 2011 is all set to be a cracking 12 months : ) We have another Mooks wedding to look forward to... our own, lovely Belle is getting hitched to Sam in September so there's a lot of excitement in the Mooks offices as we prepare for that!

We LOVE creating wedding stationery, at the best of times, but to be given free reign is very exciting!! Belle's wedding is going to be absolutely gorgeous... we've already created (and sent out) the save-the-date cards and we're looking forward to designing the rest!

Have a look... we hope you like.

A very happy January everyone! Wishing you the very best of everything this year.

Love from the team at Mooks x

Hot Pink Damask

Just wanted to show you these gorgeous invites that arrived the other day...

We love it when our customers bring their own ideas to the table and thanks to Kate and Daniel, we've gotten to see our Damask range in a totally new light (or colour, as it were!). We think that the range looks absolutely stunning in hot pink and navy ink! What a gorgeous combo!

The perfect antidote for brightening up a grey wintery day

: )

YIPPEEE! Our new website is finally here! : )

SO EXCITED!!!!!! We can barely contain ourselves!!!

After months of hard graft, we're proud to announce the launch of our new look website! YAY!!

The Mooks website was our first attempt at web-design and - whilst we've been designing for print for more years than we care to remember (!) - web design is a little bit more tricky, especially for a newbie... to say the least!!

Since we created the first Mooks site, we've designed 6 or 7 websites for other small businesses and our web skills are a little more polished now than when we started. We've been thinking that we may need a little face-lift for the last 6 months or so, and began re-designing our site back in September. Finally, after hours staring at a computer screen (Caro has got square eyes now - looks most odd!) we've finished!! All of the links work (hopefully) and it should be much easier to add lots of lovely new ranges!

We'd better get designing!!!

PS -

It's that time of year again folks!! Wedding Ideas Magazine have just launched their annual awards! Mooks would like to ask all our customers - past, present and possibly even future! - to take a couple of minutes to vote for us! : ) Tiny companies like ours generally rely on word of mouth, as we don't have the enormous marketing budgets of some of our larger competitors. It would be a massive achievement to win such a prestigious award and to do so we really need your help!

http://www.weddingideasmag.com/awards-2011-voting.html

Your votes really do count! Thanking you in advance,

The small and dedicated team at Mooks xxx

Busy, busy, busy...

Wow - it's been such a long time since we posted on our blog.... and feeling everso slightly guilty that we've not managed to keep it up to date...* blush*. Having said that, things really have been so incredibly manic recently that there just don't seem to be enough hours, doing our day to day stuff, without managing to type a running commentary as well : )

We Mooks have been rushed off our feet, what with the summer wedding season in full swing, we've also moved house and business premises - from Marlow to the East Midlands - PLUS we've also just exhibited, for the first time, at the National Wedding Show at the NEC... PHEW!

As it was our first show, it took an awful lot of planning and worrying, but we're really happy to confirm that it went amazingly well and the feedback from our clients has been absolutely fantastic!

As well as meeting past and potential customers, it was also a great opportunity to meet our friends from Wedding Ideas and Perfect Wedding magazines! So lovely to meet the girls that we regularly speak to, and finally put faces to names etc!

Also a really good opportunity to meet other wedding suppliers and fellow stationers within the industry! Such lovely camaraderie between everyone, that they made the 3 days (plus the set-up day) pass really quickly!

One business that we think our brides will love is 'Your Wonderwall'. Lovely Allie, who runs the company, kept us amused (and sane) over the weekend! They had also just done the London leg of the show, the week before, so the fact that she was so full of energy and humour was pretty impressive!

A 'wonderwall' is a beautifully personalised montage of your favourite photos, telling a story of a special someone or occasion.

In short, they will take the pictures trapped on your PC, in albums and boxes, and then turn them into a large showpiece for your home.

Just give them your photos- either professional or amateur - and their design team turn them into contemporary wall art. All are available in a choice of stunning glass frames or on canvas.

We were really impressed by the concept, but also by the frames that they are supplied in! The vintage style frames would be absolutely perfect for our wedding seating plans! The frames come in lots of different finishes, but our favourites, by far, are the black or ivory classic frames... they'd look stunning with one of our Rambling Rose or Damask wedding table plans in!

We're taking a breather for a couple of weeks then gearing up for all of the Christmas weddings that are coming up, but we shall definitely be exhibiting at next years shows... it may take another 6 months to recover from this last one, but hopefully by next Autumn, we'll be all set to do it again!

Hopefully speak to you soon (we'll try to make it a little sooner than last time...!) X

Snowflakes in summer...

Summer's here - Wimbledon is in full swing - and we are totally rushed off our feet. Wedding season is truly upon us once more : )

Whilst we're putting the finishing touches to reception stationery now for many of the summer weddings that we designed the invitations for, earlier in the year, we're also being asked to design lots of Christmas wedding invitations and winter wedding stationery sets.

It's a wee bit strange to be working with snowflake illustrations - and other such wintery iconography - whilst there's blistering heat outside, but hey-ho... at least life is never dull!

Here are a couple of pics of just some of the winter invitations that we've designed...

As ever, if there's something that you'd like, but haven't seen it on the blog or the Mooks Design website, just drop up an email at info@mooksdesign.co.uk and we will design something especially for you : )

Just wanted to show you one of our latest bespoke designs!

We were to commissioned, by a lovely couple call Lisa and Tom, to create a completely bespoke wedding stationery range especially for them. The design is a pocketfold invitation, but unlike lots of competitor pocketfolds, these are a little different as we have actually printed onto both sides of the card!

Our stylish couple had searched high and low for a supplier of printed pocketfolds and drawn a blank each time, so when they approached us, they were a little despondent to say the least. We love nothing more than a good challenge and were delighted to help! Caro worked really closely with Greg and the print-team and came up with something that we're all really proud of!

The majority of pocketfold invites, on offer in the UK, are produced from simple coloured card which can then be personalised by sticking flat card invites inside, but other than that, they are fairly standard. We are over the moon with our version - as were Lisa and Tom : ) - as we have created a gorgeous pocket fold format that can be printed in any design our customers choose!

Unusually, the pocket of our design has been formed in the inside front cover of the card - and can contain matching RSVP and info cards - whilst the main invitation wording still appears on the inside right of the invitation. This means that your guests will receive the perfect little pack of wedding stationery - no loose maps or extra bits of paper to lose!

We're just discussing plans to launch the pocketfold invitation as a regular feature of the mooks wedding stationery range... the possibilities are really exciting! Looking forward to posting more pics of different designs to show you! Watch this space....

the painted playroom and other news...

Such a long time since we last posted! Been really busy at Mooks HQ - the wedding season is in full swing and there simply aren't enough hours in the day!

There's lots of exciting things afoot - we're already gearing up for this autumn's National Wedding Show, at Birmingham's NEC, where we'll be exhibiting. It's always lovely to meet our brides - and grooms : ) - and it also gives us a chance to meet possible new clients too!

We spent the Easter holiday exorcising our creative demons and getting up to some (legal) graffiti! Whilst we work mainly on a computer these days, the illustrative skills are still there and given half the the chance, we like nothing more than to put them to good use and get the paints out!

When we were commissioned to paint a little girl's playroom... this, coupled with a very loose brief was all it needed for us to dust down the paintbrushes and get cracking!

Had a tiring, but absolutely delicious time and the results were definitely worth all of the effort! Our little client was absolutely bowled over by her new room. Lying on the day-bed gives you a real sense of being in a secret garden, underneath a magic tree... oh to be 4 again!