I woke up on Sunday, my first wedding anniversary, to find my husband not home. There were, however, written instructions from him to catch the bus into the city and get off at a certain stop, where I would find the first in a series of clues…

I didn’t even know he knew about paper being the first anniversary present but he’d made a set of origami hearts (even made from old book pages which were a feature of our wedding) with clues on the reverse to find the next location.

I was led all over town to various places that are meaningful to us, including the bar where we got together, our wedding night hotel, my uni campus (where there was this giant ‘a’ from my logo!!), all ending up with a picnic near our wedding venue…

…where there was another giant ‘a’ (this time in Helvetica because a few days earlier he’d asked me what typeface I couldn’t live without). He’d even brought the iPod dock to play the song I walked down the aisle to. Awwww!

As you can see, it was a perfect sunny day to enjoy a picnic of champagne, cheese and antipasto.

Our favourite photo from our wedding is of us sitting on this bench so I had to recreate it with the letter, which totally cracks me up.

Prior to all this, I was pretty smug thinking I’d thought of the best anniversary present.

Now, clearly I wasn’t going to be able to top the effort that The Man put in, but I hope you’ll agree this papercut art is absolutely divine. This gorgeous custom piece was hand cut by Kyleigh’s Papercuts (thanks Kyleigh, he loved it!) and features the lyrics from the first dance song from our wedding.

I was completely blown away by all the effort that The Man went to and it was definitely a day to remember.

What are your favourite ideas for a paper anniversary gift?

Today The Man and I have been together for eight years. Ryan, I just want to say:

(Mum & Dad: that’s a good thing.)

Print by Hannes Beer.

Hello lovelies! How was your weekend? The Man and I had our birthday cocktail party, which I’ll tell you more about later in the week. In the meantime, though, here’s a sneak peek of the invitation I designed for it, as well as a fun mood board to go along with it.

Decorated table | Record player | Fairy lights | Sequin dress | Invitation | Glitter lips | Cocktail

Check out examples of my work or drop me a line to enquire or place your order.

Whose birthday did I make these for? Not a son, or a nephew… Nope, they’re for my husband. Who says 27 is too old for Lego?

The cake turned out much smaller and messier than I hoped (it looks like Van Gogh did the icing) but I hope you’ll agree it’s not too bad for my first attempt at doing a novelty cake.

My method, if you want to try it yourself, was to bake a plain sponge cake and trim the edges to make it square. I then used round biscuit cutters to cut the cylinders out of the cake off-cuts. I iced the plain cake, then stuck the circles on and iced them.

For the biscuits, I used my favourite only biscuit recipe, rolled out the dough and cut around a cardboard template I’d made. I am hopeless at piping, so a tube of ready-made black piping gel is my new BFF.

I think I’m still high on all the sugar and food colouring.

Lisa Tilse

I will be taking a super dooper long weekend, with the Easter public holidays and also Anzac Day being commemorated here on Tuesday, so I will see you back here on Wednesday.

It’s also my brother’s engagement party over the weekend, which will be awesome fun. Whatever you’re up to, I hope you have a lovely Easter, dearies!

It’s Wednesday, so where’s the usual Obsess & Inspire post? My posting schedule only allowed for one post per fortnight that didn’t fit into any of the features. I’ve been finding that my ‘free-choice’ posts have a serious backlog because I couldn’t squeeze everything in. Since I’d rather focus on more original content for you (rather than featuring stuff that’s cool but you’ve probably seen already elsewhere) I’ll be cutting back the Obsess & Inspire feature to every other week. I hope you enjoy the change.

When The Man and I returned from our honeymoon in New Zealand, I showed you a few a lot of our photos. What I never showed you was what I did with them: a bound photo book.

With every second electronics and discount department store now offering photo books, it can be really hard to decide which one to go with. We chose Photobook Australia (there’s also a worldwide website). They are quite a bit more expensive than many options, but it was really important to me to have excellent quality and the timeless look of a beautiful fabric cover instead of the usual photographic cover.

They have special software with layout templates for you to create your book. However they also allow us picky designers to use our professional software and provide the finished artwork, which was another must-have when considering which company to go with.

I love that we have a beautiful coffee table style book documenting our first overseas trip together.

Yesterday I was writing a guest post about our New Zealand honeymoon when news came through about a devastating earthquake in Christchurch. It is far worse than the one that occurred just before we were there. 

Today I would like to share a couple of photos I took during our visit and remember a beautiful city now reduced to rubble. Please spare a thought for our neighbours, the residents of Christchurch, who have surely been dealt with more than anyone should have to bear.

Image source

Lots of love to you, my gorgeous readers!

Cuba Gallery

I don’t set new year’s resolutions as such, but I am quite goal-oriented so it’s a great time to think about how I’m going to go about achieving those goals. I don’t think I’ve ever done this aloud, let alone broadcast over the internet, so I have to admit to being a little nervous to posting much more personal content than I’m accustomed to. The reason I’m stepping out of my comfort zone is that a) I feel it’s only fair to tell my loyal readers what you can expect from me and b) so I am accountable.

Business-wise, well let’s just say that I dream big. I have a ton more invitation collections in the pipeline, which will enable more customers to go the more affordable route of choosing existing designs. There are also additions to the greeting and stationery ranges in the works (sign up to keep up with the goss!). For privacy reasons, I don’t publish customers’ bespoke jobs until after their wedding, so they’ll start popping up from around March. I want to make the ordering process as simple as possible for customers, so I plan to integrate the ordering and payment functions into my website, rather than being transferred to my Etsy shop. It’s a huge undertaking so don’t hold your breath, but it will happen. And when it does, it will be awesome! If you’re local and prefer shopping at bricks-and-mortar locations, I’m also negotiating further wholesale contracts so expect to see Akimbo stuff popping up around Adelaide.

In terms of this ’ere blog I have SO MANY ideas it’s not funny and I’m really excited to share them with you through the course of the year. The balance of topics will remain much the same, but I do plan on having some themed weeks/months. For example, in May you can expect lots of party projects, tips, free printables and gift ideas as we celebrate Birthday Month. I am also working to continually improve my photography so I hope this becomes evident. I am still in negotiations with wedding magazines regarding featuring our wedding, so until that’s sorted I can’t publish any of my photos or the rest of the DIY projects. It’s killing me!

On the home front, we don’t have any major plans at this stage so it’ll be a matter of see-how-she-goes. Since quitting my job six months ago to start my own business, the piggy bank is looking thinner these days. But instead of feeling too frustrated I’m looking at it as a challenge: after all, sometimes the most creative ideas come from having to work within a limited budget. The Man doesn’t know it yet but I’d love to do a budget bathroom makeover this year, given that it’s the only room we haven’t touched since moving in so it’s looking pretty sad. There’ll also be a fair bit of newlywed nesting going on, with finding creative ways to display wedding photos and honeymoon souvenirs and incorporating wedding gifts and repurposed wedding decorations into our decor.

Personally-speaking, I am looking forward to settling into a nice routine after having a schedule that was all over the place in 2010. I need to learn to control the ‘Must. Keep. Working.’ urge and cultivate some balance in my life. I’d love to blow the dust off my neglected cookbooks (sadly not kidding about the dust) and get back into the kitchen. Our family jokes that our wedding set something in motion, becauase between then and returning from our honeymoon, five couples we know have got engaged in addition to two more earlier in the year! So I think 2011 will be somewhat of a love-fest.  And what better thing to focus on?

I think 2011 is going to be a wonderful year and I hope you’ll stick with me for the ride!

Without a doubt, this has been the most amazing and eventful year of my life.

The rut to end all ruts
At the beginning of the year, I was stuck in a soulless advertising job, that at the end of each day left me feeling like if I’d stayed in bed I would have made as much difference in the world. I felt the creativity, life and motivation being sucked out of me as I watched my goal of being a senior designer at a leading studio fading. (Eek, getting a bit teary here, that’s a blogging first for me.) I had not been successful – not for lack of trying, I assure you – in landing a more engaging job that would put my career back on track.

Meanwhile I had also been planning our wedding and, as a graphic designer, I had spent an inordinant amount of time thinking about our invitations. I was already the invitation go-to-girl amongst family and friends (and a handful of clients) but it wasn’t til I immersed myself in all things wedding- and stationery-related that I discovered my passion for it. I started sketching out designs and toying around with the idea of developing it into a nice little side business (after all, I was still wanted to be a corporate graphic designer with a day job, right?).

Image source

The turning point
The turning point was when I actually started feeling relieved when I received the rejection phone call after interviews. I had already started the business (and blog) by that stage, but it was at this point that I began lots of serious discussions with The Man (my amazingly supportive husband Ryan without whom I absolutely could not have done this) and kicked the planning into overdrive to make it my full-time job. I quit my job in June and haven’t looked back! To anyone thinking of starting their own business, I don’t recommend doing it while you’re in the midst of organising a wedding: it was in. sane. But it was definitely a now-or-never situation for me and despite the sleepless nights, I wouldn’t change a thing.

Image source

Starting the blog
While I’m getting all uncharacteristically D&M on you, I don’t think I ever really explained my motivation behind starting Atypical Type A, despite the fact that I’m quite a private person and thought that blogging and social media was kind of self-absorbed. From a young age, I’ve been passionate about decorating and creating and it went to another level when I bought my first home with The Man two and a half years ago. I was trying to work out some way of keeping a record of my home improvement projects as I find it really helpful, when I’m feeling frustrated at a lack of progress, to be able to look back at how far we’ve actually come. Around the same time, I discovered blogs (oh! how did I ever live without you?). I couldn’t believe it! There were all these people out there who got me. People who got excited about the same things I did, things that would cause the eyes of most people I know to glaze over. Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that my friends have such varied interests and perspectives, it makes for a richer life, but sometimes you want to talk to someone who’ll understand your excitement at your new Eames DSWs or describe your new dress as being Pantone 485.

Anyway, I had been getting bucketloads of inspiration from all of these amazing wedding and decorating blogs. But I had been all take, take, take and really wanted to give something back. Gawd, that sounds awfully cliched doesn’t it? But it’s true, and I figured if the efforts of some talented but still just regular person like me had inspired someone across the world then why couldn’t I?

Image source

My point (and I do have one)
This is all a very long-winded (I swear I didn’t intend to write this much!) back-story to my point. Thank you sincerely, dear reader, for taking the time to make Atypical Type A a part of your day and for your encouragement and lovely comments. And to the lurkers (you can’t hide, I can see you on my stats!) I also want to thank you for reading.

This year I have married the love of my life, gotten over my shyness to start writing a blog and quit a stable job to become my own boss. This year brought a lot of uncertainty, stress and hard work, but it has also been so rewarding and I feel so lucky. Thank you for letting me share it with you.