Bridget Bryan

Getting ready for a baby doesn’t always conjure up images of the birds and the bees these days, but let’s face it, that’s where baby’s come from, right?

My younger sister and her husband are expecting their first baby. That baby will be our first nephew to us siblings, will make my parents into grandparents, and will make one set of our grandparents Great-grandparents for the first time ever.

To prepare for her baby shower, I wanted the invites to be unique to us. So I drew upon the style of Beatrix Potter, and storybook scenes from our own backyard. The birds and the bees definitely made it in there.

Take a closer look at the pictures to see how.

To announce the baby, I drew and painted a pennant banner in the tree foliage – the happy couple is expecting a boy.

Mishka, our English mastiff, given to us by my sister ages ago, is the family affection outlet.

He often keeps an eye on our chickens, a newer pleasure to us.

While those birds are allowed to go and scratch in the garden, the bees buzz in and out of their hive.

The bees, Dad’s hobby, made honey which was given in vials of amber gold as wedding favors at my sister’s wedding reception.

Here in the picture below you can see the Lord and Master, our dad, as he tends to his bees in the garden, while the Mastiff looks on. The chickens are inside the wire enclosure. The young apple trees on the left are the inspiration for the tree in the invite.

You can also see the bee’s usual home (we don’t use the basket hives, but the Russian horizontal hives), and Mishka’s usual lush grassy throne.

And here below are the invites, complete with font and ready to be sent out. This was my third project using digital tools to complete it, but my very first invite!

It was fun doing it and drawing upon my family’s interest’s and garden for inspiration. In a way it was a piece of illumination, bringing to life an ordinary invite. Let me know if you’re interested in having such a custom invite done.

Thanks for making it to the end drear reader! I hope that you are having an enjoyable summer!

Before you leave, I’d love it if you would check out the notebooks in which I did all these paintings. That’d be grand, because when you click the link below, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

This book captures some of the images of Beatrix Potter’s style that I was drawing upon. Certainly, A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh) and Ernest Shepherd (Wind in the Willows), were also subconscious sources of inspiration. (Thanks, Mom for nourishing our imaginations! It’s bearing fruit now. Teehee.)