More Designer Isles by Mariah & Sham

When we met up with Yana, her sis and her then fiancee almost a year ago, I suggested creating something different, new and special for their wedding hantaran and wedding cake.

Instead of just doing up the cake for instance, I decided to create a Wedding Cake Designer Isle. And so with a serving size of 100 - 200pax, I suggested breaking up the servings into one cake centrepiece and the rest all pre-packed as favors, and aesthetically presented on our Isle.

Thing is, we love designing and creating favors - for which we were first known for - and we love gorgeous arrangements of anything beautiful. So we suggested this Isle idea to our many other enquirers, thinking we were doing good service...by being forthcoming and generous with new ideas during our non-obligatory discussions / consultations. Some politely declined cos they were understandably not ready for this, considering they've had budgets set aside for other wedding expenses...but some actually abandoned us and got other vendors to build up on this idea :(

It was heartbreaking...but in retrospect, we're all the wiser now. Moving on, we've taken it in our stride to accept all these as part and parcel of business, and hence to continue evolving.

Whatever it is, we're lucky to have many other great clients and fans who have kept us going

and encouraged us on to strive for the best.
In this light, we're grateful for Yana's and Akhbar's trust and loyalty.

So here's one specially decicated to you newly weds, and of course, sis Ezsra. :)

 

  

This Designer Isle featured our wedding cake centrepiece of fondant covered rich chocolate cake, with matching favors, decorative accents and bespoke monogram.

The 'two tiered' cake was actually made up of four layers of  real rich chocolate cake. We had to make it this high cos our groom is one tall young man! Doing up a 4 tiered cake however would make the cake look too 'overbearing', what with the motif design and all. So yup, we made it 2 tiered but 'tall' instead :)

                            

  And then we designed the favors to match our cake. Notice the rosette design on the favors and on the TOTALLY EDIBLE rosette icing.

 We didnt have any inspiration boards cos most of the time, our inspirations are conjured up in our imagination, some of it 'at last moments'. But we knew what colours we wanted to work on....so here, we married the two colours used by our newly weds. (Bride chose blue with dashes of pink for her Hantaran, and groom chose purple with gold for his Hantaran)

        

 And for the all-important harmonized look, we placed a matching bouquet of fresh flowers to balance the whole set-up.

And now, another special dedication to the newly weds.

Presenting the totally revolutionary Wedding Hantaran Designer Isle by Mariah & Sham....

All the gifts for exchange were presented on our Designer Isle. Bride chose a blue-pink colour scheme to present her gifts to her husband. After the solemnization ceremony, the gifts from both sides of the families would be exchanged, and the groom's gifts for his bride (purple gold!), which we designed to match, will be placed on this same Isle. Lucky for us, both Yana and Akhbar have got a keen eye for colours. The gifts they bought were all of the right tones and designs, making our work way much easier :)

 For Him gifts were all placed on our gorgeous slick white stands, as opposed to the more traditional 'dulangs' or trays.

 Notice the backdrop rosette motif which was reproduced in their Wedding Cake and Favors previously mentioned.

Loving the fresh peony in full bloom.

                    

 We designed this bespoke monogram for them to match their get-away car signage.

For once, featuring camera-shy Mum in action!

And so now, here's a look at the groom's gifts for his bride...

They chose romantic purple for this. And so to up the glam and grand factor, I decided to match the look with champaigne gold.

The groom was a bit apprehensive about handling fresh flowers...so we used faux ones instead.

Luckily, we had a whole year to scout around for the highest quality faux flowers, and we're delighted to have had worked them well.

Mariah's gorgeous frame in action...for the customary 'mas kahwin' cheque due to be slotted in, complementing the bride's gorgeous Tiffany bracelet.



Ok so that's all for now. A very big thank you to Haz Workz for all the help rendered, and of course, I'd personally like to thank mother-in-law for helping with everything else while I got busy with projects, work and house moving. And to Mum, great great job as always! And to my four cheeky kids...Universal Studios here we come!! So now, on to our next project. Stay tuned! :)

Just Married!

Here are our first two maiden 'get-away car decoration' projects!
And we're opening up more slots ;)



Props all ready, waiting for groom's arrival...

  We got the requests just a day after our announcement for this new service. So I got down to design the bespoke Just Married Monogram signage, from scratch, for both our couples, and managed to get things done on time.

Here's a closer look at the waterproof signage which the couples get to keep...

Our Signage in action!

The door knob.
Congrats Fahmi and Fadzlin!

 I designed a matching monogram for all the door knobs. Afterall, the bride and groom deserved all the attention :)

Front view

          My idea was to keep the design safe and simple, yet totally special and romantic.

Getaway cars are not meant to be feminized with too many flowers, dangling ribbons and laces....especially when the grooms have chosen slick and sporty MPVs and SUVs to 'get-away' with their brides.

     

   

Congrats Md Akhbar and Nur Zaiyanah!

   

Another bespoke signage for another beautiful couple.
Seen here in mauve and blue.

                                    

Here's one without flowers.

                                

New tentages by Mariah & Sham

We have a couple of Designer Isle projects coming up in 2011, and our clients wanted the same tentage concept we used for our previous Isles.

We'd love to do just that, but as always, we get easily bored....cos a tentage, spruced up, is just that. Where's the challenge, right? And because we love designing the fine details, we've decided to design and produce our own tentage. New concepts, new designs. In fact they are being designed from scratch in-house by us, and will be sewn by our chief seamstress a.k.a Mum.
And we're thinking whether a hexagonal one would be hot in demand. What say you?

I dreamt of having a tentage like this, as opposed to the dais concept, for my wedding (and that was 10 years ago), but hey I'll be just as happy doing it for others...

Just a bit on Mum

Mariah & Sham has always been synonymous with sis and myself. Understandably so...cos apart from the obvious biz name, we sisters are the ones always updating our FBs and blogsite, keeping in touch with fans and friends alike.

It is not superfluous however, for me to introduce the real unknown talent behind our family biz. Our Mum.
She finds content in just doing things together as a family, and is possibly unbothered about recognition. Well, I can respect that wish, but once a while I think it's ok to showcase her talent just a bit, especially cos I've recently found a beautiful picture of sis in her wedding gown. Mum sewed it of course.

I love the design. It was simple, classy and most importantly, created with TLC.

Probably just right for a naturally gorgeous bride :)

Deep Purple & Blue by Samia

This is entirely long overdue.
We'd like to thank Samia of Deep Purple & Blue for featuring our Pink Black Dessert Isle on her journal blog.
It's an honour really ,and likewise, your blog is worthy of mention too!
Love your stories, eloquence, inspirations and dedication to all things creative and beautiful.
Do keep in touch, and stay inspired! :)

New! Wedding Car Decoration

Ok so just before i really sign off for the week, here's just another small announcement.

We're itching to do wedding car decoration, complete with its "Just Married" signage. The ideas are floating around in our head, so you can't ask us for the catalog yet. But then again, if you trust us enough and would love to be surprised with something chic, classy and utterly gorgeous (and especially if you're getting a vintage car for your wedding!), do drop us a mail soon.

We're booked up for other projects, but we're opening up only 2 slots in between (and at promotional price too), for this new project design.

So email us today at mariahnsham@hotmail.com

A new archive

Here're just some minor updates for our site.

Apart from the new topbar icons, our sidebar now bears our Archive of Fine Details.
Just a collection of our past works, designs, posters and even unpublished ideas.

Much time and effort have been invested into this part time family business / hobby, and we'd just love to share these works and ideas, right from their conceptualization to their production, with like-minded individuals sharing the same passion and panache for design, styling and all moments beautiful.

See ya next week (after the kids finish their exams yea!)
Meanwhile, take care and have a great week with family and friends ya all!

New designer cupcake by Mariah & Sham

Last week we collaborated with Haz Workz to come up with a new designer cupcake look for our new client Ashley's 23rd birthday. (Happy Happy Birthday Ashley ~ )



Cupcake and Cupcake Wrapper by Mariah & Sham.
Cupcake Topper by Hazworkz.

We worked on the cupcake wrapper, here featuring a white chandelier silhoutte against our modified Aqua-Tiffany Blue (a shade between aqua blue and tiffany blue) background. Hazrin worked on the monogrammed topper, and we simply love his fine workmanship! (Yes, you can order generic and personalised toppers from him too)

We then designed a new label for Ashley's cupcake take-away box.



Our designer cupcakes, packed in a clear box and embellished with ribbon and crytal beads.

And then of course...because we're always quite the fickle minded lot, we decided to pack the cupcakes in a clear box as well...just for variety :)

And so like always, we would combine all our various ideas and designs...to come up with the all-important harmonized presentation.

This "harmonized variety" has apparently been said to have become one of the distinctive trademarks of Mariah & Sham. So ok we're sticking to that ;)

So anyway, that's all folks!! See ya in our next post...ouh but hey dont forget to check out our constantly updated albums too. Some pics may not find their way to our blog post, but we always put our projects up, no matter how small they may be, for all our clients to see. Just a small way of saying thank you. Thanx for trusting us :)

Our newest Dessert Isle

We recently had the pleasure of creating a new dessert isle for our new client Liza, who'd just had her 30th Birthday Bash last weekend.

In the short time we've known her, she came across as someone who truly enjoys treating her family and friends. Though extremely generous, she is not unnecessarily extravagant...she knows when to indulge and whom to indulge with.

So we hope our isle had been a tremendous treat and joy to her loved ones and to herself on her special day, and here's wishing Liza a Happy Birthday!

We love the idea of sharing beautiful things and beautiful food with our loved ones. And so does Liza.
So she unabashedly cosied up to our idea of an outdoor dessert isle - a garden party!

An outdoor tentage set up like this, we thought, could be very gorgeous and classy...yet inviting and pretty much laissez faire. And Liza loved the unique three-dimensional feel to it too.

Introducing our Pink Black Sassy Dessert Isle.

This isle was designed with a couple of elements in mind.

We were striving to create a pink black themed isle that is sassy and chic,

as opposed to one that is either too gothic or too sweet.

So we decided to make a black and white striped parisian blind,

and worked our whole design around that parisian chic look.

We used black-white stripes, chandelier & silhouttes, topiaries, satin, velvet, crystals and silverware.

Then everything else was harmonized in pink... though not exactly of the same pink shade,

but rather in different tones...cos we simply love harmonizing different tones of colours.

And of course because we believe that the treats should be authentic and not too overdressed with icing and colouring, we therefore mostly made do with their natural colours and worked on harmonizing them instead. It was truly challenging, but hey that's what we are here for ;)

 

Now comes the fun part - Dessert!

Our chocolate cupcakes were spread with delicious chocolate fudge, and spruced up with our newly designed chandelier-silhoutte cupcake wrappers.

And then we had our designer butter cookies with their thin matching chandelier icing.

Then there were the all-time favourites... marshmallows and sesame sticks.
Although the latter didn't come in pink, they blended perfectly with the chocolate cupcakes and butter cookies placed alongside...

More sweet treats - Our mini shortcakes lightly laced with pink crystals and tea roses.

Not forgetting Grandma's old recipe - Chocolate Fudge Pudding!

Our favors were designed to bear all the elements of our design. Notice the matching black white stripes, the chandelier silhoutte, the pink label, the pink meringue, the crystal clear bag and the silver stand.

When placed on the isle,

the whole favor set-up helped harmonize and balance all the elements of the isle altogether...

Our generous arrangement of fresh flowers then complemented our parisian blind,

our french white chandelier, and the pink satin.

And of course, the Birthday Cake.

What could be more appropriate and matching for this parisian chic isle, than a parisian hat-box cake?

A fondant covered chocolate cake baked with the finest ingredients...

So here are some behind the scene photos:

Creative designers - Sham and Mariah

Baking chief and seamstress- Zaiton

Stationery and props specialist - Hazrin

Distraction specialists - 6 kids in between :)

Steam ironing the velvet tablecloth for that all-important professional look.

We're big on quality control.

A quick pose

Mariah and Sham, sans Zaiton and Hazrin.

- Thank You -