Sunrise Ketubah

Sunrise Ketubah; 18″ x 24″, acrylic on paper. Simpler custom ketubah, digitally printed text, hand-painted decoration.

Chicago Fireworks Ketubah

Chicago Fireworks Ketubah, by Judith Joseph

New ketubah:  inspired by the beautiful skyline of Chicago, as seen from out on Lake Michigan.  This is a new interpretation of an earlier painting, which I created for my son Cameron and his wonderful wife, Blake, for the save-the-date for their wedding:

Chicago Skyline, by Judith Joseph

Blake’s beautiful mom, Raina, just married her beloved, Jeff, and they asked me to create a ketubah for them inspired by the earlier painting I had done for Blake and Cam.

When I look at Raina and Jeff, I can see the sparks fly between them, so I suggested we add fireworks.  Raina asked for lots of flowers, which is also appropriate for love, joy and the motto of the City of Chicago:  “Urbs In Horto”, which means, “City In A Garden.”

So much joy and fun for our family this year!  Blessings and joy to both couples!  See it here on my website.

Introducing Blue Spring Ketubah

Blue Spring Ketubah, by Judith Joseph

My new ketubah design is available on museum quality paper or canvas, for more information click here.

Random Creative Stuff

I now understand why mothers who plan weddings end up becoming professional party planners.  My son and his fiancee planned their wedding, for the most part.   Since I am a painter and calligrapher specializing in the Ketubah (decorated Jewish marriage contract), I happily volunteered to help with the d.i.y. creative touches.

The wedding was at a very colorful restaurant venue in Chicago.  The environment was over-the-top colorful and gorgeous, so it didn’t seem necessary to spend lots of money on decorative flowers, aside from the bouquets and boutonnieres, which were beautiful.  We only had to come up with something for the tables.  Here is the  colorful, low-cost centerpiece I designed, which doubled as a table number marker. for their wedding.  I have included sources  for materials:

I ordered cobalt blue wine bottles from Amazon.com by the case, bought artificial Gerbera daisy flowers on sale at Hobby Lobby, and filled it out with tissue paper flowers I made with the bride and her mom (a fun afternoon!)  I prepared for our flower making by covering  3/4″ wood drilled balls (Hobby Lobby)  with white glue and glitter.  Next, I threaded a pipe cleaner through the glitter ball  to create the flower center.  We folded the tissue paper, accordion-style, and wrapped the pipe cleaner around it before fanning out the tissue around the glitter ball.

For the bottles, I painted a number on one side of the bottle and a monogram I created with the couple’s initials on the other.  The acrylic paint will wash off, and I can repurpose the bottles (I have two more sons, unmarried as yet!)  This was a very inexpensive centerpiece and we got lots of compliments–very festive and colorful.