Wedding bells

My brother is soon to be thoroughly wed to a very good friend of mine, which is a wonderful in and of itself and is also one less address on my hypothetical Christmas card list. They asked if I would do something for their invite and inspired by Sarah Mcintyre's sublime prints of a Greenwich Park tree I set about my first lino cut since I was a school boy.

Well as you can see from the below mine turned out to be a fair bit cruder than Sarah's. One of my errors may have been to buy the traditional lino rather than the easy cut stuff. I did so under the false assumption this would grant me instant artisan status. Instead I sat for hours in my freezing Edinburgh studio, hunched like Bob Cratchit, attempting to soften up that lino with a hair dryer. Novices be warned!