A Girls Gotta Have Somewhere To Hang Her Dress!

I've been seeing a lot of the wire-wrapped coathangers that spell out "Mrs" or "Bride" or something close to that effect, and now that they're super popular, I needed to "make it my own" so... I grabbed me some ribbon, and a coathanger, and some beads and got to work!  It's not done yet as I want to add the wedding date and some pearls to the wood, but I love it so far!

 I love how my fairy figurine looks like she's giving it a bit of a kick!

The picture doesn't actually do it justice, but at least it's a bit different than all the wire-bending hangers out there!  

Bottle Cap Wine Charms

Meet my little wine charm prototypes!

I want to make personalized wine charms for each guest at our wedding so I set out on the Google and found a few tutorials on how to make these little beauties.  These ones are crappy and only made with spray adhesive and Mod Podge, but I wanted to see how they'd look when they were finished and I pretty much love them.

The trickiest bit was finding a way to create the names so that they'd print out the right size, but the Avery website was my best friend again with all of their sticker templates.  I played around for a little while and came up with the purple/turquiose tags.  The most wonderful thing about the Avery website is that you can customize everything on the stickers from the colors to individual text on each label.  It's so easy to do!!!

Now all I need to do is order a few hundred epoxy stickers, flattened bottle caps and a bunch of wine charm rings and our guests will each have something personalized to use for the evening and take home with them.  I'm thinking about using these as decorations on the fronts of each cracker, that way they'll double as name cards!  Win-Win!!!

Ring Boxes

I decided on ring boxes over ring pillows as I can DIY up something unique and we will always have somewhere safe to keep our rings if we're not wearing them.  Lance is an electrician and will only be able to wear his ring when he's not working... Work hazard or something like that... Bah!  My box will go unused for the most part, but it'll still look pretty as a set!

Here are the two finished boxes

 And the inside view.

I still need to make little satin pillows with tie-up ribbons for the inside, but Lance decided to tell me that he doesn't like the purple color and wants me to re-do them.  It's a bloody good thing that I love him.  So... Now I have these two little ring boxes that will have to find another home, and I'm starting on making a couple of new ones.  The new boxes are more square, and I've already started painting them, and this time I think I'll stamp the words on the top rather than try to paint them, as I'm shaky with a paint brush at the best of times!  New pics to come soon!!!  

I have an Etsy store now!

I figured I'd better put my creative abilities to some good use and opened a store.  My first item was the wedding wands that I'd made this afternoon while watching the series finale of Dexter *tear*.

Aren't they just ridiculously pretty!!!  They're not my colors, but it's the only ribbon that I had on hand to play around with, so I went with it.  Anyway... if anyone else would like to open an Etsy store, click on this link and we both get 40 free listing!  Woohoo!!!

http://etsy.me/16RUYFV

You can also visit my shop at http://www.etsy.com/ca/shop/BeadsByMarie

=D

Say "NO" To Chalkboard Signs!!!

Everywhere I look there are chalkboard signs at weddings!  I want signs at my wedding, but I don't want them to look like all the other ones.

I have found a blank wooden heart sign at Dollarama last Winter and it's just been hanging around in all its wooden glory waiting for something big to happen.

This isn't my heart, but you get the picture... Just a lovely wooden canvas!

I grabbed some metallic paints from Walmart and some brushes and decided to have a crack at hand-painting my own sign... This is how it turned out...

Pretty impressed, am I!  I'm going to paint an arrow just under where it says "Photo Booth" but I have no idea where the sign is gonna hang yet, so that'll be done after we book the venue (which might be tonight as I'm going to check out a cute hall later!).  

I've now decided to change my plans from lazing around the house watching TV to heading to the dollar store for more blank signs.  I have visions of the drive to the hall scattered with "nearly there" and "this way for the I Do's" signs!  Perhaps I'll even make my own "Mr & Mrs" signs for the backs of the chairs, and then hang them above our bed after the big day has come and gone!  

I just love DIY soooooooooooooo much.  

A Brides Rant!!!

I have been engaged for exactly 273 days, and I am officially "pinned out"!

When I first became engaged I decided to be super sleuth and create a secret board for all my wedding inspired pinnables, but as that became out of hand I graduated myself to a whole new fake Pinterest account.  This was a place that I could pin freely without any of my friends seeing every pin and wondering if I was going to somehow incorporate that into my wedding for the ultimate Pinterest-Inspired wedding.  I pinned day and night!  If I couldn't sleep, I'd be perusing for unique ideas or decorations.  I found myself pinning at every moment I could.  And what did I discover?

Every bride wants the same thing.

We all want a unique never-been-seen-before wedding filled with cutesy mason jars, cowboy-boot wearing brides and bridesmaids, groomsmen adorned in super-hero cufflinks, shirts, and socks, pictures of the groomsmen fawning over the ring in a girly fashion, secret vows whispered to each other, twinkling lights strung throughout a barn, personalized wire-wrapped coathangers ... Well guess what, Ladies... It's all been done before... and done, and done, and done.

Pinterest is ruined for me.

Don't worry, I still love going there and poking around, but you won't find my wedding filled with the whimsy of a Pinterest wedding (with the exception of the backdrop photobooth... I am soooooo doing that!), but rather an inspired collaboration of all things wedding-y.

I have stopped pinning each and every idea that I think of to Pinterest, but rather to a folder on my computer that I won't be sharing until after my wedding so that no one can accuse me of having another cookie-cutter, burlap-wrapped,  bedazzled flip-flop wedding!


I have also decided to ixnay a chandelier above my washer & dryer!

DIY Light Bulb Vases

These things are so darn cute that I may become addicted to making them.

Lance is an electrician so it seems fitting to have these adorable vases included at our wedding.

I'm going to use them to line the aisle with and they'll also hang throughout the centerpieces at the reception.

I found the tutorial online and at first it was a little fiddly and hard to understand but now I know what I'm doing, the other 100 or so will be a breeze!

A Favorable Change!

I was 100% sold on my idea to do wish bracelets. I thought it was fairly original as a favor but it's not... So I had to make it original.

Instead of a hemp knot I'll be using a silver infinity charm.

The bracelets were going to be accompanied by a cute poem about tying the knot and that was that.

Then things changed.

I have now decided to make Christmas cracker favors and I'm so excited! I can still use my infinity wish bracelets but they'll be in a more fun packaging that can also include some confetti, advice cards for the guests to fill out, candies and a drink ticket or two!

I love this idea more and more as I think about it, and so does Lance (so he says) and my parents.   What a great way to incorporate my British heritage at the reception!

Charm Tree Centrepieces

Browsing Pinterest, I saw a centerpiece that didn't just catch my eye, it made me do a happy dance too!

Beautiful Centerpiece!

I don't know what it is about this that I fell in love with.  Maybe the simplicity, the colors (they match the colors that I have informally chosen), or maybe that they're so big and would give the reception venue a more enchanting feel!  But... As I have promised myself, I want a Pinterest inspired wedding... Not a Pinterest cookie cutter wedding.  Soooooooooo, how can I make this my own?

Wish Bracelet Favors

I wanted something different for my table favors.  Something handmade, something that people would actually take home with them rather than leave on the table for me to toss out.  I remembered seeing a wish necklace on a friend years ago and the story went something like "you make a wish when you tie on the string, and when it wears out and falls off, the wish is supposed to come true".  Perfect!

I went to town online and started looking up different wish necklaces.  Many were just a bead on a piece of hemp string.  Some were even just a knotted piece of hemp string.

Not good enough!  A little eBay snooping later, and look at these gems!!!

Silver Infinity Charms

Do you know how much it cost me for 200 of these babes?  $25!!!  That was including shipping, and they're led-free!  Win-Win!  I cut 2 lengths of hemp string for each charm, and this is what I got... So all-in-all, the cost for 150 table favors should be around $60.00  Can't argue with that!  

Pretty cute, aren't they?

Now to set a date and then I can make the cards for these to go on, which means that I have 2 years to come up with a better poem than the one that everyone else has used!  

Do you like them? 

Would you make sure you took one home, even to give to someone else?

Do you have any ideas for a better poem? 

Do you like the shameless angle I took my picture so you could kinda see my engagement ring?  :)

<3 Marie

We decided on forever!

Well how about that!  After 4 years of just being "boyfriend-girlfriend" he finally popped the question on December 24th, 2012... That's a whole other story!  (Click here to read all about the proposal that I nearly sabotaged).  Lance and I (I am trying to include him as much as possible!) have decided on a smaller budget.  He's frivolous  I'm frugal.  I win!  I also love to make things, so I figured that I'd make a blog to detail all of the planning details in our two year engagement!

People ask me if I'm crazy for having such a long engagement... My response: No!  I am having such a great time looking through wedding magazines and other peoples blogs, not to mention Pinterest!  Why rush it?  This is supposed to be the best time of my life, and I intend to drag it out as long as I can!  :)

Anyway... Enjoy my blog, and if you're newly engaged, then a big congratulations to you too!