HOLY SHEET...

Three more sleeps, and I am officially a Mrs!

When you start planning a wedding, it feels like this day is never gonna get here...Then you step into the last month and time suddenly just flies by... Then you get to the last week, and time moves even faster!  Lance and I have done pretty good this week.  I have only cried twice, and that was mostly just from sheer exhaustion!  I bought myself a Silhouette Cameo and that added a million new things to my project list, but I can make the cutest things now!

We finally finished the wine labels up last night and just have to stick them on.  I had bought a pack of 90 Avery Wine Labels that were on clearance and thought "Hey, that's a great deal!" until I opened the pack at home and they're for tiny bottles of wine.  I managed to find some pretty decent sticky labels yesterday and we are looking forward to seeing them on the yummy bottles of wine that we made!

My Aunt and Uncle arrived from the UK yesterday, with another set of Aunts and Uncles arriving today.  I'm looking forward to seeing them!

My friend Christa, gave me a free set of gel nails on Monday, so I am officially useless!  Seriously!  How do girls function with these on all the time?  I dropped my ruler last night while I was trying to measure something and I had to get Lance to pick it up for me...Although, I do love the sound my fingers make when I type right now!  Hehehe.

I'm currently finishing off the table numbers...Two more to go.  They're pretty!  The photobooth is finished (hooray!), now the only thing to do is buy a whole crapload of alcohol!!!

Roll on, Saturday!!!  Roll on!

Chandelier Makeover

My Mum gave me a chandelier to use at our wedding.  Actually, she gave me two.  One is a beautiful all-glass piece, and the other one had lots of brass.  Yuck!

Look at this beaut!  Just waiting for a makeover!

Notice how the sleeves are all cracked and disheveled.  I regret not taking a better picture of the cracked and broken sleeves!  I spent a bit of time googling how to fix them this morning, and came across another blogger (ThePaletteMuse) who used my favorite, Mod Podge!  I was all over that!!!

See her chandelier post here! 

I was also lucky enough that it was absolutely beautiful outside so I took my paper cutter, Mod Podge, spray paints and chandelier outside and set to work!

Let the spraypainting begin!!!

So, it took me forever to take this thing apart.  And let me tell you, I am SOOOOOO glad that I took pictures of the process or I'd still be trying to figure out what went where!  I used a bit of painters tape over the part you screw the lightbulb into, then spray painted away.  I thought I'd grabbed a spraypaint with primer, but I did not.  I got lucky and it seems to be sticking pretty well!

I had some weird brown cardstock that I wasn't going to use on anything else.

I wanted to see what it would look like with glitter spray paint on it.

I followed ThePaletteMuses directions and got my Mod Podge on!

It's kind of awesome how that Mod Podge made that weird brown cardstock look like a copper metal, and had I of chosen to spray paint the chandelier chrome, I would have kept them like that, but I decided on the black, so I glittered the sleeves up.  Did I mention how much I love glitter spray paint??? 

 I used the chandelier as a drying rack for my newly glittered sleeves!  Loving how they look so far!!!  Excuse the bald patch of grass in our yard.  We have seed down and are trying to recover this piece of yard now that the 300ft Maple tree has been chopped down!!!


Once everything was good and dry, I played the puzzle game and tried putting things back where they once came from.  This took just as long, if not longer, than taking it apart.  Lol.  Regardless, I absolutely love how it looks.  It's no longer dated and brassy.  It's black and glittery!

<3 LOVE <3

Thanks PaletteMuse for inspiring me this morning!  

Bridesmaid Thank-You Gifts

I wanted something nicer than the plastic tags my Bridesmaids jewelry came on, so I decided to DIY it!  I know, you're shocked!  Haha.

I didn't take any pictures of the process, but it's not hard to explain, but here's how they started out...

As you can clearly see, those would have been boring and awkward to give.  Do you wrap them?  Hand them over like that?  Nope, I wanted something cute!  So I made the boxes you are about to see!

Beautiful, aren't they!!!  (see how that's not a question, but a statement!)

So, how did I made them?  Well, I bought some wooden dollar store boxes.  They are available in almost every dollar store I've ever been in and are made from real wood, but they are unfinished.  They're usually about $1.50 each.  Totally affordable, but not very beautiful looking in their raw state.

We've done a lot of home reno's so we had stain on hand.  I used a walnut color.  It didn't take very long, maybe 30 minutes to stain all six boxes, inside and out.

After the stain dried, I decoupaged my labels to the top and inside lid of each box.  I used Mod Podge on the top and bottom of each label to give it some durability and to make sure that the labels don't start peeling off.  The labels were ones that I had designed myself in my wedding colors using a gradient and some pretty fonts.

After the labels were dried on there (they aren't coming off for the world!), I cut some styrofoam into the shape of the inside of the boxes and hotglued them in.  I didn't want the jewelry sitting in there too deep.  I took some dollar store craft foam and cut that to shape too and hot-glued that onto the styrofoam.  I kind of regret that desicion now because it's hard to me to make the jewelry sit nice on the foam.  I should have made it so that I could hide the chains behind the black foam, but c'est la vie!  I'll figure something out before I give these to my girls!!!

All in all, I'm still pretty stoked about how they turned out!!!

DIY Rosettes!

Someone in the Wedding Buy & Sell: FraserValley group on facebook was selling these beautiful rosettes that she had made for her daughters wedding.

Aren't they awesome?

I set out to making my own!  Here's how they're done!!! 

This is plain printer paper all gussied up with some Washi tape

I had made two of these prior, just to get the hang of it... For this final one, I used some plain white printer paper and a bit of washi tape.  I also used a flowered border punch to give it a decorative edge.  It looks pretty just like this!!!  Make sure to decorate BOTH edges of the paper because we'll be folding them in half later.

Time to start folding!

I flipped the paper over to the backside and folded it in half.  This will help my concertina folds stay nice and even!  

Fold again!

Now fold the two short edges into the middle!  

And again!

Now take your new edges, and fold into the middle again!

One last time!

And fold the new edges into the middle once more!  

Open 'er up!

Once you've folded everything up, you can carefully open the paper up again.  

Now do a concertina fold!

Once it's opened up, you can concertina fold the paper.  All the folding we did earlier makes this step way more simple!  The alternative is just to do this with the paper without all the pre-folding, but it's hard to keep everything nice and even.  

Now do everything all over again two more times!  Yikes!

Fold each piece of paper in half

 Once you've got them all nice and folded up, fold the two decorated ends up to meet each other, kind of like a fan shape.

Attach with double sided tape or a glue gun!

  Tape some double-sided tape or a glue gun and tape the inside pieces together to make 3 separate fan shapes.

Attach all the fans together!

Once you have your three fans, glue or tape each edge to another edge, and you'll get a beautiful rosette!

Voila! 

I made some smaller rosettes to go in the middle of each one.  I attached them with a glue gun and they're stuck there for good!  I made a small hole at the edge of the larger rosettes and threaded a piece of ribbon through so that I can attach them to the photobooth backdrop that I'm making!  

I'll do another tutorial on the small rosettes next time, and hopefully an update on the backdrop!  It's going to look AMAZING!  Only another 50ish rosettes to go... Boy, oh boy!

DIY LEDs

I'm cheap.

There's nothing more to it than that.  If I can make something myself rather than buying it, then I will... Especially if I can make it better and cheaper than something commercial.

This was my dilemma:  I have about 80+ paper lanterns in all sizes to use for my reception but I would like to have them lit up.  I think the photo ops with them lit will be SPECTACULAR!

Problem 1:  Proper LED lights for lanterns are ridiculously expensive, even the battery operated ones.

Problem 2:  The battery operated ones say "up to 8 hours use".  That's not going to work for us because we're setting the hall up the night before.  Even if we had someone who was able to turn them all on for us, they'd need a ladder and everything will be decorated by that time...What a pain in the ass!

Problem 3:  Even at 8 hours of use, I don't want the lights going out before the guests go home!

I started searching online, but didn't really find any other solution for this until I came across "throwies".  My inner nerd screamed!  Here's the description of a throwie.

Throwie:  An LED light taped to a 2032 3volt lithium battery and a high powered magnet. 
Used as a form of graffiti."Hey, I made some throwies last night, wanna go throw 'em at something magnetic?"

 It's worth a try!  Surely I can doctor this into lighting my lanterns!!!  I ordered 100 bright white LEDs from eBay for about $1.50.  That's more in my price range!  I had a CR2032 laying around the house, probably from when the kids had Tamagotchis, so I taped the bulb to the battery... Nothing.  Then Lance told me that I had to turn it around.  I guess even those cute little LEDs have poles. Lol.  I turned the little bugger around, and it lit up like a sonofabitch!

I was a little skeptical about how long it would last, so I stuck it on my memo board next to the date "Jan 1st, 2015".

I was excited to get up the next morning and see if it was still lit up.  I ran out to the dining room and "thar she glows!"  I got up the following morning... Still glowing.  After about a five days, I wasn't checking on it so much.  It slowly started to dim after about a week.  Now it's March 13th, and it's still working, but not very bright at all.  But whatever... I just need them to be bright for 48 hours!

Now that I know that they work, I have plans.  I'm ordering 100 CR2032 from eBay... They're about $18/100.  That's going to work out to about $0.20 per light!

This is an 18" lantern after I sanded it down.  I'll need two LEDs for the bigger lanterns, but it gives off such a pretty light!

I might even light my lightbulbs with them!  They're so pretty!!!  I used two laser pointer batteries for this one, and I sanded the bulb down with a nail file as the light was a bit harsh.  It made a huge difference!

My lightbulb vases.  These will be hanging off my curly willow centerpieces, and now they'll be delightfully lit up!!!

 So

Will you be my...

I've been collecting little things for my Bridesmaid Boxes for some time now and finally got around to actually making them today.

My daughter has been asking lately who I've picked for the Maid Of Honor and I told her that it was between Robyn and Julie.  She has no idea that I'm going to ask her to be my MOH!  I'm pretty excited.  Her and I hang out more than anyone else I know, so I really couldn't imagine having anyone else stand in that place when Lance and I get married.  

The last couple of days I've had to keep everyone out of my craft room, so I posted a little sign which piqued Bailey's curiosity that much more.  

"What are you doing in there?"

"Just crafts"

"Then why can't I come in?"

"Because they're secret crafts."

Then she'd purposefully walk loudly down the hall so I would think that she was going to try and come in.  I had stuff everywhere!!!  Cut up bits of card, crepe paper, glue, glasses... It was like Frank's Red Hot Sauce... I had that shit everywhere!  

After two days of cutting, gluing, etching, writing and organizing, I had my boxes all prettied up and ready to be dispensed.  

Aren't they the prettiest?  I made each girl a chipboard book with lots of info in them.  

Page 1) Will you be my MOH/Bridesmaid?

Page 2) A personal letter to each girl begging them to say yes.

Page 3) The Bridal Party.  I wrote down who's who, including the Grooms party.

Page 4) So is it a yes?  A little note stating how freaking excited I am that we get to go dress shopping!

Page 5) A color scheme and a note about the dresses.  As long as the color is right, I don't care what style they pick!

Page 6) Your Role - I explained on Bailey's one that her job is a big one and that she can ask the Bridesmaids and my Mum for help, then on the Bridesmaid ones I explained that Bailey will need help and for them to keep her motivated. 

Page 7) The plan.  What is going down the night before, the day of and the day after!  

I added some cute little gems to the front of these books afterwards! 

Each box has a bottle of Champagne with a "Will you be my MOH/Bridesmaid?" label that I'd ordered from a guy on eBay long before I realized that I could easily make them myself.  An etched mason jar with a handle.  Each one has the girls name on and an etched picture of a dress on the other side.  These were fiddly and I didn't really enjoy making them, but I'm sure I'll get better at them with practice. Some cosy fluffy socks, facecloths and a nail file.  A candleholder and candle and a bunch of candy and other little filler things like hand sanitizer, tissues, notebooks, etc. 

  

I really hope that bridemaids will be as excited opening them as I was putting them together. #needstogetalife

Here's hoping that no one says no!  

DIY Invitations

They are finally mailed... Mostly.  I still have a couple more that need to go out, but what a labour of love that was!!!

I wanted beautiful invitations, but no matter where I looked, they were pricey.  I have always loved the idea of pocketfold invitations, but couldn't justify the $400+  that they'd cost to have made, so I set my mind to making them myself.

A quick trip to Michaels with their 50% off coupon, (Score!!!  I usually always miss that coupon and have to settle for the 40% one) and I had this beautiful silver shimmer paper!

I got all my other supplies and got to work!  

1 package silver shimmer cardstock : $10 after coupon

1 package 100 pieces black cardstock (for the pocketfolds) : $3.33 on sale

2 packages of 50 A2 envelopes:  $4.50 each

3 rolls of purple ribbon : 3/$1 on sale

3 rolls of teal ribbon : 3/$1 on sale

Double sided tape : $1.50 at Dollarama

Glue dots : $1.50 at Dollarama

Plastic buckles that don't look tacky : 100/$2.00 on eBay

1 cheap bone folder from Dollarama. $1.25

2 packs of shipping labels : $10/each from Staples

Total : $50!!!  

I scoured Google for a template that would fit the envelopes but couldn't find one, so I made my own.  It was fairly easy as I was able to use the templates I found online as inspiration.  I then cut my template out of card and traced around the other 99 pieces of black cardstock.  The first few took forever to cut out, but then I found my niche and the rest were cut out fairly quickly.  I used a bone folder to make the creases in each envelope, and attached the "wings" with double sided tape.  I added two pieces of ribbon to the pocket piece before gluing it.  You can see that in another picture further down.  

This was the inspiration for my pocketfolds.  

I used a program called PrintMaster to design the inserts for inside.  It took a bit of playing around before I was happy with them, but they turned out awesomely!  I  printed these out on my beautiful shimmery paper, then got to cutting.

The first mistake that I made was those bloody corners.  ARGH!  If I could go back in time, I would have made them so that the edges were 90 degree angles, and I would have used a decorative angled punch to save me about 432749324 hours!  

Something like that would have looked AMAZING!  Bah!

Anyways, I eventually got them all cut out so that I could glue the invitation part and stack the inserts.  Here's a picture of how they looked inside!  

See the pretty ribbon, and how it gives it a nice pop of color!!!  

I wrapped a band with our names and wedding date around the front with two pieces of ribbon and a buckle, then they were ready for mailing...

But wait... There's more.  ;)

I couldn't shove these beautiful invitations into a boring envelope, and the prices for professionally addressed envelopes are ridiculous... So back to PrintMaster I go!  

And this is what I created!

They looked amazing all stacked up and ready to go!  I've received so many compliments on them that even though I said I'd never do it again because they took so long... I totally would!  ;)

The only thing that I'd do differently is to find smaller buckles.  Unfortunately the buckle made them just that tiny bit too thick to go as normal mail, so they cost almost double to mail... We ended up hand-delivering a lot of them though, which was nice and made it a bit more personal!  Oh, and the corners...Damn those corners!

:D

***Edit:  I forgot to explain what the return mailing labels were for!!!  One package of them had our address on it for the RSVP Madlibs, and the other package were stuck on the back of the "Getting Around" insert and had a map of activities in Hope, BC for before, after and inbetween the wedding!"