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