Wedding Blog

I wasn’t planning on posting this until I had completed my project but seeing as it might be helpful to other brides , I plan to share with you all my biggest DIY project for the wedding …. our votive favors and decorations.

I’ve always had a love for things etched and was extremely excited that it was available to DIY. Being able to incorporate it into the wedding was not exactly a challenge since I had pitched this idea to Mr. CB before we were engaged. The challenge was executing it and showing the real sample to him. Mr. CB was very against the idea at first because he did not want me to bleed blood and sweat and spend hours on the millions of DIY projects that I plan to do, but once he saw these, he was on board 500%. My first sample project, decor:

Exhibit A: Our decorative votive candles for the tables and for the cocktail hour area:

Hard to picture it just like that right?

Now picture it next to my other DIY project, my cube votives (I’ll share the details on those next time)…

I plan to glue pink glitter to the tea lights to give it a little bit more umph, and add more sakuras to the votives but you get the overall picture.

The HOW TO?? Here’s how:

Materials:

1.) Armour Etching Cream - I got the biggest bottle available with the 50% off Joann’s coupon.

2.) Carl’s Sakura Craft Punch - I got the Large, Medium, Small, and Mini all off Ebay

3.) Mailing Labels

4.) Qtips

Step 1: I punched out a million sakuras, small and mini, and cut them out one by one. I kept the actual sakura punch outs which I will use for something else. Note: I printed up a cherry blossom pattern onto the mailing labels so that the punched out sakura that I will use later will not be the boring white of the labels. DOUBLE SCORE on use!

Step 2: Apply templates onto votive in the pattern desired

Step 3: Apply Etching Cream onto template areas that you want etched with a Qtip, be sure to be generous on the cream.

Step 4: Allow the etched votive to stand for 5 mins (per bottle instruction), I came back after 15 mins to let it really soak in.

Step 5: Run votive under running water to remove all cream

Step 6: Remove templates

Step 7: Votive Complete! and Voila


Exhibit B: Our favors - to be filled with pink and brown jelly beans

Apply * notice the cherry blossom paper * the Sakura punch out will be put to good use.

The picture is blurry but you can kind of see the part where it is etched.

And VOILA! On the sides are more of the smaller sakura punch outs like the ones for decor above.

TIPS:
Trial and Error: I tried to make the template using a transparency sheet and taping it on, big mistake! This is what you end up with, as Mr. CB would say, it looked like I sneezed on it:

- I also bought a roll of contact paper to punch out the template - it didn’t work because the punch stretched out the sheet, leaving me with a blotched punch out with strands of plastic sticking out.
- Your best bet - stick with an adhesive sheet like mailing labels. My first couple of tries were punched out from old Hello Kitty stickers I have at home.
- Make sure to wear gloves, which I did not do, shame on me. And work in a well ventilated area.

* Unfortunately, I won’t be able to use these straight edged votives because the cheapest I’ve found was 66 cents each before shipping. The ones I ordered from Cudge.net are slightly tapered at the bottom, are about 46 cents each after shipping, and should be arriving on Thursday - all 288 of them so that I can get started on them now since I have over 200 of them that I have to etch.

And to save money, I may consider changing the letter J on the favor to look like this:

Because to buy full alphabet sheets just to use the letter J would run me about $30. I could purchase the alphabet punch from Michaels for $40 that has a skinner J …. What do you think? Or should I use the the J punch above that was so graciously lent to me by a friend.

Hope you found this tutorial helpful. This is may be my biggest project ever and I am super proud of them, so I really hope our guests will enjoy them.