Weddingbee Blog

When I envisioned our reception, I knew that I wanted thoughtful details to really make our wedding an experience for our guests. Our site provides a choice between white or ivory linens, and I knew we would be adding purple overlays of some sort… but that wasn’t enough. After scouring the web for inspiration, Martha came to my rescue!

Napkin rings, of course! While they can be ridiculously expensive to buy, Martha has plenty of ideas on how to make them (for way less).

Knowing that I had 250+ of these things to make, some seemed a little more complicated than I was willing to get into (but oh so gorgeous):

check out instructions here & here

While others just weren’t really the effect I was looking for (but still fantastic, nonetheless):

again, instructions here & here

But then, I stumbled upon a design that seemed classy, pretty, and most-importantly, easy to make!

Bead and ribbon? How easy does this look? I have to say, after making 280, I can’t really say it was very difficult. Ready to ring some napkins?

Materials:

• Beads of your choosing (bigger lumens are better)
• Ribbon of your choosing (thinner is better unless your bead lumen is very big)
• Carpet or upholstery needle (again this will depend on your bead’s lumen size)
• Scissors

I got my beads and ribbon for 50% off at Michaels. Enough materials for 280 napkin rings cost me about $50, or $0.20 per ring - you can’t beat that!

Instructions:

1. Cut ribbon about 15 inches in length
2. Thread your needle and pull about 6-7 inches of ribbon through the bead
3. Grab the ribbon close to the bead and re-thread the ribbon & needle back through the bead in the opposite direction (this is really the only part that can be even pseudo-challenging if your bead lumen is small for your ribbon)

ET VOILA! It’s THAT easy. And, it can work on all sorts of napkin folds.

I personally got my inspiration for the final napkin fold & ring look from these pictures:

(source)

I found out that the fold above is really, really easy to do, which I’m sure will make the venue staff very happy :).

Take a look at my makeshift set-up:

Tip: once you make 10 rings, slip them into a sandwich bag. This way you now have one bag with all the napkin rings for each table of 10 and an easy way to keep track of how many rings you’ve made!

What kind of DIY projects are you making that are big bang for your buck?