Weddingbee Blog

That was Mr. Guinea Pig’s response when I told him I wanted to make these:

(from the ever-so-crafty Martha Stewart)

I discovered this idea very early on in our engagement and the above photo made it into the very first wedding inspiration board I ever made. I absolutely love the warm glow these have, and the intricate patterns casting shadows on the bag.

They are called “Lacy Luminarias” and I think they’ll be a great complement to the lace on my wedding dress (another item in the posting queue) since not much else really has a lacy feel to it. Because I won’t tell Mr. Guinea Pig my dress is lace, he has no idea why this would be a good fit. I’ve since seen this photo in a lot of folks’ inspiration boards, so it’s a popular idea, but I think it will add a great soft glow to the porch+rocking chairs area of our venue, as well as sitting on the mantle in the ballroom.

I kept this idea in the back of my head, knowing that at some point I’d have to start looking for the necessary components, but hadn’t really thought about actively starting - until (dun dun!) - I came across a pack of 500 white bags at Costco for $14. Sweet! That’s about 3 cents/bag, which I consider a great deal. So I bought a pack even though I definitely won’t be making 500 luminaries - they will certainly come in handy for trials and experimentation! The only minor catch is that the bags look like this:

(one white paper bag from Costco)

The lovely red stamp at the top does not go with our color scheme. (the red print at the bottom will be on the bottom of the bag when it’s standing up). Luckily the bags are pretty tall, and I already liked the look of the different height bags in the inspiration photo, so I can just cut each bag at varying lengths below the red stamp. Of course, a straight-across cut would be much too simple! So, I bought patterned scissors and tested a few out.

(Scalloped on the left, ’Victorian’ in the middle, and zig-zag on the right)

I couldn’t decide if I like the mixed look where all the bags have different edges, or if I wanted to just stick with one type of cut for consistency. I was leaning towards the ’Victorian’ cut as I think it works best with the lace feel of the luminaries, but then in one of my I’ll-just-stop-and-look-around trips to Michaels, I came across the perfect punch!

(Found in the Martha Stewart section of Michaels)

I love the look this will give to the tops of the bags! Now I’m fairly certain I’m going to ditch the scissors and punch this across the tops of all the bags. Or would a mix be better? Moving on…

Thanks again to Costco, we also know how we’re going to light these lovelies! Literally the day after I struck gold with the bags at my local Costco (and having told Mama Guinea Pig about the purchase), my mom called me from her local Costco to say, “There’s a crate of battery operated tea lights here…” Yes! Another great deal! We’re going with battery-operated lights so there are no open flames to catch things on fire. She bought three cases of the lights, which worked out to be a little less than 50 cents per light and that includes an extra battery for every candle! I don’t have a picture of these yet because they are in CA, but I’m excited to have these two pieces of the puzzle sorted.

The next decision is what to put in them to create the pretty patterns. While at Michaels (same trip, I swear!), I found these Wilton gold doilies. Martha says use gold because white ones don’t show through as well, but I also really like the glow that the gold ones give to the bag.

(Wilton’s 8 inch and 4 inch diameter gold foil doilies)

I figured I would give them a try. The 8 inch ones are too wide to fit completely flush along the front of the bags, but I could use them to cut the pattern out around the edges. For now though, I wanted to test what it would look like if I just stuck one in the bag and put a candle behind it!

(An 8″ doily set against the inside of the bag - looking pretty sad, I must say)

I learned a few things from this quick and dirty test:

1. There is a seam on one side of the bag! It’s very clearly visible when lit with a candle - see the bag on the right in the photo above. I’ll need to make sure any decorating I do is on the side without the seam so that it looks best.
2. The solid center of the doilies ruins the look (IMHO). I do, however, like the pattern around the edges, so maybe I could cut those out and rearrange them into something new.
3. These tip over easily (and I had real candles in them for the test run, yikes!). I’ll have to consider weighing them down with something like sand, or pebbles.

I quickly cut the pattern out around the edges of a test doily. And when I say quickly, I really mean painstakingly. It was time consuming and not fun. Then I just tried taping the pieces from one doily to the inside of a paper bag:

(Random pattern from the edges of one 8″ doily)

I’m not exactly impressed. I imagine it might look fine if I got more pieces and packed them in more densely? But I have neither the time nor patience to cut those pieces out as carefully as that required. So scratch that option off the list! Now I’m looking for doilies that don’t have a solid center, like these, from Royal Lace (which may be the ones Martha used?):

(8″ gold round doilies from Royal Lace)

These would probably look great whole, or cut into pieces (it makes my hand cramp just thinking about cutting that out). Mama Guinea Pig also had a great suggestion to spray paint/stamp/roll a pattern onto the bags, which might be easier than finding, cutting, and piecing together the pattern from doilies! I’ll have to test how this looks in terms of creating the right shadow, but I think stamping would be less expensive, so I’m all for that! Plus, then I could use whatever design I liked best and reuse the stamp on other projects!

Have you tried to recreate Martha’s Lacy Luminarias? What did you do to create the patterns? Do you have any suggestions for a way to create a pretty pattern without using doilies? If I don’t use something gold, will the glow of the luminaria be less luminous?