Weddingbee Blog

Bunting. All the “cool” weddings have it nowadays. For a time, I wanted it too. Cinnamon Buns wasn’t too into the whole bunting idea, so I let it go, knowing I could come up with something else to use. You see, we’ve got all this great space in our venue for swagging bunting something along the edge of the balcony:

We’ve got about 80 feet of balcony to decorate (oh my). Tacks, etc. are not allowed, but I’ve got a cunning plan for string and tying off to weights on the other side of the balcony—no one will be up there except maybe the photographers.

Bunting is out—books are in. What to do? The obvious thing is something made out of pages of books. Hearts, inspired by Bookity, we want in the reception area. I was now on the hunt for fun things to do with paper! Then, I found this tutorial for a felt ornament from Betz White. I immediately tried to do the same thing with paper:

I cut this one from an old magazine I had lying around from previous (non-wedding-related) craft projects. It looked great, and Cinnamon Buns thought it was cool, but Betz White’s directions involved a lot of measuring and drawing. I was pretty sure the same thing could be accomplished with some folding and cutting, so I found this tutorial. Yup—fold, fold, snip snip snip, and voila! Cool-shaped wiggly paper things! It has the added bonus of being able to be done in stages—first, cut all the squares from a big theatre reference book I bought for a dollar from the library. Next, fold them all. Mark the cutting lines next. Then, attack with scissors! I imagine that I will store the cut-up squares flat until closer to the wedding, and maybe have a gluing and stringing party some time in May.

I also found this tutorial:

source

I’m thinking of stringing a little ball between each wiggly shape, with a few inches of string in between each thing. I already have a two-inch circle punch that will make this job much easier. I might not make the balls as full, either. The ones pictured above have seven circles folded in half and glued to each other; I think I might just do four. We will be using six-inch squares for the wiggly shapes (The one in my photos is five-and-a-half inches—that’s as big as my magazine was!)

My plan is bakers’ twine or embroidery floss for stringing. I’ve been stocking up on glue dots when they were on sale, which will make sticking the wiggly shape together much easier. I hope it will look neat and 3D strung along the balcony there. As there’s about 80 feet of balcony, I’m guessing we’ll need about twice that in garland to get nice full swags.

This will be a very easy project to get other people involved in—there are a few different steps, but none of them take much thought. Did you have crafting parties leading up to your wedding?