Weddingbee Blog

Hi guys! Guess what? I’m finally making some progress with the table numbers! Hooray!I bought the fabric I mentioned in my last table number post, and was thrilled to find that fabric.com ships from Atlanta. My fabric came overnight! Meanwhile, Mr. Panther and I were searching the state for flourishy, ornate picture frames. We bought a mix of 4″x6″ and 5″x7″ frames from TJ Maxx, Marshall’s, HomeGoods and Goodwill. And, I even got most of my wooden numbers from Michaels. Unfortunately, 1s and 2s are very tough to find—I still need to hunt down a few more!

I already had a bunch of metallic acrylic paint from my failed attempt at using Mrs. Gloss’ edge painting technique on some test invitations, so I busted it out and tested it on some extras 6s and 7s. I only had four extras, so I used two colors per number. I will NOT be using more than one color per number for the final product!

One of the sets was primed using Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Spray Primer. Can’t tell which one? Yeah, I can’t either. It didn’t really help, but I think I’m going to give it another try. Anywho, I used four different shades of paint and then held them over the three fabrics. I decided I’ll use all of them except for the lighter purple.

I think I’ll also use gold paint for the fabric on the right, since the purple, aqua and teal all kind of blend into it. Don’t worry, I’ve got some of that left from the failed edge painting, too! It was a very extensive attempt—I bought a LOT of paint.

After my paint test, I started adding fabric to the frames, using the tutorial by Dill Pickle Picnic. It started off all right.

But soon, I realized that not all of my frames were going to cooperate.

See that icky yellow stuff? It’s GLUE, and a bunch of the glass pieces in my pretty frames are attached with it! Drat, drat and double drat! Some of them were glued loosely, so I tried pushing gently to pop the glass out, but honestly, pushing on glass is terrifying to me. Fun fact: When I was seven years old, I tried to spin myself around in a rotating armchair by pushing on my living room window with my feet. My right foot now has a scar shaped like the continents in the southern hemisphere. Anyway, one of the pieces of glass in my picture frames broke in the corner, and I got scared and stopped pushing. Mr. Panther thinks I can use a blow dryer (or maybe my heat embossing tool?) to melt the glue a little bit, but I haven’t tried it yet. I’m kind of afraid to warp the wood. Anyone have any suggestions?! Should I just punch through them?

Once I figure out this picture frame thing, I’ll prime and paint the numbers, then get to attaching them. Hopefully, they will look like this, but way more awesome:

My apologies for the craptastic iPhone photos! Mr. Panther was out of town last week, and he took his fancycam with him. How RUDE.

Has anyone else attempted a DIY project and run into a snafu? Did you figure it out and forge forward?