Weddingbee Blog

My friend whose wedding we attended in Italy is also having a New York City reception next Tuesday. Woohoo for more parties! While we already took the couple out to dinner in Oslo as their wedding gift (by some strange coincidence, they were honeymooning in Scandinavia at the same time we were visiting our friends in Norway, so we all got to meet up for dinner, super-duper fun), I am loathe to show up at a party empty-handed.

I wanted to keep it relatively inexpensive (since, ya know, we just flew out to Italy for their wedding and all) but make it heartfelt, rather than give them a colander or whatever.

Enter the classic ‘Framing of the Invitation’ with my own little twist. Since my friend used a starfish motif on all her paper goods, this was the perfect opportunity to put to use all the shells I collected while walking along the beach during our time in Italy.

I bought a white frame with a matte from Pottery Barn. Pottery Barn’s wooden frames are almost always 20% off at the store near me (I should know because it’s only 7 blocks away. DANGEROUS!) but of course, today I had no such luck. Harrumph.

Still, $25 later and I had a beautiful 5 x 7 frame and matte, ready for action.

I used double-sided tape to attach the invitation to the outside of the matte, so the pretty silver edging wouldn’t be lost.

Then I dug around in my jar of shells for some that were relatively flat and in the coral color scheme of the wedding.

It took me a while to get a layout I was pleased with (and by a while, I mean 10 minutes—I’m an underachiever) but I finally worked it out.

I love an excuse to bust out my glue gun, especially now that my own wedding’s long gone and I have no reason to create mediocre crafts anymore, so I whipped that bad boy out and hot-glued all the shells and sea glass to the matte board.

About 10 minutes (and much to my astonishment) zero burned fingers later, everything was dried and I put it all together, securing the back of the frame. Here it is, in all it’s seashell glory…

Huzzah, am wedding-crafting goddess!

Haha, no, I am kidding with that above comment but I am pretty pleased with how it turned out (because I’m so not crafty like most of y’all are) and for $25, it certainly didn’t break the bank.

Hopefully my friend and her husband will like it. After a solid 20 minutes spent on this project, this crafting goddess is hungry and will now be crafting a sandwich, stat. Cheers!