Weddingbee Blog

The Bracelets are still waiting for their professional photographs, so in the meantime I’ll fill y’all in on several pre-wedding projects that I didn’t get to talk about before our wedding. A while ago I shared my table-number inspiration. So whatever became of that?

We ended up combining two separate inspirations into one…

{collage by me / left image via Zoe Vee (Etsy); right image by Kari Herer via Style Me Pretty}

Step 1: Preparation

Mr. Bracelet bought some cheap wood, cut it up into 4″x4″ squares, and traced the shape of numbers (we used the font Century as our guideline) onto the wood.

Step 2: Cutting out the wooden numbers

Luckily we were able to use my FIL’s workshop to cut out our numbers. We started by using a band saw to cut out the numbers and then smoothed out the round parts with a buffer.

FIL looking on/supervising

Step 3: Sanding and drilling

(This part is rather self-explanatory, so I’m telling you about this without photos.) We sanded the wooden numbers to make the surface and edges smooth. Finally, we drilled a small hole in the bottom of each wooden number and super glued a thin metal rod (cut into 15″ lengths) in place to hold up the number.

Step 4: Painting

Paint supplies

I picked up my paint supplies at Michaels:

• Decoupage glue and sealer by Martha Stewart
• Glitter in bronze by Martha Stewart
• White acrylic paint by FolkArt
• 2 brushes—one for white paint and one for glittering

Before painting I wrapped the metal rods in masking tape to prevent stains. After the first layer of paint, the numbers still showed their wooden grain:

First layer of paint

It took about three layers of white paint to get an even texture with little wood grain showing. Next, I mixed glue with glitter. You’ll want to mix as much glitter into the glue as you can to achieve a more consistent look (less glitter and more glue = more layers required). I finished glittering our numbers with two layers.

Step 5: Drying

The numbers then spent a long time on our drying contraption (we put a Styrofoam piece inside of the box as an anchor) to ensure that everything was fine and dandy.

Although Mr. Bracelet and I thoroughly enjoyed crafting our table numbers together and I love how they turned out, I’m not sure that I’d choose to do it again.

I had two reasons for DIY’ing this project: a) I didn’t think the numbers were worth paying the $14 on Etsy because I could make something similar myself and b) I wasn’t looking for a dark, natural wood stain design, and DIY gave me complete design control. Considering the huge amount of time that went into this project (easily more than 14 hours), I’d suggest saving time and just buying them (or choosing a less ambitious DIY project).

Are you DIY’ing your table numbers? What kind of table numbers did you choose?

* All photos personal unless noted otherwise