Weddingbee

What’s shown: hand bound love quotes guest book ($45 from Marta Designs), wooden frame ($4.99 from TJ Maxx), flat top glass vase ($0.75 from Michael’s), flower pens (quick tutorial below), brass photo stand ($12.99 for two from eBay), and bird cage cardholder ($29.99 for two from Save on Crafts).

What do you think? When it was all set up, I was so ecstatic to see it come to life. I can’t wait to see how it will really look on the day of. As is, it’s not too shabby… if I do say so myself.

Now for a quick tutorial for flower pens. They were very easy to make and took about 30 minutes to make six pens. I found all the supplies, except for the pens, at Michael’s. Since I always have boxes of pens lying around, I just used what I had, which were Uniball Gelstick .7mm pens in black. They’re fade resistant, inky but don’t bleed, and acid-free, so whatever my guests write will last forever.

The rest of the materials:

• Roll of floral wrap tape ($1.19)
• Silk flowers ($0.99)
• Tape
• Gluestick

These were super easy to make. Once we had all the materials, all I did was cut the flower leaving about a 3-inch stem.

I used scotch tape to tape the flower to the end of the pen.

(Those are C’s very helping hands wrapping one of my flower pens!)

Then from the top, we used glue stick to adhere a bit of the floral tape to the pen, and started to wrap the pen right until it reached the nib point. Initially, I wasn’t too crazy about using floral tape because of the green color and wanted to use satin-faced ribbon instead, but the tape allowed for me to still cap the pen (which is really necessary with gel-stick pens).

And voila! The completed pens as we started to fill up the vase. I finished off the vase by tying a pink satin-face ribbon around the rim.

Success! Another project is complete! What were some of your completed weekend projects?
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We made them in two colors, to match our color scheme of spring green and pink! And the best part of the programs were that they were much easier to make, relative to our invitations. Again, these were designed in MS Powerpoint.

Here’s a better look at the front:

The floral patterns were on the vellum, so when you lifted it up, it was just the text…

And here is the back!

So here’s the how-to! What you’ll need:

• Pastel pink and green vellum paper in 8.5″x11″
• Ivory organza ribbon
• Luxe glass text heavy or cover paper
• Lime green laid texture paper (warning: it is slightly see-through when it comes to using ink jet printers…it still worked out beautifully, but if I had more time between making our programs and the wedding, I probably would’ve returned this and purchased linen paper)
• Fiskars rectangular single hole punch (I bought mine at Target, but this is where I found one online from googling)

Step 1. Set up your design templates! I had bought a lot of luxe glass paper from Paper Source for our invitations in order to get the discount, so I wanted to maximize the leftover paper. I decided the best way to do this was to fit three sheets on a page, like so:

I first made sure the slide was the right size using “Page Setup” –> “Slides Sized For:” –> and then selecting “Letter”. Then I created a box by selecting a rectangle from the “Draw” toolbar, right clicking and going to “Format Autoshape”. You can adjust it to the exact dimensions you want by going to the “Size” tab and manually adjusting the height and width. I made the outline again very light dotted lines, as these were just for my own guidance and I didn’t want it to print out visibly.

Step 2. Design the cover the way you would want it to look with the vellum on top. This way, you can get all of your spacing done correctly. Add in the images and text that you want. We wanted our programs to be reminiscent of the invitations, so we used a portion of the same graphic and all the same fonts (Lainie Day and High Tower Text). Take a look at the initial design:

Once you have that all set up and designed the way you want, copy the entire slide and create a new slide. You can do this in “Normal View” under Powerpoint, by going to the slide sorter toolbar on the left, clicking on the slide, and then hitting “CTRL-C”, placing your mouse cursor below that slide, and then hitting “CTRL-V”. Then just delete the parts you don’t want on each layer!

For the vellum, we deleted all of the text:

And deleted the graphics for the cover that would be printed on the Luxe paper:

Step 3. Design the pages that will be inside of the program.

The pages we included were as follows:

• Order of Ceremony
• Scripture readings
• Lyrics to the congregational hymn
• List of our our wedding party and helpers
• Our thank-yous
• And on the back cover, our new contact info

Keep in mind that your guests will be flipping the pages vertically, so you want to make sure your margins are correct. What this means is visualizing where the ribbon will bind everything together and making sure you have enough space for that. So for some pages, we had a big margin at the top, like so:

Whereas on other pages, the margins were at the bottom of the paper:

Step 4. Print and cut! Note that the inner pages will all be double-sided, so make sure you know how to feed your paper in properly so that the orientation on both sides is correct. You should be seeing the text upright when you flip the paper vertically.

And because the dimensions of the programs are pretty simple, I recommend getting the whole stack cut at Kinko’s…it will save you many precious hours!

Step 5. Assemble and punch! Gather all of the pages together in the right order. Using the rectangular hole punch, make two punches about 0.5″ from the top, and 1″ apart from each other.

Step 6. Tie a pretty bow. Thread the organza ribbon through the two holes, starting from the front to the back and then back to the front again. Tie a pretty bow…

And you’re done!
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What we used:

• Satin-edged organza ribbon from PaperMart
• Scotch Permanent Photo Safe double sided tape

Step 1. Cut a 2’3″ length of ribbon, trimming the edges at an angle. Wrap it around the pocketfold in a way so that the location of the bow is right where you want it. For our invites, we wanted it at the bottom right of the invite.

Step 2. Lay the pocketfold flat with the ribbon in the right place. Put two small strips of double sided permanent tape along where you want the ribbon to lie. I placed one near the folded edge of the pocketfold and one closer to where the bow would be (but would end up underneath the monogram label).

Step 3. Add 2-3 strips of double-sided tape on the flip side of the pocketfold as well, along where the ribbon will lie. Make sure that you have strips on the edges (i.e. one near the folded edge and one near the cut edge).

Step 4. Adhere the label on the front.

Step 5. Tie your bow! I found the easiest way to tie a pretty bow was making a loop with each length (as opposed to one loop and wrapping the other length over), wrapping one loop over the other, and then adjusting the bow so it sat properly.

And finally, you’re done!

And there you go, the complete tutorial to how we made our invitations! I won’t lie, it took many late nights to craft over 200 of these. Was it worth it? Well, if I had to do it again, I would definitely do it again, because the final product was exactly what we wanted, it was personal, and it was filled with love for our friends and family.
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Photo from Sarah K. Chen’s blog

I like the idea of having a memo board for guests to display their advice and well-wishes. It stands out enough that people will hopefully take notice of it and leave us a note, and it will likely provide some entertainment throughout the evening if our guests are able to read each other’s messages!

Since I’m picky and want everything to coordinate with our colors, I couldn’t just buy any old memo board, and I decided to make my own.

I started with a 20″ x 30″ piece of foam core (1/2″ thickness) from Michaels for $5.99:

And a yard of silver satin from Joann Fabric for $6.99 (which I ironed on a low setting before beginning, to ensure that it was wrinkle-free):

I cut the fabric to be about 5″ wider than the foam core around all edges:

I am sure I could have affixed the fabric to the foam core with a glue gun or something a little neater looking, but I decided that no one is going to see the back of the board, so I used some good ol’ quick, non-messy thumb tacks.

If you have ever stretched an artist’s canvas on your own, this is pretty much the same method I used. I started along one edge, tacking the fabric down, and then moved to the opposite side, pulling tightly so the fabric stayed taut. I did this all the way around, pulling tightly each time; to make sure everything was super secure, I finished the edges off using an extremely high-tech thing called a “stapler”:

Again, not the prettiest method, but it works and it was free since I had a stapler on-hand!

The result was a neat, smooth satin-covered board:

Exciting, huh?

Then it came time for the teal ribbon. Since the board was 30″ on its longest side, I decided I would place the satin ribbon every 5″. With a pencil, I marked 5″ marks along the top and bottom of the board, and then began affixing the ribbon by stapling it down to the back of the foam core. The piece of ribbon that started in the top left corner (at 0″) crossed down to the right and affixed to the 10″ mark at the bottom, in order to create a nice diagonal. I followed this format for all of the ribbons.

And then I went the other way to form my diamond shapes:

Once all of the ribbon was in place, I used my white thumb tacks and some cute decorative fabric flowers that I found at Michaels for $6.99 to further secure the ribbon at all of the intersections:

And, voila! My completed memo board:

The board will be displayed in our cocktail area, along with some blank cards and a sign explaining to our guests what it’s for, so hopefully throughout the evening we’ll get lots of fun messages from our friends and family!

Did doing this save me money? Probably not. Did it take more time than just buying a ready-made memo board? Definitely. But, I like that it will go along with the rest of our wedding decor, and I like that it has a hand-made quality to it.

What kind of guest book are you having at your wedding?
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Here is a screen shot of what my fully designed page looked like. I made some of them upside down so that the text wouldn’t get cut off, since the printer doesn’t like to print too close to the margins.

Don’t forget to first make sure that each slide is set to 8.5″x11″ paper (under “Page Setup” select “Letter” under the drop down menu “Slides sized for”).

For the main invitations, I similarly first drew a 4.75″x4.75″ thinly outlined box. I then added all the text and images and grouped them together. “Grouping” is essentially a function in Powerpoint that will turn all of the selected items into one image, and can be done by selecting all the items, right clicking while they are still selected, and going to “Grouping –> Group”. Once the whole thing was grouped, I was able to copy it by holding down “CTRL+SHIFT” while dragging it across to the other side of the paper.

On the bottom of that sheet, I made the little monogram labels that we would use on the front cover. After these were cut, I pasted them on Metallic Brown paper, cut in 1 7/8″ x 3 1/8″ rectangles using the leftover paper from the invitation backing.

Here is what the full sheet looked like with the actual designs:

Now for some of the details…We used the following fonts:
Lainie Day
High Tower Text
Bickham Script Pro-Regular (for the monogram)

We printed everything on Luxe Glass Text Heavy paper from Paper Source, using the Canon MP530 printer, which I absolutely heart. It was completely reliable and the colors were true to form. It’s actually a photo printer and scanner as well, which is why the print quality was so great!

And finally, the graphic itself. I couldn’t find a graphic I liked, so I created this out of a combination of three different rubber stamps! Here is my original stamped image:

I scanned it in, emailed it off to my friend who has Illustrator, and had her smooth out the edges and even out the black. Once she sent it back to me, I filled in the color with my perfect shade of pink using The Gimp, which is basically like a free software with similar capabilities to Adobe Photoshop (thanks Mrs. Lemon for introducing me to Gimp with your lovely tutorials back in the day!). And voila, the finished image:

That should cover the details, the design, and the dimensions. Next up, the finishing touches!
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To continue the our glam theme, I made bouquet jewels which will be inserted in my bouquet. It was very easy to make and cost pennies compared to buying them already made. You can make endless amounts of shapes when it comes to making them yourself. I decided to make a teardrop kind of shape to recall the chandelier piece which will be wrapped around my bouquet. (see image below)

List of materials:
Jewelry cooper wire
6mm cubic clear Swarvoski crystals
5mm cubic satin silver crystals
miniature taupe multi-faceted fire polished beads

How to:
1- Cut your cooper wire about 12 inches.
2- Insert beads to desired look. Make sure to have a symmetrical design.
3- Fold the wire at the center.
4 - Hold the beads with one hand and with the other start turning the wire to twist it. Continue until you have reached the bottom. This will not only secure the beads but at stength to the stands.
5 - Place the beads and shape wire to desired look and Voila… you have your first bouquet jewel

I also made some bouquet jewels for my bridesmaids, but nothing as complex as mine. I just made them 1 single clear fire polished bead. Since their bouquets won’t be very big, it will add just enough shine. Their flowers will be pale pink so the clear stones will pop out and shimmer in the sun.

Since our flower girl is not allowed to throw flower petals, I decided to make her a basket and she will have a full bodied ivory peony in the basket. I think it will look really cute.

Before

After

Cost breakdown:
Bridal bouquet jewels : 8 strands = 3.75$ each (5 swarvoski crystals)
Bridesmaids bouquet jewels: 38 strands = 0.33$ each
Chandelier piece for handle: 0.75$
Flower girl basket: 2.oo$ basket + 2.50 ribbon = 4.50$

Are you adding anything jewelry to your bouquet?

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Mrs. Bird of Paradise actually did a similar post a while back, so be sure to check that out!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I learned my lesson a little too late. You can hopefully tell from the picture above, the first two columns of bows look much better than the last two columns. While the bows in the first two column were symmetrical, the bows in the last two columns still looked like bows, but they were slanted. My problem was that I only made one loop, like I would when tying my shoelaces, but there’s a better way!

The Container Store has this helpful website that teaches you how (click over for the full tutorial).

Basically you need to make two loops and then do the bunny ears method.

Here’s a video I found on youtube.

Feel free to suggest some better options. Good luck!
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