Yup, that's the man I'm marrying!

Thursday I was feeling a little down. Alex noticed and hates when I feel sad and tries to cheer me up.
Friday morning comes along...and this is what happened:

Alex leaves for work before I wake up, but he knows my routine.  So, I wake up and go to feed my 2 cats. It's the first thing I do every morning as they are always waiting right by the bedroom door when I wake up and are ready to be fed NOW. lol.

So I go the closet to get the cat food and there's a post-it stuck there:

Then I head to the bathroom to shower. On the bathroom door is another one (which I forgot to take a picture of) that say "Love You!"

Then I go in the bathroom and on the bathroom mirror is this one (Please ignore the 1970s tile in my apartment bathroom. haha):

Then after I've finished getting ready and am heading out the door to work, I find this one on the inside of our front door:

And that's one of the MANY reasons that I am marrying this man.  :-)

I want to win.....

... the giveway at Bridal Gown Blog, that is.  I entered to win one of the awesome personalized hangers.

If you want to head over and enter too, here's the link:

http://bridalgownblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/its-giveaway-time.html

DIY Lovebirds Cake Topper

I'm sure many of you have seen the variety of sculpted cake toppers. From personalized brides and grooms to animals... there is a large selection.  One of my bridesmaids saw some sculpted birds for cake toppers and I LOVED them! However, these cute toppers usually come with a hefty price tag... and I just can't justify in my mind spending $40+ on a cake topper.

Enter crazy DIY bride notion to make her own.  :-)

I had no idea what to do, what I'd need, or where to start. So I just winged it. (Most of these pictures were taken with my phone as my camera was on the fritz. Sorry).

SUPPLIES:
- Sculpey clay
- Acrylic paint
- Paint brushes
- Oven
- Toothpicks
- Super glue

PROCESS:

- Ok, so I went to Michael's and bought one of the small blocks of Sculpey clay.  This is not the smallest block, but probably counts as the "medium" size at Michael's. I picked this clay because it's the kind that you bake after you've molded it. I like this idea because then I didn't have to rush or worry about changing my sculpture, since this doesn't harden just from being exposed to air for a bit... and because after baking they get very hard so I didn't have worry about messing them up from that point on.

- Ok, so... buy your sculpey and sculpt your birds. Again... I just kind of winged this part. I looked at some other pictures of clay birds for reference though. I chose to sculpt all the parts of my bird separately. The body, the wings, and the beak. I didn't really want my birds to be too realistic looking.... so adding the parts on later seemed to give me the look I was going for.  If you plan on giving your birds legs then you need to make the holes for the legs now as you won't be able to after it's baked and hardened.  Toothpicks ended up being just the appropriate size for my bird legs. (Don't leave the toothpicks in while baking, just make the holes and then remove them.)

- After you've sculpted your birds, you then bake the clay in the oven according to the directions on the side of the Sculpey package. I believe it's like 15 mintes for every 1/4 inch of thickness or something. Read the package, it'll tell you.

- Take the birds (and their various parts) out of the oven and allow them to cool completely.

-After they've cooled you can paint them any color you prefer. Also, paint their various parts and accessories. I painted by birds a pale pink and their beaks a mocha brown color.

-Add accessories. I chose to give my groom a dark brown bow tie that I sculpted from the clay too. The bride has a veil that I created by just cutting a small rectangle shape from a piece of tulle and then sewing with white thread at one end to gather it.

- Super glue the wings, beaks, and accessories onto the birds.

-Paint some eyes on. I gave mine dark brown eyes.... the bride got some cute eyelashes.

And there ya have it. They aren't perfect, but they are handmade and I adore them. And this project probably cost me about $10 total. Awesome!

DIY Coasters

Lots of lots of projects still going on. I had a long weekend from work for Labor Day so I've been doing lots of shopping and lots of DIY.  Here's the more recent one.....

SUPPLIES:
-I purchased a pack of 125 square, 4 inch, chipboard coasters from an Ebay seller for about $14.50 (including shipping).

-I already had the ink pads (have to use the pigment ink on coasters since it's water resistant) from previous projects.

-I purchased the "lovebirds" stamp and "Thank You" stamp at Hobby Lobby for about $2-2.50 each (during one of their stamp sales).

-The heat gun I borrowed from my future father-in-law, who had used it for rebuilding an old car. It's not an actual embossing gun, but it gets the job done just the same (and I didn't have to pay for one, which is awesome).

-The clear sparkly embossing powder I bought from Michael's using a 40% off coupon.

PROCESS:
- This one is pretty easy. I just took the bird stamp and inked it up with the brown ink and stamped them on the coasters. I had to get a good amount of ink on there and then press down really hard on the coaster to make sure that I got all the lines nice and complete, but they came out pretty good.
-Then I took the pink ink and the "Thank You" stamp and stamped it right below the birds. Since I was going to be embossing the pink part I had to have the embossing power open and ready to go since I have to sprinkle it on the ink immediately after stamping to ensure that it sticks.
-So, after stamping the "Thank You", sprinkle on the embossing powder.
-Shake excess embossing powder off the coaster (I shake mine into a bowl that way I can reuse it later by just funneling it back into the powder jar).
-Then take your heat gun and melt the embossing powder until you see it start to become cohesive and shiny.

*TIP: When it comes to embossing I've tried tons of inks, powders, etc.  What I found that works best and gives me the clearest image (this is especially important if you are dealing with a pretty detailed stamp) is to stamp the image with the color of ink you want and then emboss it with the clear powder. Embossing with the colored powders looks more messy for a detailed image, at least in my experience.*

All done! I LOVE them. The birds are so cute!  Not sure how my wedding theme came to involve birds, but I love it. We definitely have a rustic elegance look to most of our stuff.

Have a great rest of the week!