Semi-DIY: Flower girl dresses and headbands

We are having two flower girls. They are both pretty young, so I don't really expect them to behave like older flower girls would, but they are both just so darn cute that at the very least I'd like to have them in pictures wearing their cute outfits.

I scoured the internet looking for the perfect flower girl dress on a budget. I really didn't want my friends (or myself) to have to pay more than $30 for the flower girl dresses.

I happened upon the girl's department in JCPenney yesterday and saw that all of their "special occasion" dresses were on sale. SCORE! There were several that I loved, but then you factor in the prices and the sizes available, and the choices were definitely narrowed down for me. However, I didn't want to be impulsive. I knew that I had recently been sent at least one coupon from JCPenney in the mail. So I didn't buy them then. I came home only to discover that I actually had 2 $10 off coupons! Yay!

So, today while I was off work, I went back to JCPenney. The choices I liked were still there, and I had my coupons in hand. One dress was the front runner, but it was also more expensive, and there were still things I'd want to change about it. In the end, I decided since I wanted to make changes anyway...  might as well go with the cheaper dress.  I enlisted my MOH (my sister) to come with me so that we could use one coupon on each dress.

I ended up getting the dresses for $11.99 each! They were originally priced at $54.99 so this was absolutely a bargain! I got two flower girls dresses for under $25! The one I bought looked like this:

They are ivory (which I love) and they have a lace-looking embroidery on the skirt (which I also love). However, I'm not loving the flowers on the front AT ALL. I mean, if I had to... yeah, I could deal with them. But I'd rather not. So, they looked fairly simple to remove. I figured at $11.99 a dress, even if I messed them up it wouldn't be that upsetting.  So, I removed the flowers on the front, and also the sash/bow that started on the sides and tied in the back.  Then I added a brown ribbon to correspond with our wedding colors (the hot glue gun is my BFF) and I ended up with this:

I love it!!! It is a completely unique look? No. But where else could I have gotten a dress this cute for only $12?!?! I've also already made headbands for the flower girls to wear. I love the headbands too! They are my favorite part and I can't wait to see Olivia and Brianne wear them. I'll have to do a tutorial for this one soon.

Crunch Time!

Well, I haven't posted in quite a while.... almost 4 months, actually. In reality I haven't really had much to post about because I've been a slacker bride. However, now that we are officially past the "100 days" mark, it's time to get serious. As of today we have 94 days until the wedding... and I'm SOOO far behind! Eeek!

I mean... seriously, where did all the time go?!?! We have had a long engagement (almost 23 months) so at times it seemed like we'd never get to this point. But now, here we are... a mere 94 days away. It feels unreal. I remember reading other wedding blogs and feeling so jealous that they were getting so close to their weddings. For the most part, everything is planned and picked. It's just the execution that I have to work on now. I think I may have taken on way too many DIY projects. I have eliminated a few that I decided that I could live without, but the others are important to me and I need to get them done. I realize that not many guests are going to really care about our ceremony programs or the pew decorations, etc. But those things are important to me. I want to set a tone for our wedding. I want to have no regrets when it's over. So while a lot of the projects are intended for other people to see, they really are for me too. It's my day and I want it to be fabulous and have lots of special details.

I've enlisted the help of my MOH (my little sister) and two bridesmaids to help me with the rest of the projects. We are having our second DIY "party" this weekend and then another DIY "party" in September. Hopefully we'll be able to get everything finished and I'll have lots of pictures.

I do have a few DIY projects to post that have been finished over the past few months... so hopefully I'll get a chance to post those soon!

DIY: Groomsmen gifts- Etched glass mugs

I love the look of the personalized large beer mugs for groomsmen gifts, but I don't love the $40+ price tag. So, I decided to DIY this one too. I chose to do just the first letter of each guy's last name.

Supplies:

- Contact paper ($1 at The Dollar Tree)

- Printed letter in preferred font (Free. Done from my computer and printed at home on regular paper.)

- Small paint brush (Free. Already had on hand)

- Exacto knife (Free. Already had on hand)

- Glass etching cream (Free. Given to me by one of my BFF's who used it for her wedding last year and had some left over.

- Glass mug ($1 each at The Dollar Tree. Seriously... these are heavy, about 7 inches tall, and look like nice quality too!)

1- Tape your printed letter to a piece of contact paper (The side that you'll be looking at after you stick it to the mug.)

2- Cut carefully around the letter (also cutting through the contact paper since it's taped underneath) with the knife, leaving a stencil made of contact paper when finished.

3- Stick your contact paper stencil on the mug. Be sure to center and smooth out and make sure all edges are stuck securely to the glass so that cream doesn't ooze under any parts of the stencil.

4- Paint over open part of stencil with glass etching cream (read directions on your brand for instruction on how long to leave it on. Also... be careful not to get too much on yourself as this can burn your skin. So maybe wear some gloves, ok?)

5- Wash cream off (I left mine on for about 2-3 minutes each time) with warm water until all is removed from the glass.

6- Peel off stencil and admire your handy work.

Ta-Da! I love them! No, they aren't perfect, but they are still great! (trying so hard to not be such a control-freak/perfectionist when it comes to all things wedding related). So, there you have it.... 4 personalized etched glass large beer mugs for a total of $5! That's a TOTAL budget bride victory!!!

DIY: Bridesmaid Bouquets

These were basically pre-made bouquets from Michael's. I believe they were originally $7.99, but I used a coupon for each one making them only $3.99 each. (I typically wouldn't have gone with a pre-made bouquet but I love the color of these roses.) And since you can only use one coupon per transaction, I also enlisted my sister (the MOH) and the fiance to each purchase one with one of my coupons so we could condense our trips to Michael's.   :-)

Ok, so then I just wrapped each bouquet in standard brown satin ribbon. They still looked like they were missing something. So I put a single strip of lace, left over from my DIY lace hair flower, around the middle and then inserted 3 diamond type pins in the stems. During the process I arranged the flowers like I wanted them, but then some of the stems were a little too long so I had to trim the ends (see tip below).

I absolutely looooooove them. I can't explain it. They are just the epitome of everything I want in my wedding... they've got the pink, the brown, the lace, the romantic/rustic feel to them.  I. LOVE. THEM.

TIP: Don't cut your finger with scissors during the process like I did. It was quite a deep cut, and was bleeding everywhere and definitely impeded my DIY attempts today. However, now my bridesmaids can know that I put LITERALLY my blood, sweat, and tears into their bouquets. I'm sure they'll love that thought....

These are also going to be sitting on the head tables as decoration at the reception. I will be putting glass jars (recycled from things we use at home so these were free) at several spots along the table for each girl to sit their bouquet in.

DIY: Lace hair flower

Hello again! Long time, no blog!

Threw this random DIY project together as I was recently thinking about how heavy my veil is, which means I may not wear it the entire reception. So, I thought of creating a hair flower.

Supplies:
- 1 sheet of felt (30 cents at Michael's)
- Scissors
- Glue gun and glue stick
- A couple feet of lace (found whole spool on sale at Joann Fabrics for $2.50. Forgot to measure exactly how much I used, but I'm guessing it's around 2 feet or so)
- Decorative button to use as center of flower. (Got mine on sale at Joann Fabrics for $2)
- Hair clip or pin to glue on back.

-Cut out 2 inch circle from sheet of felt.
- I cut my lace off of the seam but I imagine you could probably use it as is, but I liked the look of the flat lace.
- Using hot glue gun start gluing one long section of lace around the felt circle so that there is about 1/2 inch of lace hanging off the outside of the circle.
- Once you have completed one rotation around the felt circle, cut the lace where the edges meet.

Here's what it looked like at this point:

- Start gluing another section of lace onto the flower (cut lace length-wise to make thinner if you so desire. This should be based on how big your felt circle is and how wide your lace is) to make a smaller circle inside (and on top of) the this one.
- Glue a final even smaller circle of lace inside the second one. (hard to explain, but the final picture should hopefully explain it better than I can.)
- Hot glue your decorative button of choice into the middle of the flower covering the visible edge of the smallest lace circle that you just created.
- Finally, hot glue your hair clip or pin of choice onto the back.

You could glue a hair clip on the back like I did but there are also a lot of other possibilities. It could be attached to a headband, could be a broach with a safety pin on the back, or glue a long length of ribbon on the back and it could be a sash of some kind.

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!

DIY Personalized Napkins

I'm all about having as many personal touches to our wedding as we can. Deep down one of my biggest fears is that I'll look like a generic bride and our wedding will feel like a generic "cookie cutter" wedding. That's just not my style and not what I want. Now, our isn't going to be anything crazy strange or anything like that, but I definitely want to have as many little unique personalized touches as I can.

So... as I'm sure many of you have seen on the numerous wedding sites we all visit, they sell napkins that you can have personalized with your name and wedding date. They are cute but I just can't justify spending so much money on something people are going to wipe their mouths with. So, I decided to just to a more simple DIY version.

First I got an ink pad from Michael's (again, used a coupon. I hardly buy anything at Michael's without using a 40% off coupon). You have to make sure for things like napkins that you get the pigment ink because it's water resistant. It doesn't bleed when a sweating glass is placed on it and it won't wipe off onto your guests faces (I tested it out to make sure).

I already had the clear acrylic stamp blocks from Michael's (40% off coupon again) from when I first thought we were going to attempt embossing, which didn't really work out as great as I thought. I found this little pack of "W" stamps in one of the dollar bins at Michael's during one of my many trips there. We ended up using the one in the bottom right.

Then I went to Dollar Tree and got 4 packs of 20 pale pink napkins. I also had an open pack of white from when I attempted embossing in my earlier days so I used those too.  Then I just started stamping away. I let the fiance have some say in what stamp we used. I tried several (not pictured) but he just liked the plain "w" the best. Some of the more intricate stamps don't look as clean or nice when stampng on a napkin, so that's another reason we stuck with a simple design.

Ended up with around 100 napkins for a about $7.

Nothing too fancy, but still cute.... and super easy to accomplish.

Frame and Poem for the Guestbook Table

Another quick and easy one today.

I found some frames from the dollar store that were kind of rustic looking. They gave me the shabby chic vibe that I was going for.... except they were totally the wrong color. Their original color (which I forgot to photograph) reminded me more of an outhouse, which isn't really the vibe I'm going for at my wedding.

So.... last weekend I went to BM Tonja's house and we had a spray paint party. She was nice enough to let me use their deck and help me paint. (It's a little hard and kinda unsafe to be spray painting in my apartment, I guess.)

So I spray painted the frames ivory. They came out pretty good. I am thinking of making them a little more "rustic" by using some sandpaper on them to give them that antique/vintage vibe, but I haven't officially decided yet.  Then I typed up a poem to put in the frame to kind of explain our guest "book".

I've never really been a fan of the traditional guestbook, just because I'd hate to just put it away on a shelf and that be the end of it. So months ago I came across this photo (Sorry, can't remember where or I'd give credit where credit is due.) and knew that's what I wanted to do. We went to a second hand record shop and each bought a record of our favorite old bands. I picked an album by "The Doors" (I Loooove me some Jim Morrison) and the fiance picked an album by "Led Zepplin". We'll have the guest sign them with paint pens and then hang them in some collectible display cases (larger than the one pictured) that I got on sale at Michael's a few months back.

Anyway.... so I typed up the poem and put it in the frame. The first 2 lines I read somewhere on the web (again, I'm bad about remembering where I saw things. Sorry) and the rest I just made up. It's not perfect, in my mind, but I'm trying not to be a perfectionist when it comes to all things wedding. And since this is something that most people may not even read I didn't want to spend too much time on it.

In case you can't read it, the poem says:

Instead of a guestbook

stuck in a drawer,

Alex and Samantha

thought they would do more.

Please sign your name

or leave them a note,

so all their lives

they can read what you wrote.

Thank you for sharing

in their wonderful day,

and for helping to celebrate

in your own special way.

DIY Flower Girl Basket

This one is quick and easy.

First I found a cheap small wicker-type basket from Goodwill. (I often frequent the 50% off Saturday sales, so I got this basket for about 50 cents!)

Then I picked up a can of spray paint from Wal-mart in my desired color. I chose Krylon's "ballet slipper" pink.

So then I painted the basket in the pink color and got some chocolate brown ribbon on sale at Michael's to tie on each side of the basket.

Ta-da! Finished product:

Updates

Been too long since I last posted. Things are moving along these days. We are still about a 15 and a half months away from our wedding. Gosh, it seems SO far away... but I have to remind myself that we started out with almost 23 months away from the wedding so time is ticking by pretty good.

I have lots of DIY projects to post and recently have stepped up my DIY efforts as I realized that with as many as I have to do, I should probably get started.  I may be being a little over ambitious with the DIY projects but I just want to do as many as I can to make our wedding budget friendly and very personalized.

I've also been back on my healthy eating and exercise plan or the past 2 weeks. I took too much of a break during my birthday a few weeks ago. I'm back on it now though. Not just because I'm a bride-to-be but I've been attempting this for the past few years. I've lost about 35 pounds or so, but things kind of stalled after that point. I want to get back on it because I want to LOVE my wedding pictures and not look at them and think about how I hate my flabby arms and chubby face. I know it's not about how I look though, it's about the committment I am making that day. But I'd like to love the pictures that I'll be spending so much money on.  I also want to get healthier because we are planning on starting a family soon after we are married and I have already had some problems down in the lady parts with Fibroid tumors and such so I'd like to be healthy so I can be the best expectant mother that I can be. I want to give my future babies a good home for those 9 months and I want to be around a long, long time and watch them grow-up.

In other news, the fiance's sister is getting married 2 weeks from today. So that's exciting. We are considering using the same family friend as our DJ that she's using at her reception so I'll get to see him in action to know if we want to use him for our reception too. It'll be a fun time. I love my fiance's family. They are the greatest and I can't wait to be an official member of their family.

Anyway... have a great weekend, ladies! I'll try to start posting all my DIY and other post soon

DIY Doily Disaster

I've been wanting to do some sort of craft lately, so I figured I would do a trial of the canvas totes that I wanted to make for part of my bridesmaids gifts.

I have seen this project on SO many blogs lately, but I believe that this is the one where I first came across it.

I thought it seemed cute. I liked that I could still personalize it, and it seemed easy. So today I had the fiance drop me off at Michael's (I didn't make him go in as he has apparently reached his limit on the number of times he can suffer through a Michael's shopping trip with me) and I went in search of the items I needed. I already have lots of paintbrushes at home, so I bought one plain canvas tote, a bottle of brown fabric pain, some 10 inch doilies, and a can of spray adhesive. Thanks to a 40% Off One Item coupon, this cost me about $12.

So, I came home and attempted it. I had read on some blogs that people had had some problems getting the paint to look exactly right. It seems it often creeps under parts of the doily and then you don't get that tidy look that I was going for. Still... I figured I'd give it a shot.

Well.............. It didn't work out. The bag looked like a sad little doily disaster. I thought I did it all right too. I adhered my doily. I made sure it was firmly in place, but yet my paint still got into places I didn't want it to. I read on another blog (can't remember which one right now) about how she found out that if you use an Exacto knife and cut out a freezer paper stencil from the doily and then adhere that freezer paper stencil to your bag it comes out much more precise, but I'm lazy and dont feel like cutting out all those little tiny holes so the doily idea may have to just go into my "DIY Fail" file.

So, here I sat with a messy looking $4 canvas bag. I couldn't let that go to waste. I tried to figure out something else to do with it that would cover up the doily mistake and yet still look cute. I couldn't think of many easy things. I didn't feel like searching for a new project or stencil... so I decided to just wing it.

Here's what I came up with:

Yes, what started out as a bag for the bridesmaids ended up as a bag for me. Lol. Oh well... I had to figure something out to do with it. So I painted it with the brown fabric paint that I bought today and then used some left over acrylic paint I had around the house (after I googled to see if acrylic paint would be ok for fabric, and the general consensus seemed to be that it is... we'll see). I just freehanded the color blocks, then decided to try to freehand the "W". I drew the "W" on the bag first with a pencil and then painted over it.

It came out pretty good. I'm kinda proud of it for a project that wasn't planned and for not letting the "Doily Disaster" get me down.

I found some cheaper canvas bags online today from here. Even after shipping they still end up under $2 per bag.

I hope to still make some sort of bags for the bridesmaids.... just have to rethink my design (and figure out what to do with all my leftover doilies).

Making my own Monogram

I love the look of the personalized monograms for weddings. So, I've been trying to create my own. It's still in the very early stages, especially since I don't really consider myself a computer genius. They have started out very simple, which I like. I just don't know if maybe I want to incorporate something else with them. Perhaps some sort of fall element?  We'll see.

Here are the preliminary options: