The chair cover situation

Chair covers are not a necessity by any means. However, the chairs at our reception site aren't the most eye-pleasing things to go look at and I really think it'd just help pull things together if I had chair covers. Also, the white tablecloths included in our reception price aren't floor length, so I feel like chair covers help give the illusion of longer table cloths and cover the gap between the table cloth and the floor.

Anyway.... I contemplated trying to make them myself, but then realized that between the price of fabric and my very novice sewing skills that it just wouldn't be worth it.

Then I talked to our reception place yesterday about renting them. The problems with this were 1) It's $2.50 per chair cover w/ sash. 2) They don't even have any of my colors in sashes yet. They said they might be ordering a pale pink sash later this year, but there was no guarantee. 3) I hate paying almost $300 only to have nothing to show for it in the end.

Then I scoured the wedding sites to see if I could buy used ones. Typically they were all sold before I could get to them. Apparently I'm not quick enough on the WeddingBee classifieds. lol. It's also a little scary to buy from someone you don't know and have never heard of, not to mention that most of the sellers on there are asking a price close to what I can buy my own for.

So... in the end I decided to buy new chair covers (hopefully I can sell them to another bride after our wedding and recoup some of the cost) from linentablecloth.com.  They are having a sale right now where their white polyester banquet chair covers are $1.97 each, plus I had a 10% off coupon code for January (they give them out on their Twitter account), AND they have free shipping right now if your order is over $50.

So.... I bought 110 brand new chair covers for $195. That comes out to about $1.77 per chair cover!

This does not include a sash. I have not purchased sashes yet, though I will probably also buy the sashes from the same site. I am waiting because they have a rewards point program and for every 1000 points you accrue you can get $10 off an order. Rewards points can be accrued by registering on their site, signing up for the e-mail newsletter, reviewing a product, and for every dollar you spend there. Hopefully I'll accrue enough to get $10 off my sash order at a later date. I have been searching other places to see if I can find any cheaper, but no luck yet.

Once I receive the chair covers I'll let you know what I think about them.


*I have absolutely no affiliation with www.linentablecloth.com. They did not pay me or give me any sort of additional discount for this post. I simply liked their site and made my purchase.*

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).