Bridal Shower Banners

After my co-worker saw my awesome rosette banners from my cousin's bridal shower,

Awesome rosette tutorial can be found here.

 

She enlisted me to make banners for her sister's bridal shower. She let me have free rein, with only two requirements: they had to involve pink and cheetah. How fun!

While I love my rosette banners, they were just a bit too much, not to mention time consuming. I decided to make a variety of banners in different styles in my standard "bridal shower package": 1. the wedding date, 2. "bride-to-be", and 3. the names of the bride and groom.

I love how these came out! 

Handmade with love!

While I didn't want all rosettes, I think the rosette banner was my favorite.

Usually I attach the letters to string on the back. Practical, but BORING!

 This go around, I decided to branch out and use ribbon to jazz it up a little bit. I went with a classy, sheer black ribbon, so the banners weren't overly busy.

I hadn't made a triangle flag banner before, but it looks awesome!

Now, I just need to figure out how to tie perfect bows to attach the letters together...

Time for a name change...

After all the planning for the wedding was over, I really missed it. I loved having my creative side come out, which I don't really get to on a daily basis as an accountant. So, naturally, I decided to start my own event planning business and roped my sister-in-law, Sam, with me, as a project we could do on the side.

Hire us now!

We'll cover all event aspects from decor to planning and staging.

 Stay tuned for a peek at our debut event at the end of September!

DIY Paper flowers

After sending out my invitations, I had all these encyclopedias that I wanted to use in some kind of craft for the wedding. A friend sent me a link to a blog post from Offbeat Bride, "How to pull off some awesome decor for your literary wedding".

 I loved the paper roses, so I decided to give them a shot.

I found this awesome tutorial at A Beautiful Mess. There's a great, short little video (without words) that I found super helpful (obvi., why else would I tell you about it?!). I started out by cutting out 1" x 1" and 2" x 2" squares from the encyclopedia pages. I tried 3" x 3" squares, but the flowers were too big and looked a bit ridiculous. I (and mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and hubby) ended up making about 5 dozen roses. I wanted enough for 3 roses per bridesmaid bouquet, 5 for my bouquet, and one for each of the groom/groomsmen's boutineers, with the extras going to the centerpieces. 

The hardest part is getting the flowers started. Then you start adding "petals" around the flower. I tried to depict it below, but ehh, you should probably just watch the video.

Add a small amount of hot glue to the bottom of the "petal"

Fold the "petal" for the starter (p.s. these pictures were impossible to take).

Again, you should probably watch the video.

Ta-da!

Pretty flowers ready to head to the florist.

My bouquet.

Terrible picture, but you can see the pictures on the groomsmen's boutineers

The flowers really weren't that hard to do (I mean, even the hubby was able to do it!), once you get it started, and I received so many compliments on them! You should totally try them for your wedding!

Brickhouse Banners: A Paper Rosette DIY Tutorial

Taking a break from wedding posts to talk about paper rosettes. We'll just entitle this:

Brickhouse Banners

I started making banners for family parties and am toying with the idea of selling them, but I always make the same style, similar to this:

My first banner, made on a whim for my brother's welcome home party. 

 When I got the invitation for my cousin's fiancee's bridal shower, I decided it was time to switch it up and try something new. 

I saw some ideas for Fourth of July decorations on a website (not Pinterest) and decided to try rosettes using crepe paper. The directions on the website weren't too descriptive, but how hard could it be? It involved a piece of crepe paper cut to 8" x 20", and then you glued two strips of crepe paper on top in different colors, and folded like an accordion. Well they looked god awful. Turns out crepe paper is difficult to work with.

So, I set out scouring the internet for a paper rosette tutorial and they were all terrible. None gave measurements whatsoever! They basically said to have a piece of paper 12" long, fold like an accordion, glue the two ends together, push the center in to flatten it out, and it should be perfect. Many failed attempts later, they weren't even close to perfect. So here I am to tell everyone how to make the perfect paper rosette --now, including measurements!

To start off, I would recommend buying the Martha Stewart Crafts Scoring Board and Envelope Tool. It is just over $13 on Amazon and it is amazing! I wasn't going to buy it at first, and just make the accordions by hand, but I am so glad I bought it because it made it so much easier, and I will totally use it for other projects!

I used 12" x 12" scrapbook paper and 8.5" x 11" cardstock. I wanted to have layered rosettes on the banner, so I made some strips that were 2.25" wide and some were 3.0" wide (and 11 or 12 inches long). 

There is a ruler at the top and sides of the scoring board, and it comes with a bone folder. For the 2.25" wide strips, I scored them every 1/4 of an inch. For the 3" wide strips, I scored them every 1/2". Here's what I didn't find on other tutorials: two strips are needed for one rosette. I tried scoring every 1", but it didn't work out (I have a feeling it might have worked had I used three strips instead of two, but didn't attempt it).

Once all the strips are scored to the proper width, line two up end to end to make the first rosette. You want to glue them together so there is a seamless transition from one strip to the other (so the zigzags all flow together). 

Here I had to cut off a little piece from the one strip. Below you can see how the piece on the right is going to sit like a hat on the left piece, so there is a seamless transition. 

I put hot glue on the piece on the left before sliding the piece from the right, on top. Then, you're going to do the same to the other ends, so they form a circle. 

Next, you're going to pinch the top and push down to flatten the circle. 

And, voila!

Squeeze the edges to make the center smaller,  and put hot glue in the middle to hold it all together. I like to put a piece of scrap paper over it, for extra security.

Hold down until mostly dry, so it all stays together.

For the 2.25" strips where I scored every 1/4", I probably could have gotten away with shorter strips (length wise), because I had to really squeeze them together to glue the center close enough to glue, but they still turned out nice.

I went through a lot of hot glue and burned my fingers a lot, but am so happy with the finished product! I still have to figure out how hang them perfectly, but they still look pretty awesome. 

So, who wants a banner!?

  

Programs

I had no idea how much time went into blogs when I came up with the idea to start this one (not that I envisioned posting daily, but more frequently than I do). 

Anywho...on to Programs...

When I come up with a theme, I tend to go a little over-board. Enter my programs...I wanted them to look like a book, so this is what I came up with.

Of course I had to include my pugs.

I added some footnotes to give the guests a couple of facts throughout the program.

After this "title page," I had the sections "Introduction", "The Ceremony", and "Epilogue". In the Introduction section, I listed out the participants (officiant, singer, musician, parents, bridal party, etc.). The Ceremony section is self-explanatory (order of events, who the readers are, yada, yada, yada). I added the Epilogue section pretty much because I needed another page. That section basically said where the reception was and to bring your dancing shoes! All together it was about 8 pages. We had free parking for our guests and they needed a placard to park there, so we included that on the back cover of the program (turns out they had to turn in the placard to park there, instead of placing it on the dashboard, so that plan backfired).

My sister is always making custom labels for gifts and other designy/crafty things like that and she told me that she uses PowerPoint to make her projects (go figure!). I decided to try it for my programs and signs that I put up around the wedding, and absolutely loved it! I don't know how to use Photoshop and found PowerPoint so easy to use. It's easy to move the textboxes around to where I wanted them. It's even easy using pictures, like the pugs I used for the "publishing" logo.

The hubs and I printed these out ourselves and the hubs put them together. We used 32lb ivory paper for the inner pages since we were printing on both sides of the paper, so it wouldn't show through on the other side. For the cover we used a 90lb ivory cardstock, so it was a little thicker and sturdier. Then we used a long reach stapler to put the programs together. I absolutely loved the way they came out!

Invitations - Part II

I started to really embrace the library theme while planning, and wouldn't have chosen any other theme for my wedding (except maybe nautical -- <3 sailboats and anchors!).

One thing I knew I wanted for my invites was to have them in some kind of envelope so guests wouldn't lose them post delivery (an enclosure envelope, if you will). The other thing I knew I wanted was some kind of "library" seal. 

This is the initial enclosure envelope I wanted, unfortunately they weren't going to work for my invites (I wanted everything to stay in the pocket on the left hand side, but the invite is meant to be placed on the flat section and the enclosures in the pocket--annoying).

From the most awesome store ever -- Paper Source! Note: this is not the color I was shopping for, but the picture shows the most definition in this color)

Paper Source was a little expensive when I was pricing out my envelopes, but you just can't beat their quality and their selection! I purchased numerous samples of enclosure envelopes and paper swatches from a much cheaper website, but the enclosure envelopes weren't up to snuff, so I was going to buy some from Paper Source and some from this other website, but it just wasn't worth it. I wasn't able to order a sample from Paper Source, but luckily for me, there is a store nearby, so I bought a pack of envelopes to see if they would work.

Anywho -- here is the enclosure envelope I ended up using. I ordered them in the luxe, cream finish, which has a little bit of texture to it. 

I found a library seal embosser on Amazon.com, which was one of the best things I purchased for the wedding (after the fiance I figured out how to use it properly).

Library book embosser on Amazon

Here's a close up of my embosser's final product (?), and the enclosure envelope with the seal:

The other totally awesome thing I did to carry on my library theme was to use encyclopedia pages to make envelope liners for my envelopes and response envelopes (as pictured above). My parents had a set of encyclopedias that were published in the 1950s (and purchased for a quarter a piece in the '90s), but they've sat on the bookshelf, untouched for years. My dad absolutely loves books, so he was a little hesitant to let me use the encyclopedias at first, but he quickly came around.

Initially I was looking for the liners on Etsy before deciding I could make them myself. I purchased an envelope liner template kit from Paper Source (have I mentioned how much I love that store?). They have a tutorial video on their website, although it doesn't need much explaining, but does help to show just how easy it is to make them. 

Here's the finished product of my invitations:

I cut out certain sections of the encyclopedias to use for the liners that were important to us such as beer, accounting, Philadelphia, etc. with every intention of giving the guest a section that we had in common, but that quickly fell by the way side. 

I absolutely love the way the invitations came out and hope I was able to inspire someone else out there!

Invitations...Part I

After scouring the internet for library themed wedding invites on the typical invitation websites, I wasn't having any luck. While the ones that I saw were "nice," they just weren't what I was looking for. If my our invitation and save the date were displayed next to each other, I wanted them to "go," and I wasn't finding anything that flowed nicely. I decided to search "library themed wedding invitations" on Etsy, and found so many more options.

The ones that tickled my fancy were the ones that looked like a book cover. Below is the one I ended up purchasing from 3EggsDesign on Etsy. I was able to make some changes to the invitation suite, such as having adding entree choices to the R.S.V.P. cards, and having an information card instead of a save the date (Kim is totally awesome!!).

I love the look of the invitation suite, and it fit in my budget, score! I received a PDF of the invitation suite and took them to Staples to be printed. The only downside was that I had to cut them out myself. After I used this amazing/awesome/miracle worker for a paper cutter:

I started out using the kind where you slide the blade to cut the paper, but I just wasn't happy with the way the invitations were coming out (a.k.a. it was the worst paper cutter ever and the invites were looking aw-ful). Luckily my dad already had the paper cutter above, so I was able to salvage the invites I had already cut. If you're printing your own invitations, you have to get a cutter like this one!

Here are some other literary wedding invitations fit for various budgets and where to find them.

BokehDotPrint on Etsy

BlackLabStudio on Etsy

HappyWhale on Etsy

PceLoveDesign on Etsy

KendraOlson on Etsy

TheBirdAndTheBeard on Etsy (I bought my escort cards from them and highly recommend!)