Wedding DIY

Now updated with pro pictures. 

On July 30, 2013 at exactly 4pm I started a thread called "I made this today" and began posting all the projects I completed for the wedding on August 18, 2013 at 10:38pm I completed my postings.

What happened in between has been referred to has "craftapalozza" and "the craftpolcypse" and I can't say I find either of those descriptions inaccurate.

 The following is my account to the best of my recollection of what transpired and was created during those 20 days.

For these I took an approximately 6" wide roll of burlap I was lucky enough to find in the sales bin outside of Michael's and just cut it diagonally to make the triangles. I used white acrylic paint and a stencil I found for the letters and then hot glued the triangles to a length of twine to string them together. They held up fantastically.

Then I started to make flowers. I used an old dictionary that my grandparents gave me. I ended up with approximately 110 of these blooms. I used a similar technique to the one found here. Then I took a length of floral wire, folded it in half and wound it around itself to act as the stem which was hot glued to the bloom. This resulted in one hell of a cigar butt sized burn on my shin that is still there as a reminder that hot glue and sleep deprivation do not mix. 

The flowers ended up being used for my bouquet and centerpieces. For the center pieces I put floral foam in the bottom of cans I'd been saving and had wrapped in good grained scrapbook paper and doodled on with colored pencils. Then I just stuck the stems into the foam and arranged the flowers accordingly. 

For my bouquet I ended up wrapping the stems in floral paper and then in this wired ribbon. I added a bow for more flair and then photo charms carrying pictures of my grandparents, grandfathers on one side, grandmothers on the reverse. This was a touch that my family really appreciated.

One of my favorite things to do at a wedding is the clink my glass like crazy to get the bride and groom to kiss. Since we weren't having glass at the wedding I decided on this solution. I purchased some cheap little bells on amazon and used my cricut to cut out letters in vinyl that I attached to the bells. These also became part of the centerpiece. 

We had a Christmas party during our first year of dating and the most fun was had outside where we set up a backdrop for people to take photos in front of that included props. It was something we really wanted to include again. We built a frame out of PVC pipe that was 10' long and 7' high and from it we hung this fabric with more burlap banner. Notice how you can see the polkadots through the burlap? This made the letters nearly invisible once the structure was upright so I needed to create a backing for the triangles. Thankfully my mother for no reason we can come up with has a gigantic roll of tan felt that was absolutely perfect for the job.

Somewhere I along the line I saw a picture on pinterest that inspired this hefty project. I'm proud to say it was completed in in about 10 hours. And when I say completed I mean that my friends husband and I went into the woods, sliced up a tree, brought it home tried a few methods of sanding (didn't use any of them), creating a stencil, tracing every design with a pencil on the wood, actually going out and having to purchase a new wood burner and finally burning 8 of these bad boys after much trial and error on the practice slab to perfect my technique. 

After the addition of a lantern which provided light and bug protection (I put citronella oil in it to burn) the centerpieces were complete and just as perfect as I'd imagined them to be.

Next came the cake topper which was created using string instead of twine because on such a small scale where draping is of the utmost importance twine does not play nice. Hot glue was also used in the this project though no injuries occurred. I also used a sharpie for the letters.

I couldn't stand having all those leftover flags and string just lying around so I put them to good use on these tiny mason jars my mother in law sent up as a last minute decoration idea. They actually turned out to be very charming and a much welcomed addition to our buffet tables.

And finally, in the background you can see the flags that inspired the above two projects. They were made using this method and currently this is probably the best picture I have of them. You can all see me asking for a substitute groom as mine had disappeared when it was time to cut the cake.

And finally, what is more fun than a personalized mad libs? The responses we got were HYSTERICAL. I looked around online and found a couple of examples and frankensteined them together to make this. Then I painstakingly type it all out into the same template we used for our wedding invites on vistaprint. It took forever but it was well worth it.

So there you go, the absolutely madness that was my wedding DIY 

adventure. 

What I've been holding back.

On August 24, 2013 The Beef and I did in fact get married without a hitch.

On September 6, 2013 we went on our honeymoon.

I haven't mentioned ANY of this on the blog yet!

But why?

Honestly, I have two very valid reasons.

1) I really needed a wedding detox.

2) I wanted to update with pictures and I don't have the professional ones back yet 

(but I've seen some of them and they are AMAZING)

I promise though that you'll get both stories eventually, I'll start with the honeymoon because that's the part I was most looking forward to anyway and I do have all the pictures from that adventure.

I also promise that I will post about all the DIY stuff I did for the wedding. My original intention was to post about it while I was doing it but I feel like once you see how much I did in the time span of three months while working 50hrs a week you'll understand that it wasn't feasible.

So big things are coming this way and on top of that fall is here which always means more adventures. :D

Oh pinterest...

Deciding to post one craft a week was a great idea, it gave me the kick in the pants I needed. The creative juices started to flow and I starting planning out which project to do first. I had a couple of good ideas and I was raring to go when one last pitstop on pinterest completely sidetracked me. 

Someone had posted a new pin:

Sure, I've seen plenty of pallet headboards on Pinterest, I was interested in that, I had my sights set on making a different headboard. I just hadn't gotten around to it yet, I couldn't find the wood or the fabric that I wanted. 

For whatever reason a light bulb went off in my head and I decided that this was the project I was going to let inspire me into a new headboard. 

After sorting through my pallets I decided that this one had the best wood for this type of project. Unfortunately, the nails were rusty which meant it was near impossible to get apart. I'm alright with compromising from time to time so an easy solution was met.

That is not me cutting the pallet, men don't seem to like missing an opportunity to use power tools.

I ended up with these pieces of wood after the cutting, some of them were cracked a bit so wood glue came in handy. After measuring the bed and seeing what I had to work with I decided  what shape our headboard would be.

Once the shape was decided it was time to secure the pieces of wood together. I decided on brackets for the length and wood for the height because I didn't want to buy 48 brackets.

The funny thing about power tools is that apparently the electric sander doesn't count, so I was able to do that. 

Drills however are power tools and wasn't I too busy sanding to use it anyway?

 This is what the back of the headboard looks like once put together. The rogue boards on the bottom are the result of me forgetting I had a piece of the headboard hidden on the side hoping the wood glue wood dry. It needed to be tacked on at the last minute. *face palm*

 And this would be the front of the headboard, sanded and ready for staining. 

Freshly stained 

The next day, All done.

And some added carving :)

We haven't put it up yet because there just hasn't been any time, but I'm sure you'll see it in all it's glory when I do the tour of our bedroom.

What craft projects are you currently working on?