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.