diy rustic signing pen

Last night I had a bit of an epiphany. I can't believe it took so long really. For quite some time, I've had these two pens saved in my etsy collection, thinking they were a cute little rustic option for a Guest Book pen, or our Certificate Signing pen. All the ones in the stores around our area tend to be feather pens, or jeweled and really, neither of those go with the look we have going for our wedding.

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Then last night I found this one on madeit.com.au and thought, "Hold up". I looked at it again and thought..."I can just make these!".

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I have no idea why it took me so long to realise it but today, here is a simple DIY project for anyone else with a rustic-style wedding.

All you need for this project is a pen (or pens) of your choosing (I used a pack of 3 I picked up at Typo on sale for $4 - they are my favourite pens!), some Jute twine, a hot glue gun and some decorations of your choosing. I choose to use some wooden hearts left over from our invitations, but you could use jewels, flowers, etc.

First up, run a little hot glue in a strip along the top of your pen. Since my pen was thinner at the top (where the lid normally sits) I took this opportunity to try and even out the pen and ran the glue along this whole section. Then place the start of your Jute straight along this line. Allow this to set for a minute, before starting to wrap your Jute around your pen, from the top of the pen. Since the glue will still be tacky as you start to wrap, it will also give your pen a very firm starting base which means it is less likely to unravel. Because you are wrapping around a piece of Jute with glue underneath, at first you may notice one side sitting out more then the rest. Because the glue should still be warm and tacky, you can simply press lightly along the line that is sticking out, and it will cause the glue to mold more to the pen underneath the Jute, giving a more even look.

Keep wrapping up the pen, making sure that you are keeping the Jute nice and close together so that the pen underneath cannot be seen. After my first pen I noticed that if I gave a little twist to any thin parts of the Jute, it unraveled a little, making it thicker and giving more of a consistent look all the way up the pen, rather then some parts appearing thinner then others.

When you reach the top, cover the top in hot glue and let it cool for a couple of seconds, before coiling Jute around the top to cover completely. Then, feel free to decorate the top if you like! I left ours plain, but the top would be a perfect spot to hot glue a jewel or flower!

After the hot glue had dried, I added on our little wooden hearts and VOILA! Personalised, rustic wedding pens for our Guest Books and fr the fiance and I to use when we sign out Marriage Certificate. I can't wait to use them! No offense etsy sellers, but... eat your heart out!! (I'm a little proud of them...)

What DIY projects did you try at the last minute? What ones are you hoping to try?
The next on my list is this pretty thing:

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I'll let you know how it goes!

Please note that I was able to leave the lids off my pens because they come with a little cap on the tip that I can leave on until the day of the wedding, to prevent them from drying out. Please consider this when selecting your type of pen, or alternatively, considering wrapping the lid as well!

i spy

A while back, I posted about our table numbers, using Ikea frames. Well today I'm posting about a little DIY I did for the flipside of our table numbers, the cute little "I Spy" game!

Please ignore the little black parts on the front - I'm not
removing the protective coating until closer to the
wedding!

Those of you who have been around Wedding Blogworld for a while would recognise this little game, but for those who don't - basically, it's a photography-based wedding version of the popular game we all grew up with! A cute little poem encouraging guests to capture moments throughout the reception that you can later collect and add to your wedding day memories (and in this day and age, guests can share with each other on social media!)

I created 3 pages of "I Spy", with 2 different versions per page, so there will be 6 different versions in total. At the moment we are planning approx. 10 tables plus a head table, so there will be some repeats however it will be interesting to see how differently everyone captures the same suggestions!

I used a lot of "I Spy" cards I had sighted on the internet for inspiration in creating mine, however I don't appear to have sources for them so I haven't shared the pictures. If I locate the sources, I will definitely share them so you can see the other designs people have used with their cards! I'm sure a search of "Wedding I Spy" would bring up loads in Pinterest, and I'm sure I've seen a number or two on places like Style Me Pretty. I added quite a few of my own ideas into the cards above, please feel free to use them for your own inspiration if you are looking to make something similar yourself! These were simply created in Photoshop, printed onto card stock and slipped into the frames. A very easy DIY for your reception tables and fun for your guests!

During my etsy shopping, I stumbled on this great idea for photo cards, which I think compliments this game really well - setting up an account somewhere like flickr or the like, and using a little card at each place setting with the information on the account to encourage guests to upload their photos, so that everyone can access the photos they have taken! It's a great way for the Bride and Groom to collect all the photos from the "I Spy" games, as well as any other great photos of the day they may otherwise miss.

[source] Is anyone else planning to use the "I Spy" game at their wedding? Has anyone used photo cards before?

page boy bag

Following up from the flower girl bags, is a quick post on the bag for our page boy, Aiden!

Similar to the girls' bags, the page boy page has a colouring in book and some coloured pencils, and a packet of stickers. For our littlest male member, we choose some "Cars" stickers - he's *really* into cars, planes and dinosaurs at the moment!

Waiting to be added to the bag are the following items that should be coming in the post any day now!

A black limousine - to add to all his cars collection, "wedding style".

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And, in case you were wondering what the male equivalent to a flower girl bracelet could possibly be!, Master Aiden gets an awesome badge to declare that he is in fact, the Official Ring Bearer.

So! That ends the official wrap up on the children's gifts! We are also paying for their outfits. The girls' dresses were ordered the other day and Master Aiden, his Mummy and I will be going shopping in the next couple of weeks to purchase his little suit. I wish I could show you the grown ups gifts, but they will have to be a post-wedding reveal! For now, I leave you with a picture of the dress we decided on for the flower girls, after looking a number of other options (we decided against the skirts!). What do you guys think?

kids colouring in books

Another project done and dusted!

As part of the gifts for the youngest members of our bridal party, and also to keep them entertained at the reception, I created some colouring in books for our flower girls and our page boy! One of the easier DIY projects so far and certainly one of the fun ones!

I started off by printing out multiple copies of various wedding related colouring pages. I managed to get enough pages going to be able to tell the story of a wedding, from the rehearsal day/dinner, through the flower girl/boy going down the aisle, through to the ceremony/cake cutting/first dance, etc. right to the bride and groom leaving in their "Just Married!" car.

Early on in my wedding planning process I had downloaded an AWESOME (though short) wedding activity book for kids. Unfortunately I didn't know I would be blogging at that stage and I don't appear to have saved a link for it [EDITORS NOTE (06/06/12) - I found the link today! I had Pinned it! Check out the wonderful book HERE!]. I couldn't use the whole booklet because there were a lot of activity pages (think join the dots, find-a-words, etc.) that were too old for our kiddies, but I did use a few of the colouring in pages and the front cover art (I LOVED the front cover). So if anyone recognises where it is from, please contact me and let me know so I can give credit where credit is due!

The other pages within the colouring in book are from this fantastic site here. If you want to make something similar to this, I seriously recommend checking this site out! Other then that, a simple Google search will bring up many free wedding-relating colouring in pages, including a bunch of Disney-related pages. We're planning to have a bunch of loose colouring in pages at the guest children's table as well (and some activity pages for the slightly older children!), along with some packets of colouring in pencils.

After the pages were printed, I selected a different coloured card stock for the back of each book. The page boy book had a dark grey card stock, the flower girls have one pink, one lavender.

After that, I sent them to work with my lovely Mum, who bound them for me and added hard plastic covers to the front and back!

Now each of the bridal party kids have a great colouring in book for the day, to keep them entertained and to take home with them to remember the day by! I think they turned out great! I can't wait to add them to the growing pile of bridal party gifts...I wish I could show you the rest, but for now only the littlest members! (I know they can't sneak on here and peek!)

Have you got anything planned to entertain your littlest bridal party members or youngest guests? Did/Do you plan to make anything similar? I'd love to hear about them!

diy handkerchiefs!

Having a medical condition that results in you having time off work is frustrating... But it does give you time to work on wedding projects! (at least I still feel productive when I can't work) Yesterday I managed to make one load of our wedding handkerchiefs for our ceremony. I'm quite happy with how they are turning out!!

Quite an easy DIY project, I'm hoping those who choose to take one on our wedding day (even if they don't need to use it) will have a little something to keep and remember our day by...Oh, and I've kept a blue one for myself ;)

Starting off with some blank, vintage-style handkerchiefs, the future hubby and I decided on this monogram from The Wedding Chicks to use throughout our wedding projects.

I used Paint to flip the image back to front, then printed them on some iron-on transfer paper. For this particular project, I found printing them 9 to a page was the perfect size.

I then spent the day ironing the handkerchiefs out, ironing on the transfers and ironing over the top of the transfers with baking paper (a little tip to take away the shine and make the image seem more matte). Here's just a couple of examples of handkerchiefs, the monogram is in a different spot on each handkerchief.

After applying all the monograms, I set about folding up the handkerchiefs , tying them up with brown twine and adding some cute little tags.

I think the end result has turned out quite well!

Now I'm on the hunt for a cute little basket to sit them in on wedding day... (and to make another 40 or so...waiting for a delivery!) Can't wait to see if everyone likes them on the day!

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More DIY projects to come, but in the meantime - what little projects did you/are you working on in the lead up to your big day??

the groomsmen project...

My weekend has so far consisted of a lot of "Hart of Dixie" (yep, I'm now addicted), cleaning up and making some little gifts for the future hubby to finally ask his boys to be in his bridal party!!

It was a fairly simple process really...

Take some mini boy-related alcoholic beverages...

...and some grey cardstock...

...Add some text and twine...
...and you've got yourself some appropriately male Groomsmen requests!



Whaddya think?!

mini theme and a simple DIY

So a mini theme has emerged through our wedding planning, which is really not much of a surprise. It's Cinderella.

Now, if you recall from reading my wedding dress post, Cinderella is my favourite Disney princess (on a side note, Jiminy Cricket is my favourite Disney character and you know what? It's really difficult to find anything Jiminy!!!). Imagine my excitement when my dance school decided to do a Disney finale one year and I got to be Cinderella...we even got to do our performance in local shopping centres, and got to help celebrate Santa's arrival one year!

Yep, that's me - REALLY blonde! (I think I was about 12?)
Now I tried the Alfred Angelo Cinderella dress on for fun - I never planned on wearing it and I'm not interested in a big horse and carriage or glass slippers or anything like that...personally, I'm more of an Ever After kind of Cinderella then a Disney Cinderella (come on, who hasn't fallen in love with Ever After? GREAT movie!)

That doesn't mean I haven't found a way to sneak my favourite fairytale into our wedding day though - I mean, come on...Cinderella IS one of the ultimate wedding fairytales!...

...we're just going the more subtle route!

That leads me to a little DIY project I've been working on the last few days. It's quite simple really -

Take some Kraft paper...

...add the original Grimm's Brother's version of "Cinderella"

Mix in a heart hole punch...

...and add a few hours of Gossip Girl...

And there you have it! A baggy full of cute little DIY goodness to sprinkle where you see fit! I'm thinking cake and/or guestbook table! Cinderella is also there perfect story for this kind of DIY, because there's plenty of "bride", "wedding", "father", "mother", "sister", "beautiful", "dance", etc. to highlight by catching them in the text on the hearts (see a close up of pic 4!), but really you could use any text your heart desires! Maybe the readings from your wedding? Or special song lyrics! What do you guys think?

More Cinderella-sque inclusions for our wedding day in future posts!

introducing flower girl number 1...

...my gorgeous (almost) 3 year old goddaughter, Emily. This spunky little miss is the daughter of my high school best friend, Kylie. Last weekend, Kylie, Emily, my mum, brother, sister-in-law and my sister-in-law's little goddaughter, Tahlia, went to a festival called "Winter Magic" in the Australian Blue Mountains. It's a celebration of the winter solstice, full of parades, market stalls, live music, yummy food and great energy. We go every year and always have a blast!!! This year was particularly cold *shiver*


The craziness that is Winter Magic! (and this is only one section!)

I thought that this would be a good time to give Miss Emily her special book! She loved it (and her mummy might have teared up a little). The first few images below are Miss Em getting her book on the train to the festival. The last two were sent to me the next day by her mum, along with a little story. Miss Emily gets read to every night by her daddy, and that night, after the festival, she asked her Daddy to read a very special book to her :)




I should also note that this little Miss will be getting an extra big birthday party next year - her 4th birthday is the day before our wedding!!! I am hoping to have a little birthday cake made for her to give her during the reception, so everyone can sing her a happy birthday :)

I also had to include this little pic in this post, because I LOVED it so much. Emily and my SIL's goddaughter Tahlia got along very well at Winter Magic, it was the first time they had met. This picture was taken when Miss Tahlia lent over and was explaining to Emily that if they both stayed in their prams, they could have hot chips and gravy!!! Much discussion about this ensued...cutie pies!!



I had also made each of the girls a little present, using the flowers I made from a previous post. As you can see in the pictures of Emily with her book, they seem to have gone down well :)



That just leaves giving our gorgeous little niece, Tamzyn, her special book! A post on that will hopefully come soon!