Wedding Cards Project

Hope everyone's having a great Labor Day weekend! :) Well, at least those of you in the US. The hubs and I have been chilling so far but we're heading out to a fun little bbq today. I made some tomato and moz salad to share - yum-o! I could eat it all by myself! :D

Also loving the holiday sales. I picked up some new stamps already (haha, don't tell the hubs just yet...). I couldn't help it!

I wanted to finish a few scrappy projects this weekend and I've been pretty good about it so far! :) No cards to share but a fun way to save your cards!

I had a stack of wedding cards and I couldn't bear to toss them so I figured I'd save them all in a decorated little book. This would work for birthday cards as well, wedding shower cards... (when I find them....).. the possibilities are endless here!

I punched holes into all of them and strung them through a metal ring. I tied some pink, green, and white ribbons around the metal ring. Brings me back to high school when the cheerleaders used to tie multiple ribbons in their hair...

I organized them by friends, family and family friends. I put our friends first cos they wrote the most, family next cos some of them did write stuff and then family friends last. Mainly cos most of them wrote stuff in Chinese that I can't read. Hah.For the cover, I took a piece of A2 cardboard I had (I think it was from a cardstock package or something...). Cut it in half and then proceeded to decorate it. I had some yummy Amy Butler paper from the Tea line and the Lotus line. I'm actually hoping to find that fabric as well -- I'd love to make a fun bag or something with it. Especially now that I need to find some sewing projects to amuse myself with!

Ok, I digress... the rubons and die cuts are also Amy Butler. The thickers are cloth ones from American Crafts... I LOVE these. The texture on them is just fab. I'm not sure I would have bought these on my own but now that I've used them... I NEED MORE! Ok, also need to do more scrappy projects but that's aside from the point. I wanty!
My metal ring was just a tough squeeze for the number of cards I had... I didn't think I had that many... so I will be getting some bigger rings later so it's easier to flip through the cards. Otherwise, it's a great way to put the cards out so that the hubs and I can reminisce about the wedding. And its so much prettier than in a box or something, don't you think? :D

When I find my wedding shower cards, I'll do the same. I just can't remember where I've stashed them... with all our moving furniture around I've lost track of the "safe" spot I've put them. I could have sworn they were with my wedding cards...


Paper: (Gray) Unknown, (Lotus, Afternoon Tea) Amy Butler
Accessories: (Cloth Thickers) American Crafts, (Rub-ons) Amy Butler, (Die-cuts) Amy Butler

More wedding photos!

I promised and here it is... the dress pic.

I'm in the process of compiling the "best of" pics as an album but in the meantime, I thought I'd share a fun pic or two. :-)

The month before the wedding I kept wondering if I'd be able to fit into the dress since it basically just hugs me all the way down. That didn't stop me from eating fried chicken, biscuits and gravy and other Southern goodness before I left the dirty south though! No siree! But I did heave a huge sigh of relief when I fit into the dress the day of the wedding. ;-)

Found the necklace on overstock.com and the dress at a wedding outlet store in NC. Yay for outlets! It fit pretty much perfectly... all my stemstress (Olga - she was great!) had to do was bustle the dress and add fake padding (some of us are not well endowed)

A DIY Wedding

So after many many months of planning and prepping, it's all over! I am officially a Mrs. Since I've been talking so much about it, I thought I'd share some of the pictures.

I love love love how the flowers turned out (this is the only part of the post that isn't DIY - I just loved them so much I had to share). It had some pink and peachy orange roses mixed fushia stock. It also had some fun green accents - the green berries. The bridesmaids got a miniature version of my bouquet. (I'm sorry, I don't totally know the flower names - I'm horrible with those ;-) The colors worked so well with the bridesmaids dresses.

Invites and Save the Dates
If you've been following this blog, then you have already seen my wedding invites and save the dates so I won't bore you with those details again.

Tip: Paper can be bought in bulk - or if you use transparency sheets, they're cheap and unique. ;-) Each invite cost me 75 cents, each save the date cost 50 cents and I mailed them with a normal stamp (which both my husband and I bought many many forever stamps when they were still 41 cents... every penny counts!)

Favors
I made 2 different versions of the favors (mainly because I bought the favor boxes on 75% off clearance and well, they didn't have enough so I decided I'd purposely make 1/2 one style and 1/2 another -- funny, people liked getting different ones to bring home). You can see the close up of one in this photo and then the table shot has a picture of another one. I used Martha Stewarts favor boxes to create them. Using stamps from PTI - Beautiful Blooms, With Sympathy, Around and About Sentiments. I stuffed them with some Dove chocolates that I got during a post-Valentine's Day sale... heehee - don't you just love March weddings? :-) I don't even think anyone noticed since I had a pink color combo as well. Yay! Win win!

Tip: Shop the clearance aisles at your favorite craft store and its ok if people get different favors. Also, post-holiday candy is cheap and candy doesn't go bad that quickly.

Centerpieces
The centerpieces were actually a last minute change. Originally I wanted to do something much more intricate. I ended up getting some dinner plates on clearance and some fun beads to rest the candles on. While not as "crafty" as I initially intended, it did give each table a sense of simple elegance. Candles are a little messy though - definitely lots of wax on the plates and bead things. But once again, the thrify bride knows that candles are cheap.

Tip: I bought the candles at a post-Christmas sale so they were very cheap - and no one could even tell they were peppermint scented! Also, nice looking dinner plates at Walmart are less than a dollar - you don't need to get a candle holder or anything crazy... ( I haven't asked but I doubt anyone knew they were dinner plates)


Place cards
I showed the original template for the place cards I used but I didn't show any names or font choices. The digital Eat Cake files plus some photoshopping helped create a personalized place card that matched the flowers and the programs.

Tip: There are so many free digital kits online. Also, use open source photo editing software (yay free!) to modify the kits to your taste!

Programs
If I were to do the wedding all over again, I would never never never again do my programs (template picture here) the way I did them. I spent the last two days before the wedding basically in a certain commonly known print shop yelling at their incompetence. However, as every thrifty bride knows, when things don't go your way, you negotiate the price down. :-D We got a significant discount because of the screwup.

Apparently even though some places claim to print on cardstock, they really don't. Or at least not the one in my hometown. I don't think I've been so mad before. If we were to call one moment a bridezilla moment, it would have been when I was inside this said printshop. They overcharged me 3 times the original price initially and while the test print was "perfect" (i.e. all my edges lined up properly), the final product was not.

Tip: If anyone screws up, negotiate for a discount! And always ask about bulk discounts!

So there we go! 1 year of my life and all I have to show for it is a few pictures. ;-) I'll have some more fun ones tomorrow - cos we know its the other details such as the dresses that are so much more fun!

St John

 

So we're on to some more interesting pictures... (we were pretty bummy in STT) We spent a day in St. John with our tour guide "Homes". I'm really glad we did a tour since with narrow roads and funny driving (they drive on the left even though the driver is also on the left), I think I would have freaked out if we had to drive.

The nice thing about a local leading you around means that you learn about interesting things. For instance, Homes gave us all a leaf that was something along the lines of an "air" plant. Basically, he said that if we brought it home, it would root w/o being in dirt. And lo-and-behold.... my leaf has little roots! I have since transplanted into a pot of dirt to see how it might fare in the cold cold north. I thought that I actually might have killed it since it got smooshed on its way home but its definitely kicking!

Hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend!

St. Thomas Pictures

Hmm, so I've been away too long. The dear hubby woke me up this morning to go running and I barely made it up the hill before I made him stop. Blargh... so out of shape and definitely did not drink enough water... Oh wells... I'm now being waited on hand and foot since he feels bad. :-)

In the meantime, I thought I'd share some of our pics from St. Thomas. We stayed on St. Thomas for the majority of our trip. With a not so subtle comment from yours truly, the hotel upgraded us honeymooners to a very lovely ocean view. :-) It was absolutely lovely though!

I'm back!

After a lovely long break, I'm back to the real world. I have some lovely pics to share. Since I haven't had a chance to fully unpack, I'll be sharing some photos of my honeymoon trip this week. :-) I can't wait to see my wedding photos so I can share those with you all as well.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share an image of my place cards. This is the template that I used to create my place cards. Once cut out, I folded these puppies in half and had a simple place card for guests that was simple and matched my wedding programs.

Digital Elements: Eat Cake (from Paper Crafts WCMD 07, images copyright Papertrey Ink)
Font: Edwardian Script and Century Gothic

Wedding Programs

So I know I said I wasn't going to be posting for awhile but I've been working on this for the past week so I thought it was worth sharing.

So here it is guys - my wedding program... My orignal intent was to stamp my programs but then I decided I'd try to see what I could create with some of the free digital kits avaliable on the world wide web. This is pretty simple and basically all I did was modify the colors to suit my wedding needs. I'm certainly happy to share the RGB values and this file if there's interest.

This is the front and the back of the program (click on the image for a larger view). It's sized to be 5.5 by 5.5. I'm showing this as it'll be printed (guess I could have chopped the images more). Starting from the pink is the front cover.

No, my parents are not named John and Jane Doe - I modified text so it wouldn't reveal personal information. Again, click on the image for a larger view.

My dear future hubby told me that dots were lame but I told him that it was my program and I'd do what I want. Isn't that just the beginning of a great relationship? :-D Ok, so I was a lot nicer in convincing him that dots were classic and yet oh, so trendy. I'm actually surprised that he complained about the dots and not the execessive amounts of girly colors...

Digital Elements: Eat Cake (from Paper Crafts WCMD 07, images copyright Papertrey Ink)
Font: Edwardian Script and Century Gothic