cake stands

so i volunteered the fiance for this project since he is better with the exacto blade.  i came back from the long weekend and they were done!  im really happy with them.  he is thinking we need to add ribbon or something to the edges but i would be happy even if we didnt.  we bought the cake sheets from michaels (which arent cheap by the way) and he sprayed glue and wrapped them with silver wrapping paper.  for the tiers he measured cupcakes, yes he actually went to buy some cupcakes from safeway, and made about 4 feet for each tier.  the feet were basically wrapped cardboard.

RSVP cards

under the persuasion of the fiances mom, we decided to print some RSVP cards last minute.  im a bit glad we did because some of them have come back with messages and funny notes.  i had weighed printing them via letterpress or regular press but couldnt justify the cost so we just went with the cheapest of the cheap.  PSPrint which gave us 100postcards for about $25.  i might go with them for the thank you cards too.  again i had wanted to go with either minted (since that is where the original design came from), zazzle, letterpress via mercurio brothers, or psprint.  but psprint is just so much cheaper, its hard to justify anything else.

leafy lights

So most of our printed materials have a leaf design on them.  I kind of wanted to incorporate them into our decorations somehow.  i had extra string lights so i cut leaves out of tissue paper and use floral tape to wrap them over the bulbs.  im actually not sure where we will put these.  but im sure they will be of use somewhere?  this was actually more tedious than i had anticipated.  i started wrapping down the string light and did about every other light and after an hour i had only done a couple feet.  some bulbs have one leaf and some have two.  of the ones that have two, some have one color of leaves and some have two.

string lights

so when i was in thailand i bought 300 of these string light covers to be used in our wedding.  they were cheap!  they were about $40 for 300 i think.  we asked them to give it to us without the lights themselves because the thai and us voltages are different.  we also got them collapsed. 

i spent about a day, opening them up.  i found that because thailand is so much more humid, some of the balls were starting to become brittle, dry, and showing their glue.  i dont mind so much because i dont think people will be looking at them closely.

the light bulb also didnt slide securely in so i had to make a couple extra snips with my scissors to the hole.

table guestbooks

so for our main signin we have the thumbprint picture. so we dont really have a guestbook.  this was kind of a spontaneious project.  i took some nice writing paper folded them in half.  then i took some thin card stock and used washi tape to make a sort of binding. i then rounded all corners with a punch.  next i used my sewing machine and essentially bound all the books together.  just used a straight stitch and sewed straight through.

next i used the letter rubber stamps and put questions on the cover such as:
how did you meet claudia and stephen
describe claudia and stephen
draw claudia and stephen
your favorite memory of claudia and stephen
your funniest memory or claudia and stephen
kids names

pashminas

so we bought the pashminas in hong kong because they were the cheapest there.  we got them for about $3-$4 each which is pretty good.  i also tied these with raffia.  again that were too short.  then i used cricut to cut different leaves and stamped them with keep warm.  i tied the leaves on with divine twine.

handkerchief programs

so im finally done with the handerkerchief programs that i set out to do.  i originally started out with another design but it got vetoed by multiple people.  i ended up with the marimekko unikko design for the border and then just names of everyone in the bridal party etc for the text.  our ceremony will be simple and nondenominational so a program wouldve been overkill anyway.  i had them printed at spoonflower and was really happy with the results.  i had ordered a swatch of the older design i did but not of the new one.  they contacted me to make sure i didnt need a swatch of the new design. then when i put the order in, someone had reviewed it and cancelled it for me because i had it at the wrong dpi.  it took me a while to realize that the preview refreshes to show the total yardage you are ordering and not just a snippet.

i had also considered doing these by myself because i saw somewhere that you can essentially print on fabric with freezer paper.  the cost ended up being around the same so i went with printing at spoonflower.  i thought their prices were pretty reasonable.
i then had to cut these by hand. where i realized that i made mistake #1.  not leaving a gap for cutting.  the 4 napkins were printed one right next to the other so there were no gaps.  i had to try to cut precisely. 

then i had to finish these on the sewing machine.  i got so frustrated because i was trying to learn to use the narrow hem foot.  super useful tool but takes a while to master.  i think i spent half of the napkins trying to master it.  and even then there are mistakes in almost all of them =[