DIY Twine-Wrapped Mason Jars

I feel like I'm a little late in joining the rustic chic party but hey better late than never right? In celebration of my latest project in the works which I shared a bit with you here, I thought I'd give these twine-wrapped mason jars a try. After all I certainly love wrapping and gluing anything I can around vases. This project was so easy peasy that you too can create your own with whatever kind of jar, twine and ribbon you want to use. The supplies are few as all you need is some glue (either crazy glue or you can use a glue gun), ribbon, mason jars, flowers and of course, lots and lots of the good stuff. Also known as twine. Oh sweet sweet twine. I heart you.

The jars I found were from Hobby Lobby as was the twine. I purchased the shorter jars since I was looking to save a bit of cash if you know what I mean, but I think taller jars would have looked really cool as the layers of twine would have crawled up the sides of the jar a little bit higher. Here are a few of the steps I took to wrap the twine around the mason jars. The most important part is obviously fastening the twine to the jar when you start and finish wrapping it around. I also made sure to wrap the twine over and across the exact point where I glued the start of the twine to the glass. This sort of anchored the twine to the glass and allowed me to wrap the twine sooner than it would have taken me if I had waited for the glue to dry. Patience? What's that?

Then you can make the twine sort of wrap around in a diagonal pattern over the first layer of twine. I did this by wrapping the twine in a figure 8 pattern over and over again until I felt like it looked right. And with that you can tie a pretty ribbon bow over both layers of twine to make the little jar flower-ready. Imagine a navy and red ribbon for a nautical them wedding? I think I may have just inspired myself. Love it when that happens.

Et voila! A few carnations, some baby's breath, a spray rose and pink stock complete the look.

Happy crafting!

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DIY Project: Will You Be My Bridesmaid?

When a bride-to-be happens to be super cute, super fabulous and super talented, I can't help but squeal with delight when she sends me the most adorable project ever. There's no doubt a whole lot of thought goes into proposals these days. But how often do newly engaged chicks really consider how they'll ask their gal pals to serve as bridesmaids? After you check out this clever tutorial you be sure to rethink how you plan on asking your girls to stand next to you on the biggest day of your life. Don't forget to head on over to Emilee's blog and etsy shop where I'm pretty positive you'll find something to swoon over.

{What You'll Need}

wooden spool

alphabet stamps

an ink pad

scissors

fabric and/or trim

lace and/or glue

any packaging supplies you'd like

{Step 1} Cut your fabric or trim so that the width is just smaller than your wooden spool. You can make it just long enough for your message or longer - I did mine a bit longer to wrap around the spool a little extra.

{Step 2} Stamp out the words "Will You Be My Bridesmaid?" or "Will You Be My Maid of Honour?" on the fabric strip using your alphabet stamps and ink. 

{Step 3} You can use either a piece of tape or a dot of glue to attach your stamped fabric to the spool. Start at the right side (where your message ends) and roll so that when you unroll the fabric your message is revealed.

{Step 4} Once your fabric is all wrapped up you can tie it closed with ribbon or string or lace and add any extra touches you want! Here's how the final product turned out. Would you not squeal with delight if this little creation was handed to you? I absolutely love it! How did you ask your friends to serve as bridesmaids?

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DIY Stir Stick Flags

This past summer I scoured websites and blogs determined to find cute little stir sticks or straws I could buy for the wedding. I really wanted guests to have something cute to stir and or drink their cocktails with and originally settled on this idea. Yet, this didn't seem like the most cost-effective idea and considering this girl has a budget to stick to, set out to find something a little different. Apb ended up getting me my straws (which I still have a lot left of thank goodness. I cannot wait to use these at cocktail parties!) but I never did find stir sticks that I loved both in style and price. So off to the Dollar Store I went and I returned home with a pack of 200 wooden coffee stir sticks, a page of pink Bristol board, a glue stick and a little imagination. 

To make the stir stick flags I cut out an approximately 6 inch long, 1 inch wide strip of Bristol board. I then folded the strip in half over a stir stick making sure to glue the insides of the paper strip so the folded pieces stuck together. Then I cut a triangle out of the end to give the piece of paper it's distinctive flag shape. I wrote a variety of phrases on each of the flags like "Eat, Drink and Be Married," "La La La Love" and "Add Me To Your Drink." I put the stir sticks in with the gray and white straws and voila! Instant cuteness to our bar area. I loved seeing all of my girlfriends walking around with little pink flags in their glasses! Thank you to Amanda for the lovely photos too! What fun and affordable ideas have any of you lovelies thought of or used for personalizing your own wedding?

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DIY Seating Chart

For months and months I was stumped on what to use as our seating chart and what would display where each guest is supposed to sit. I contemplated big intricate designs and printed up canvases which would be flaunted in fancy fonts. I thought that a giant salvaged door finished in a white wash with everyone's names scrolled in silver pen would look pretty fab. I even bought this really old and very cheap shutter to use as a display but my creativity got the best of me and I decided to use that bad boy elsewhere. Instead, I called up my neighbor Matt. You know, the one who helps make really cool things for me. Like these. Because I knew I wanted to have something homemade. And I gave him an idea of what I wanted. We actually went perusing for wood one day and came across these skids in a parking lot. They were being thrown out so we broke out the saw and took what we needed.

And after getting down in his garage-slash-workshop he created for me this stained, vintage looking structure that I just love. It was exactly what I was looking for and Matt left some nails in the wood to give it a worn look. He rounded the bottom egdes to give it a little flair too. I was so thrilled to see this all finished! It's exciting to see a vision come to life don't you think?  

I got right to crafting to spruce this up as a Seating Card Display. So in keeping with the vintage glam feel of our wedding, I picked up some more ivory lace (similar to the kind I used around these) from Fabricland. I measured strips of lace to sit width-wise across the structure. Six strips ended up fitting comfortably down the entire structure. Since the lace I picked is very delicate and not very sturdy I startched the lace to add some firmness. To do so, I simmered 1/2 a cup of cornstarch and two cups of water in a pot, stirring until the mixture got nice and smooth yet pastey and quite thick. I then drenched each strip in the mixture before wringing it out and scraping off the goop. Then I laid the strips on a towel, making sure they were nice and flat as they dried out overnight. By morning they had firmed up and were much easier to work with!

Once the strips firmed up I was ready to start glueing the strips on the structure. I used a glue gun but my goodness, these thing wreak havoc on your fingers. As fabulous as glue guns are for so many different projects, I hate how messy they get! The glue gets so stringy and sticky. Yuck.

Then you'll need some of these:

So you can do a little bit of this..

.

But of course I wanted to spruce things up a tad. So I broke out my favourite stuff, sweet sweet Krylon.

And tranformed plain little clothespegs into fabulous gray-hued ones:

I wasn't sure if I actually liked the gray pegs better than the natural wood ones but having that pop of gray to coordinate with our colours is a really lovely touch. I think I will spray paint the next few packs of pegs too, now that I have tested the colour. I also made up a few mock cards to see how they would hang on the lace. And of course I used my Martha Stewart punch to pretty up the mini shipping labels. Gosh I love those things!

I think I likey! What do you think? Stay tuned for more pics of the structure with the completed cards and birdcage set up that will be used in the foyer of the mansion (our venue). There will be the small birdcage shown in the photo, then a larger sized one and a flower arrangement in a lace wrapped vase next to the Seating Chart. I will also use one of my chalkboard frames that will say "Find your seat." I have started to tackle the seating arrangements and my goodness that is one heck of a job! Hope everyone is having a truly fabulous and blessed week xo

{Update} The seating chart ended up being one of my most favourite wedding details and guests surely appreciated the work I put into the project. Here are some photos from our wedding photographer Amanda Wilcher, showing how the seating chart looked set up the day of our wedding, with all of the shipping name tags clipped to the lace. Enjoy!

The details above, and the set up below.

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DIY Favour Bags

I swear this DIY stuff has me head over heels in lurve with arts and crafts. Prior to becoming engaged over two years ago, never would I have thought that I'd want to be so heavily involved in personally creating so many elements of my wedding day. But after many many crafting days - the latest project being these cute favour bags - I feel like a little kid in a candy store. And these bags are just perfect for candy as a matter of fact. I am very excited for our wedding guests to fill them up with cake pops and truffles and macarons and cookies and donuts and Maltesers and jelly beans and this list goes on and on and on....

I started with medium sized brown Kraft bags from Michaels. They come in packs of 16 and with a 50 percent off coupon ends up being $2.81 (I refuse to pay full price at Michaels; it's so pricey there!) Then I  picked a stamp that reads Thank You so guests would understand that the bags and the treats to go in them, are Andrew and I's way of thanking them for sharing in our celebration. Martha Stewart makes a really rad (and expensive) line of paper punches so I picked up a doily pattern edge cutter that is just to die for. And I made sure to get a dark black ink pad so the stamp imprint would show up clearly on the brown paper. Pretty simple list of supplies for such cutey patooty bags!

{Step 1} Punch the tops of the brown bags. I opted to punch each bag just once so that the doily pattern rests in the middle of the bag opening. I found it very difficult to match up the lines of holes in the pattern when I went to carry the pattern across the entire top. It got very messy and I was wasting all of my bags trying to make things look perfect so I decided one punch per bag would do the trick.

{Step 2} Stamp the bags, apply pressure and peel away stamp. This is a pretty self explanatory step, however - and this is a biggie - make sure your ink pad is big enough for your stamp to lay flat down on it. Parts of my stamp like the top of the T and bottom of the Y didn't fit on the pad I bought. I ended up make a big mess of myself and the stamp trying to get equal coverage on the stamp but eventually found a way of rotating the stamp on the pad to pick up enough ink.

You can see in this picture below how the ink would well up inside the curl of the letter Y. I ended up throwing out about three bags since this made a really big blob of a mess. Try stamping your stamp on a scrap piece of paper a few times to make sure it's fairly clean after completing five or six bags. This will keep the ink out of places it shouldn't be and avoids unnecessary build up.

{Step 3} Let the bags dry. It's that easy! The bags dry very quickly so you won't have to wait too long. I ended up making close to 50 bags so I still have about 40 more to go to ensure that all of our guests will get one. But I just adore how they turned out and will be placing all of the bags in one of the drawers of our Dessert Dresser. The tops will hang out slightly and will in my opinion, look so fab!

Not the snazziest DIY projects but one of the cutest and cheapest I have done to date. And unlike some of the others I really think our guests will notice the extra bit of effort put into something homemade like these! What do you think you could use these bags for aside from a wedding? Happy Crafting everyone!  P.S. That doily pattern punched into the tops of the bags will be seen in other areas of our wedding decor so stay tuned; I just cannot wait to share it all with you :) xo

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DIY Wedding Welcome Bags

Ever since we knew that Apb and I would be having out of country guests attending our wedding (he is American; I am Canadian yet I graduated University from MSU and now live back home in Canada) we were dead set on having Wedding Welcome Bags as the perfect way to greet our guests come wedding weekend. Originally I was dead set on throwing together screen printed cotton canvas bags because the idea was completely adorable and really, how hard and expensive could it really be?

I thought we could get a really cool screen print in some sort of vintage pattern with our initials or something. Then our guests could reuse the bags long after our wedding is over. Yet, costs started adding up after I looked into prices, and frankly I didn't know if guests would even like the idea as much as I did; wouldn't a throw away bag be easiest for everyone? After all, who even wants a canvas bag that reads 'Andrew Loves Rhiannon So So Much' (that's a joke Apb).

So to solve my problem my fabulous Mom picked up some brown paper tote bags from Michaels that come in packs of 13. They are the perfect size and because of the brown paper are great for stamping and writing on (unlike coloured bags that have a slippery-shimmery finish on them that doesn't allow ink to dry). Yet as much as I love stamps and ink, I really wanted to incorporate a little message on the bags via some shipping tags from Staples (if you've never really found a use for shipping tags then find one ASAP because these things are oh so versatile and way too much fun). There are two sizes of tags to choose from and each pack comes with 100 tags for under $4.00. Yes please and thank you very much.

Then my Mom really outdid herself. She bought a ton of goodies to stuff in the bags like...

{Organic raspberry, coffee, orange and coconut chocolate}

{Individually wrapped biscottis}

{Mini Volupsa travel candles}

{Packs of eucalyptus bath salts}

{Salted packs of peanuts}

{Packages of white Tic Tacs}

{Various flavours of chocolate toffee crunch}

{Pamphlets of downtown Burlington where everyone is staying}

{Face towels pressurized into a roll that you dampen with water to use}

And I got to stuffing these bags as fast as I possibly could. I really was way too excited to see how they came together complete with all the goodies in them and the adorable little embellished shipping tags tied on the handles; with black lace of course. And now that I am seeing how nicely the bags came together I can't even believe I contemplated canvas tote bags. Brown.paper.bags.all.the.way.

I stamped the corners of the tags with a fancy hole punch, then wrote "Welcome. We are so glad you're here. Enjoy, Love Rhi and Andy" on them. Now all we need to add is some Toronto and Niagara Falls postcards with personalized messages to each of our guests (like how to make sure they check out the incredible gelato place directly across the street from their hotel because it's truly heavenly). The morning before the first guests begin to arrive I will drop off the basket of bags to the hotel to make sure the staff on duty hands them out upon guest's arrivals. 

I think I will use these bags in the future for gifts and parties and loot bags since the possibilities are endless when it comes to jazzing up the bags. I also hope this post helps anyone else who may be in a rut trying to find a cost-friendly alternative to packaging multiple bundles of gifts or items for people. I know this kind of post would have been helpful about two month ago for me :) Happy DIY-ing everyone!

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DIY Milk Glass

I adore milk glass. There's something so sweet about it and when used in clusters it gives off the most vintage and lovely of looks. Yet, finding real vintage milk glass s is usually pretty hard not to mention expensive; I've seen stores on Etsy selling genuine milk glass for $20-$40 a piece. I'm all for quality stuff but why pay big bucks for something you can DIY for cheap? I just had to make my own to see how gorg it really would look.

I started by finding various glasses and vases in different sizes that had unique textures. I had to Goo Gone most of the stickers and price tags off of the vases because they were placed directly on the glassware (where the spray paint would go). Most of the pieces I found were from the Goodwill; I spent under $10.00 for all 6 pieces and spent a few weeks finding what I thought to be just the right finds. Using lots of newspaper, I set up my workstation then I used Krylon white satin spray paint to apply 2-4 coats of paint on each piece for a solid white and shiny finish.

I loved this piece that I think used to be a fancy wine glass of some sort. The detailing on it is so pretty and the scalloped edges are amazing. I had to be careful with spraying too close to the glass though because I had a few drips of paint on some of the skinnier and taller pieces (like the stems). I also used some extra coats on the green glass goblet that I scored for 69 cents; the green took a while to fully cover up. 

I let all the glasses dry for about 30 minutes to an hour before removing them and filling with water. I then picked some fresh purple, pale green and pink hydrangeas from my Mum's garden and put them in each of the vases created a cluster centerpiece of sorts. I love em; what do you think?

Hope everyone had a relaxing weekend. The end of summer feels so close! I sometime wonder where the times goes; in just 47 days I'll be parading down an aisle in my all-lace gown (which by the way is being remade by Enzoani since my original dress was 3.5 inches too short; thank goodness for that!) Be back later this week with a recap from my incredible bridal shower, some more fun projects and perhaps a recipe or two. Happy Sunday!

    

     

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