Category Archives: wedding

wedding wednesday: DIY moss stone place cards

Why yes, I do still have several wedding DIY’s that I’ve seemed to let slip through the cracks. We received so many compliments on our moss stone place cards, and they were so easy to make and super duper inexpensive so I just had to share them with you. I wanted something special and unique for our guests to find at their seat that still worked with our ceramic animals sitting in paper flower wreath centerpieces. Moss stones are my favorite filler when adding the finishing touches to a space, and I liked the whole astroturf-y garden vibe they brought to the table (literally). So I knew they were just the ticket! I picked up 25 bags each for $1 (hoorah!) at Dollar Tree. The bags each had an arrangement of five different sized stones which I really liked, it seemed more natural to me. And I had grabbed a few extra in case some of the stones were damaged (they are just styrofoam you know) and in case I messed up. Better safe than sorry right?

After sorting through my stones and choosing all of the best candidates I used these Avery business cards to print out each of our guests names on a card. I used a simple and modern typeface (Futura Std) because I liked how clean each of them looked. After printing them out I arranged them by table (because I’m OCD like that).

Using an xacto knife I cut a slit along the longest side of the top of each stone. Because they were just styrofoam I carefully spread apart the opening to place the card inside and then let go. With these stones the styrofoam was tight enough to hold each card in place so I didn’t need any glue, but you might need some if you use another type of stone.

Afterward I organized each grouping of stones (by table) and placed them in clear boxes with the table’s animal labeled on it so that my House Party would know where each grouping went. Easy peasy!

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Aren’t they so cute? We still have ours sitting on a shelf, and several of our guests ended up taking theirs home which is exactly what we had hoped for. In the end each place card cost us about .35 cents. I’d say that’s a win!

vintage stamps are for sale (again!)

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As of today, I have officially started taking orders again for vintage stamps. After you guys cleaned me out in less than 48 hours a few months ago it took me a while to play catch up, but I’m back in business again.

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Vintage stamps can still be used as standard postage today, as long as all of the denominations add up to the standard postage rate. They are all “face value” meaning that whatever number is written on them that’s what they’re worth (ie: .6 cents = .6 cents), and I have several colors, themes, shapes and sizes.

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The going postage rate for a standard letter right now is .46cents and for an oversize (or square) letter (like wedding invitations) is .66cents. So I’ll be selling them in packs of .46cent sets and .66cent sets so that you will have the exact amount you need for each of your letters. Basically if you buy 10 packs this means you have enough stamps sorted for you to mail 10 letters. Got it?

So after choosing your quantity you can then specify if you simply want a mix of stamps (totally random themes, shapes, sizes, etc.)

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or to follow a certain color palette like red:

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or to follow a theme like botanicals/nature:

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Or if you want your bundle to be small with only a couple stamps with high denominations:

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Or large with several stamps using small denominations:

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The choice is yours! I’m charging $1.00 per set of standard .46cent packs and $1.50 per set of oversized .66cent packs. Why am I charging more than their worth? Call it a labor fee. I did sit down for hours to hand pick each and every one of these stamps, none of them are random they are all stamps that I have chosen due to their colors, images, sizes, etc. So you won’t be getting a bunch of American flags and doves (unless you want them?). Any stamp you see pictured above I own, and to see more of my collection go here (which only shows you about 5% of what I have.. I’ve also added a TON of Christmas themed ones for your next Christmas cards). To see more ideas on how to use vintage stamps with your letters go here.

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If you’d like to request a quantity that is different than what’s provided in the drop down list, please email me or leave me a comment with your exact order, and I will send you an invoice through Paypal. Each set of stamps will be sent to you in small glassine envelopes to keep them sorted. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask!

a bit of a shameless plug

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Now that I’m not planning a wedding, I have the time to take on more interior design clients, and a slew of other things. That being said I’ve spent the last few days updating my website to include the services I offer such as:

Interior Design – full service design, e-design, decor in a box, furniture flipping, custom upholstery, and several a la carte items like personal shopping, consultations, etc.

Graphic Design – branding, marketing materials, web design, personal stationary, and wedding items such as invitations, save the dates, menus, programs, etc.

Wedding Planning – organization and budgeting, designing the look and feel of your big day, as well as several DIY projects such as decorations, favors, embroidery, etc.

I enjoyed planning our wedding so much that I wanted to be able to offer this specialty to my clients as well. When I say wedding planning though, I don’t mean “day – of coordinator” I simply mean that I can help you with the services mentioned above up until your wedding day. For actual wedding day services, I recommend hiring a professional day-of coordinator.

Anyway, if you are interested in working with a licensed professional in your home, for your business, or for your big day. Please have a looksie at my website to see how we can get started together. :)

wedding wednesday: DIY cake topper

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I have to admit, our cake topper was pretty adorable. We had a hard time deciding what to use for our cake topper. I originally wanted to use these, but Derek thought they were kind of boring.. and he doesn’t have a mustache. Then I found these while shopping with my mom, which would commemorate our love of polar bears, but I just couldn’t justify the price. Our dear friend Fresh even bought us this, but Legos are really more of a Derek thing so I felt kind of left out. While looking around the house for ideas I was looking at our Vitra collection of miniature designer furniture that we had been collecting over the years. When a George Nelson exhibit came to the McNay we had picked up a few of the Eames Elephant stool miniatures in the gift shop for about $15. So when I saw our little collection just sitting on the shelf, I knew they were perfect.

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I wanted to dress them up a little so I cut a small piece of tulle into an oval to make a tiny veil for the girl elephant.

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I folded it in half (hamburger style) and then acordian folded the folded side to create a nice bunching affect. Just like a real veil!

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Then with a needle and some white thread I quickly stitched a few simple loops to keep everything in place.

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Then using some Tacky glue, I dabbed a bit on the sewn part of the veil and attached it to the top of the elephants head so that it would be hidden by the fluffier part of the veil like so..

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I kind of love how ridiculously over-exaggerated it turned out. That elephant is getting married. Period.

Then for the boy elephant I cut some black construction paper into a 1″ x 6″ strip to form the top hat.

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I rolled it around a sharpie to create about a 1/2″ diameter opening on each end, and glued it in place.

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Then for the bottom part of the top hat I used my 1″ circle punch to form the brim of the hat, and glued it to one end of my rolled paper.

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And for the top part of the hat I measured a 1/2″ diameter circle and free handed it (as you can see). Then I glued it to the opposite end of the rolled piece.

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The glue looked a little sloppy at first, but once it dried I just filled it in with a black sharpie, and no one was the wiser.

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Things were looking pretty cute!

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I thought just having the elephants alone would be a little too simple (and kind of small) so I wanted to build a little party above them. I used a piece of gold glitter scrapbooking paper I picked up at Hobby Lobby for .50cents and cut small triangles for the bunting.

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I used two wooden skewers (found at the grocery store for about $1 per bag) and spaced them out to start playing with the arrangement of my triangles.

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Then using some black and white striped bakers twine I glued one side of each triangle to the twine (with about 1 foot of twine left on each end (before and after the triangles) so that I would have enough to tie to my skewers.

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Once one side of the twine had all of it’s triangles in place I added another set of triangles onto the backs of the already glued ones. This way my bunting wouldn’t have a front or back, it would be glittery on both sides.

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I placed a stack of books over my triangles and let them dry overnight.

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Once they were dry, I wrapped my leftover twine ends around each side of the skewers and tied them off. I packed them up in a cute little box with my elephant couple, and sent them off to my cake baker to place on the finished cake the morning of our wedding.

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Not sure why the bow is off center, but what can you do?

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I just love how they turned out. So cute! They had such a special meaning to us (being design nerds who drool over Charles and Ray Eames) and they are definitely unique :)

wedding wednesday: DIY gold animal favors

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Just because the wedding is over, doesn’t mean that I’m done sharing my wedding DIY projects with you. I’ve been dying to share these with you guys, but I had to wait for all of the wedding photos to come in first. So now that the wait is over I can finally dive into some of my favorite details from the day.

True to form, we wanted to have favors for our guests to take with them at the end of our wedding. I had originally thought of some sort of food item, but we wanted everyone to have something they would be able to keep and look back on to remember our day. And since we already had an animal theme happening with our centerpieces I thought that sending our guests home with little animals would be pretty fitting.

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I started searching around for plastic animals in bulk and they all seemed to be pretty expensive (about $10 for a sleeve of 12 at Hobby Lobby or Michaels). Then I came across these guys on Amazon that were only $17 for a bucket of 60 and with free shipping I couldn’t click “order now” fast enough. I bought two buckets for my 95 guests knowing I’d have some left over to use for other crafts (like Christmas ornaments!)

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After sorting through my animals I found that there were 5 of each animal and 12 different animals. I elminated the ostriches (because they had a hard time standing on their flimsy bases), the wildebeests (because they were kind of scary, and *spoiler alert* they killed Simba’s dad), and the jaguars (because I already had two kinds of cats). Which left me with around 105 favors which worked out in case I had a bunch of surprise guests, that way no one would feel left out.

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I went to Home Depot to find the perfect gold paint and primer for this operation. I wanted the gold to be very reflective and shiny (like actual gold) rather than bronzey and kind of dull like many spray paints tend to be that claim to be “gold”. I settled on this Rust-Oleum Metallic, which as the cap conveys is very shiny! I asked one of the workers which primer would be best for my project, and after gabbing about my wedding for 30 minutes we decided that this Rust-Oleum Painter’s Touch Ultra Cover primer was the best bet because it “also bonds to plastic” as you can see on the can (which is also available at Home Depot for way less, I just couldn’t find it to link for you guys).

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I was a little nervous because some of these animals were plastic while the others were more rubber-like, so I did a test run on some of my animals that didn’t make the cut.

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Take that wildebeest!

It went on very smooth and dried within an hour. The finish of the primer was uniform on all three different textures of animals so I knew it would hold my gold paint nicely, and went ahead and primed the rest of my animals. Since the animals are a little awkward shaped, I laid them all on one side and primed, then after they dried I flipped them all over and primed the other side. I just used one nice even coat on each side. Nothing too gloppy.

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After the animals were nice and dry on both sides it was time for my gold paint. I was very excited and nervous about this part in case my gold wasn’t shiny enough, but I was pleasantly surprised and how metal everything looked after my first coat. And yes those are my snazzy painting clothes..

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After one coat had dried, I flipped them all back over and did a final coat on the backs of each animal. They were dry within the hour!

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I let them cure overnight because I knew that I would end up having to pile them all together to store them before the wedding, and I didn’t want them sticking together. This also helped them off-gas a little, spray paint + plastic = stinky! Then the next day I printed out little tags for each one, punched a hole in the ends and tied one to each animal with a small black ribbon.

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And here is their big debut at our wedding :)

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I just love how charming they looked on our favor table next to the confetti cannons. And several of our guests still rave about them and have sent me photos of their animals on their shelves at home. I love that!