Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Fabric Wedding Bouquets

From the moment I got engaged last October, I knew I wanted to make a fabric bouquet. There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, I hated the idea of dying flowers. Just. Plain. Wasteful. Secondly, I really wanted to make my wedding meaningful to me and handcrafting the bouquets did just that. I started off experimenting with polyester fabrics when I made some satin flower pins for my girlfriends that attended my stagette.
With the same idea in mind, I set out to create a variety of different types of satin flowers. I love the look of the melted edges of satin. It made each flower unique in it's own way and no two flowers would ever look the same. I purchased some white, ivory and champagne colored satin along with some organza and tulle. I tried cutting out a bunch of different shapes to see what they would look like melted. I ended up using a lot of circles, ovals, and flower shaped pieces. Some used only one color of satin while other flowers used a combination of fabrics and colors. 
That was a quick photo I took with my phone one night. I used a hot glue gun to attach all the pieces, something that saved me loads of time because with the original flower pins I made for the girls, I hand stitched the petals together. Not smart. After making what seemed like a hundred individual flowers, I embellished them with some bling. Some had rhinestones in the middle and some had glass beads. Flowers can't be flowers without stems so I attached floral stems that I purchased at Michael's and Dollar Giant using floral tape and more hot glue. Then I bunched them all together to make my wedding and 2 bridesmaids' bouquets. 
I made my bouquet bigger than the rest,  2 medium sized bouquets for my bridesmaids and one itty bitty one for the bouquet toss.  I didn't want a red bouquet and after looking at pictures of red and white bouquets, I decided against that too. To incorporate red into my bouquet, I just wrapped the stems in a red satin ribbon. They turned out way better than I expected. Future plans for my bouquet you might ask? I was hoping to make a shadow box with my wedding stuff... Haven't gotten that far yet though.

Monday, December 12, 2011

Liz's Garter

It's super past both mine and Liz's wedding but I still want to share some of the crafting that was done for our weddings. Garters aren't all that expensive but I really wanted to make one for Liz. Why you might ask? What didn't I want to make for our wedding? I thought it would be super easy to do. I had a general idea of how to piece it together so really... how hard could it be? 

Well sadly, I thought that the elastic lace would create enough of a band to go around the leg. As you can tell from the picture, that itty bitty amount of elastic from the lace just wasn't going to cut it. So after sewing it the first round, I had to go back and find some actual elastic to sew onto the garter. Wasn't easy considering my needle wasn't made to go through such thick material and I'm just not all that great at sewing. In the end, it all worked out. Just don't look at it too closely. I tried to disguise my bad sewing job with a nicely tied bow!

After sewing one garter, I definitely didn't want to sew another so I told Jamie that he must catch the garter at Liz's wedding. Catch it he did! Phew!

Monday, October 31, 2011

Procrastination Bit My Butt.

I'm not the greatest at keeping up with hosting workshops and things for my Stampin' Up! business. I sometimes feel kinda bad that my friends have me as a demonstrator because I'm just not motivated to host a bunch of things all the time. I also don't buy a ton of new products. Due to the wedding stresses I had, I most definitely pushed card workshops way down on my list of things to do. I had all the intention to place an order before the last quarter was up but procrastinating for my wedding really threw me so I just let my demonstrator membership go into pending status. I thought I had another quarter to jump start things but I received a call from my dear upline, Carolyn. She informed me that I actually only had a month to make up my downfall of last month. Panic set in. I had told Jamie I didn't have the time and energy to commit to being a Stampin' Up! demonstrator anymore but when push came to shove, I just couldn't give it up that easily. My love of paper crafts took over. I called all my loyal customers and they all helped me reach my minimum to maintain my demonstrator membership and pulled my little bitten butt out from pending status. I'm very grateful and I really feel like I need to be a bit more deliberate with my time. I haven't done a lot of paper crafting since the wedding but with Christmas around the corner, I've already got 2 workshops lined up. Hopefully the delicious taste of workshops and the fun of group gatherings with girlfriends will pull me back into the swing of things. Thank you Penny for asking me to put together a workshop for you because I just couldn't say no. =) 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

It's been a loooong time coming. One year of planning and wedding crafting led up to one amazing day. I am officially married! 

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Beach Wedding Signs

My BFF got married last week in Mexico and I know that she had looked at some of the beach signs on Etsy. I wasn't sure if she ordered them or not but took the gamble anyways and decided to make one for her to use on her special day. To start off, I printed out what I wanted the sign to say in the font I wanted. 
 Next I cut out the letters with an X-Acto knife to create a stencil. 
 Jamie cut out some plywood arrow signs and we painted them with white acrylic paint. The stencils were trimmed to fit on the sign and taped down. 
 After everything was secured, we sponged on black acrylic paint. 
 Let the paint dry and careful remove the stencil. 
Buy hanging hooks to attach to the signs so that you can tie ribbon to both signs. Jamie pre-drilled holes and then screwed in the hooks on the tops of both signs. You'll need to do that if you want to hang the signs somewhere. You could also nail it to something but we didn't want to bring a wooden take or hammer/nails to Mexico. 
We didn't know if we'd be able to point people in the right direction with the signs because we didn't know where we would find something to hang the sign on so we did the stenciling on both sides. =) Thanks bridal party for leaving all the leftover crafting supplies at my place! They came in handy! 

Friday, July 22, 2011

My BFF!

Last weekend was my BFF's bridal shower. Now it's less than 3 weeks to her wedding day in Mexico!!! We booked Culina Highlands for a private function and it turned out great. The brunch was super delicious and we finished the day with a candy buffet. How can you go wrong? Here's a few photos from the day. 
Elizabeth's Beautiful Bridal Party. 
This photo was the day after I got engaged. That was last October. Now these two BFF's are getting MARRIED!!! 



Friday, July 15, 2011

Engagement Photos!

Kathy is awesome and was able to edit our engagement photos super fast!! You can find a little snippet of them here! Enjoy! 

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Wedding Update!

So I'm stressing out again because we figured out that we need to make another 42 invitations... =S I vow to never make a wedding invitation again after this. On a funner, brighter note, Jamie and I did our engagement shoot with Katch Studios a few weeks ago and I just wanted to share the engagement teaser photo we were shown. It really is a mega teaser. 

Friday, June 24, 2011

Ribbon, Cards and Flowers! Oh my!

I spent the last few days making some thank you cards and I cleared out a lot of Fabriclands in Edmonton because the ribbon was buy 1 meter get 3 meters free. You read that right! Buy 1 get 3 free! Here's just a few pictures of what we've been working on. 





Surprise Bridal Shower.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that my lovely work family threw me a surprise bridal shower. We had some delicious food and some fun games. Many of you have probably played the "make a wedding dress with toilet paper" game but perhaps not many of you have played the greener version of it. The girls at work know I'm a bit of a recycling nazi so instead of toilet paper, they used newsprint paper from The Edmonton Journal! After we were finished, we just threw the whole lot into a recycling bag. Much nicer and more sanitary than reusing toilet paper. If you're wondering where the inspiration for the dress came from, it's from a show called... My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on TLC. Apparently they love big slutty dresses on there. That's why my cup size grew to a C in this photo. You can't see it, but they also made my butt grow a couple sizes too. 
Daisy's cousin also made me a stunning cake. It was her first time using marshmallow fondant and it turned out amazing. The cake was an Oreo cake. Thanks again work family. You guys rock!

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Amber & Mike's Maternity Shoot.

Amber and Mike are expecting their first baby and so we decided to do a little maternity shoot before Mike had to go out of town to work. It worked out really well despite raining for a portion of the day. We trespassed into the muddy field by their place when there was a break in the rain. Daisy was our creative director. She had a lot of visions that she wanted us to recreate. These are some of my favorites. 

















Engagement Celebration!

It was super busy last weekend. Jamie and I had our engagement party with roasted pig and all with the family. Afterwards I got a lovely surprise bridal shower from my work family. It was a great weekend. Here's a few photos from the engagement celebration.

 Can you believe the size of that pig Jamie is carrying? That's considered a small pig and it was $130 from a place called Tasty BBQ in chinatown. 
 Traditionally the groom comes to the bride's house bearing gifts on platters. So the different platters shown above have things from fruit, tea, buns, abalone, to homemade coconut sticky rice. 

Jamie's family's tradition is to get the bride earrings. Originally they were going to pass his grandmother's earrings onto me but his mom didn't like how they looked so she bought a new pair. We'll keep these for my future daughter or daughter-in-law! 
 After the gifts have been exchanged, it's part of Vietnamese culture for the bride and groom to present my parents with tea. It's to thank and honor them for giving me life, raising me and shaping me into who I am today. After they finish the tea, it's good fortune to give back a red pocket. 
After all the little traditions were complete, it was time for a feast!