Friday, December 31, 2010

Fork Me


If these forks dont scream rustic chic wedding I don't know what does! Made by Seletti they'll set you back about 4 bucks a set pre-package but if the packaging aint your thing you can purchase them from www.ecocateringsupply.com for $105 for 240 individual pieces not bad for something so cute!

Image courtesy of remodelista.com

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Vintage Transportation

I love all things vintage. Vintage clothes, vintage furniture, vintage handbags, and vintage cars I love it all. Lucky for me I happen to be marrying a man who shares my love of all things vintage especially vintage cars. About a year ago J was bit by the vintage car buying bug, more specifically the vintage BMW car buying bug and about 6 months later this beauty found its way to our driveway.

BMW have a special place in J’s heart. A large portion of his family on his late father side including his brother work as master BMW mechanics and many of his favorite memories from his early 20’s revolve around him and his cousins tricking out their vintage and late model Beemers. So what does all this have to do with weddings well friends I’ll show you.

Pics of couples posing in, around and on top of vintage cars have been filling up my wedding inspiration folder since the beginning of our engagement and in the spirit of full disclosure I secretly hoped J would purchase the beemer for the sole reason of getting pic like this. I’m super excited to be able to get some pro pic of J and I with the beemer in our wedding finery and I love that will be able to honor his family history with BMW.

pictures courtesy of style me pretty and ruffle blog

Monday, December 27, 2010

For the Curvy Girls

If you’re like me images of bridesmaids in vintage/anthropologiesque dresses make you swoon.

If your also a plus size bride with a bridal entourage ranging from petite to plus like myself making your vintage vision come to life can feel as unobtainable as your goal weight. True vintage plus size dresses are few and far between and due to their rarity come at a premium price and vintage style retailers such as Anthropologie and Modcloth only carry dresses up to size 14. So what’s a curvy girl to do?

Well my friends that’s where my new best friend LucieLu comes in. Lucielu.com is an online boutique specializing in plus size clothing ranging from 1x to 5x. Their clothes are a wonderful mix of classic and vintage silhouettes with just a dash of trendy and bring to mind all the lovely dress I’ve longed for at Anthropologie.

While I haven't received my first order from them yet a quick Google search resulted in a boat load of positive reviews for the quality of clothing and customer service.

I can guarantee you one of these beauties will be making an appearance in our upcoming e-pics with a couple of more making their debut at my shower and rehearsal dinner!

images courtesy of oncewed.com and lucielu.com

Monday, December 20, 2010

Ceremony Flair

Ceremony décor is not high on our priority list. With our tiny décor budget we have to be strategic with our spending and dropping a wade of cash to spruce up a space our guest will only be occupying for a short amount of time isn’t practical. I want to make sure that whatever we choose to create for our ceremony can be reused in our reception space and is easy for our coordinator to set up, breakdown and move. Sounds like a tall order right? Well feast your eyes on these.

I loved this the moment I saw it on Style me Pretty. White chivari chairs topped off with modern geometric pillows, so pretty and so perfect for our wedding.

Thanks to our super star of a coordinator we were able to squeeze chivari chairs into our rental budget and with a little help from my seamstress mom I'm confident that we’ll be able to crank out 35 of these bad boys to add some flair to our ceremony. So confident in fact that as I type this post 8 yards of yummy midcentury modern-tastic Joel Dewberry fabric is on its way to me.

I can’t wait to get started on this project it combines 2 of my biggest loves sewing and fabric and will help add a little extra something to our ceremony and reception space.

Are you creating any decor for your ceremony?

*image courtesy of Stylemepretty.com and Joeldewbery.com respectfully

Monday, December 13, 2010

Its Not You....It's Me

It’s over friends. I have officially broken up with my Google readers.

It’s not the readers faults its mine. Every day that it plops a fresh crop of wedding porn at my feet makes me second guess all of the wedding decision we’ve made and I’m officially over it. So bye bye reader it’s been real but it’s time for this bride to stop day dreaming about wedding inspiration and get her wedding craft on.

Have you bid farewell to any of your favorite wedding blogs in exchange for wedding sanity?

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Pom Pom Love!

A couple of months ago while lurking on our DOC blog I stumbled upon and fell in love with this picture.

I died over the cuteness and wanted it for our wedding. Unfortunately for me our floral budget is currently maxed out so I need to find a non-floral alternative if I wanted to make this beauty mine. Enter our amazing DOC, the creator of the above cuteness. She suggested using yarn poms in place of carnations to create the garland. Genius right? Off I went to our local Michaels in search of garland making supplies and stumbled upon this.

For those who aren’t in the know this little guy is a heart shaped yarn pom pom maker. My squeal of excitement when I found it could be heard throughout the store. I scooped it up along with some skeins of yarn in our wedding color and headed home for some heavy duty crafting. After some brainstorming and practice with the pom maker I discover that a garland similar to the one above would take a lot more poms than I was willing or capable of making so I had to simplify the design. Instead of stringing the poms end to end to create the full look the above garland required, I decided to space them out a couple inches apart.

I love the look and although it’s not as full and fluffy as the inspiration garland this garland definitely showcases the heart shaped poms while still maintaining the fun and cuteness of the original garland.

In order to make your own heart yarn pom pom garland you’ll need the following-

  • Large Clover Heart Shaped Pom Pom Maker
  • Skeins of yarn in your desired colors
  • Sharp scissors, preferable with a small thin blade
  • Embroidery thread in coordinating color
  • Large embroidery needle

When you get your pom pom maker you’ll notice that it comes in 2 pieces that connect together through a metal pin in the center.

When you put your two pieces together to make a pom it’s very important that both pieces face up. You’ll be able to determine which way is up by the heart printed on the front panel of each piece. If one heart points up and the other down your pom maker has been put together incorrectly and will need to be fixed before you start.

Once your pom maker is together, you’re ready to start wrapping it with yarn. Starting at the top of the arch neatly wrap your yarn until all the small ridges on the arch are no longer visible. Repeat on the opposite side until your pom maker is full.

To secure the yarn take your embroidery thread, and beginning at the center wrap around the pom maker making sure to pass between the 8 channels located around the maker. After you’ve wrapped your embroidery thread around the pom maker twice take your loose ends and bring them up to the center of the maker. Make a single knot by looping the ends together twice. Once you’ve tightened the string around the maker anchor the loose ends in the hooks that are located on each arch.

Now comes the fun part! Take your scissors and trim through the yarn in each ditch. I prefer using my sewing clippers because the blade is tiny enough to get into the small ditches. Repeat for all 4 channels.

Once you have cut through all 4 ditches take your scissors and working at an angle trim the yarn on the inside of the pom maker. This will help compact the yarn in the body of the pom and create a more even shape.

Now that you’re done trimming the inside of your pom remove the thread from the hook anchors and give it a good tug to tighten the knot. As you’re pulling you’ll notice the yarn pull inward and the pom maker will separate. Depending on the amount of yarn you wound around the arches the top of the pom maker may pop off, if this happens don’t worry you’ll be removing the pom from the maker in the next step.

­With your thread knotted tight, lift the arches one side at a time and remove your pom. At this point you may notice that although it has the general shape of a heart the yarn is messy and uneven, this is fine as you’ll be fixing this shortly.Next you’ll want to give your thread one final tug and knot your string, this will ensure that your pom is secure and prevent it from falling apart.

To create the heart arches take your thumbs and at the top of your pom push down. This will define the heart shape. Take your scissors and trim the excess yarn in the ditch, do this on both sides.

Your pom should now have a nice defined heart shape. To finish your pom take your scissors and trim any stray yarn on the body of your heart.

It’s really easy to get caught up in trimming your pom pom and obsess with the over shape and symmetry of the heart pom but be careful not to trim too much our you’ll end up with a jacked up pom that looks nothing like a heart. Remember it’s a pom pom made out yarn and thus will not always be perfect!

Once you’re done making all of your poms it’s time to start your garland! For the garland you will need embroidery thread in any color of your choosing and a large embroidery needle.

Cut a piece of thread to your desired length and thread your needle. If you find it difficult to thread your needle it may be helpful to trim the end of your thread at a 90 degree angle. Take your first pom and insert your needle 1/3 down from the top of the pom and directly in the middle of the width of the heart. You want your needle to pass directly under the dent at the top of the heart.

The goal is to have the top 3rd of your heart above the string and the final 2/3 below. This helps distribute the weight of the pom evenly on the string and will prevent your poms from twisting while hanging.

Once your pom is strung you may want to hold your pom up to test the weight distribution and ensure that your pom is not twisting on its string.

If you want to secure your poms in place on your garland simply create a knot on your string before and after you insert your needle. I’m choosing to leave my poms unknotted to allow changes in the spacing by our DOC during set up.

Once you finish stringing your poms your garland is done! Now the hard part is trying to figure out where to showcase our new garland!

Friday, December 3, 2010

DIY Resource-Royalty Free Images

I’m a DIY bride. I love spending hours on a craft project or invitation design and knowing that it’s destine to shine on our big day. I like to think I have a good eye for design and have the skill to execute the craft projects that are currently sitting on our to-do list but when it comes to putting pen to paper and drawing out the need design motifs for our wedding paper I hit a wall.

I have zero drawing skills but fortunately for me websites like Veer.com and Istock.com exist to provide vector images to the artistically handicapped like myself. At about 15 bucks for a medium size image the images on Istock and Veer are not cheap but if you’re like me with little to no ability to draw it’s a nice alternative to paying someone to custom design your invites for you.

Veer even has editable invitations available for download, for about 30 bucks you can download this vintage lovely.

Needless to say I love me some Istock and Veer but one of my favorite image resource is this book.

Repro Depot Pattern Books are in one word amazing. Included in each book is a CD with 75 pattern designs in 3 different color combos. The patterns are saved as jpeg files which means unlike vector images from veer and Istock you are able to paste these images into any projects made with word, paint or power point. Also in the book are step by step instructions 10 craft projects including this Japanese inspired stab-bound book. How cute would it be for a guest book or ceremony programs?

Repot Depot Pattern book retails for about $25 dollars but when you consider the amount of images that come on the CD it’s quit a bargain.

I hope this post encourages some of you artistically challenged brides to consider DIYing some or all of your paper products. With the right resources and tools even we drawing handicapped can have beautiful DIY wedding paper!

Images courtesy of Veer.com and Repro Depot Respectfully