Weddings!

It's almost that time of year again--Wedding Season! For me however, it's getting started a little earlier this year. Last year I wrote a post about wedding shower invitations and this weekend is the wedding of the same bride!

I never knew how much work actually goes into planning a wedding until this one because I am the maid of honor and I have had lots of responsibilities in the past few months! 

I've done lots of crafts, gone to tons of meetings, dress fittings and recently I've stayed up way too late crafting. Hopefully it will all be worth it once the day arrives!

Since I've been horrible about taking photos of the crafts, I have only two that I'm allowed to share with you. The bride doesn't want anything to be posted before the wedding because she wants it all to be a surprise!

One of my responsibilities has been decorating the "vestibule" or entrance room to the reception. For this we are using my wine crate shelf and a few other pieces of furniture as decoration. We are also doing photos, painted letters etc., etc. I can't go into detail or else I'd be in trouble, but it's going to look really vintage-chic!

To surprise the Bride and Groom, I have painted them a wedding chapel (we decided against a birdcage). I can't decide if I'm going to put wreaths on the doors or not. 

Here's the before and after!

Next week I will post a bit more showcasing the decorations and handmade items from this wedding!! 

Christmas Gift Painting

One of my friends asked me this Christmas to make her something to give to her Mom. She had seen my picture of the words on canvas that I had painted several months ago and wanted me to do something similar. Except she said she would like it to be a painting of the Fruits of the Spirit and she gave me specific colors to use. 

I decided, however, that since the Fruits of the Spirit are so short, that it would be better to use different fonts, paints and sizes to take up the canvas she had purchased for me to use. 

I remembered this print I had seen a while back on Pinterest and I decided to show it to her. She said she loved it! 

The only problem was that she had purchased a square canvas instead of a rectangle canvas, so I knew the scale was going to be off a bit and that it wasn't going to be exact. Nevertheless, I decided to go for it! 

I had never painted block letters before. So, I knew this was going to be a challenge for me. If you read my post about the words on canvas, you heard me express the patience it takes to paint words. This one required even more patience!! 

First, I had to sketch out the block letters on the canvas and then I painted the letters one color at a time. 

All in all it took me about 5 hours to paint. Definitely a labor worth doing because I can now say I know all of the Fruits by heart!! 

I don't know if I'm in love with the final product. There was one font in particular that I am not a big fan of. But my friend said that her mom loved it! She paid me probably too much for it, but it was still nice to be commissioned to do something and get paid for it. 

For her moms birthday we are going to build her something out of old barn wood. I'm looking forward to it because wood and I are much better friends that paint and I :)  

Upcycled: Free Logs Turned Into Fantastic Centerpieces & A Present

One of the best things about being nice, is that if you're nice to strangers, 

they will generally be nice back to you :)

I was driving to my boss' house one day and I passed by some guys cutting down a few trees for one of his neighbors. After they cut the tree into smaller pieces, they placed it all into a pile across the street. I parked my car, went over and started asking about the wood--all in hopes of asking the land owner if I could take some of the discarded wood. The workers informed me that the city dump would come by tomorrow and that the wood was mine for the taking. I grabbed three large logs (pictured below) and threw them into my trunk.

A few weeks later, my oldest brother and I spent a few hours with the wood and a chainsaw to cut the logs into 2 1/2-3 inch thick pieces. We got about 18 smaller pieces and three large pieces out of the logs. 

(Pay attention to the tall one of the left--I'm going to use it later on for a gift for the bride and groom)

Here's a close up of the sizes. They all varied because I didn't want the tables to look too uniform--My hope for the dinner party was to make the tables look styled, but individual.

Next, I wanted to create something fun for the bride and groom.The largest leftover piece of wood was too tall to place on top of a table, so I decided to make it into an engraved doorstop for the couple. 

I wanted the doorstop to read "A + J" but I couldn't find my grandfathers' wood engraver, so I resulted to using an old trick that I learned in high school. You can achieve the same look by using regular wood matches. 

First you line up the matches in a row (or in the shape of whatever it is that you're trying to make) and then you use tape to hold the ends together. Try not to get too close to the ends of the match because you do not want to prevent the matches from burning. 

Place the line on the log in the location of the project area.

Set fire to the matches and let it burn for 3-5 seconds. 

Blow it out and remove. You should be left with something that looks like this: 

Continue repeating the steps until you have your final project!!

Here's what mine ended up looking like. The bride and groom loved it! The groom, however, wanted to know what his initial didn't come first haha. 

The dinner party ended up being a big success. My parent's think that event planning/wedding planning is my calling. They might be right. I did have a lot of fun planning and decorating.

Here's a pic of what the tables ended up looking like with all of the flowers, candles and wood cuts :)

Upcycled: Purple Shirt

I used to work at Anthropologie for a second, part-time job, in addition to my full-time job. I worked there for over a year and a half and I have to say I am so grateful for all of the people who I worked with and all of the inspiration that floats around in the atmosphere. 

One day in the fall of last year, we received this shirt in a new shipment. 

I absolutely fell in love instantly with the colors because it has almost every one of my favorite colors in the pattern. I didn't, however, love the neckline. In fact when I first tried it on, I hated it. Something about having three holes in the chest area (one very deep and low--hint the middle) and I was a little uncomfortable with drawing attention to my chest. I ended up purchasing it because of the color pattern, but only wore it a few times in the past year. It was a few weeks ago that I was cleaning out my closet and I came up with an idea for a neckline adjustment using salvaged materials from things I was going to donate. 

One of the shirts I was going to donate was this babydoll (or long tank) with cream colored lace around the bottom of the shirt. I decided to cut off all of the lace from the tank and then cut out all of the holes on the purple shirt. My hope was to eventually give the purple top a more structured and vintage look.

What I ended up doing was first cutting out a square in the shirt, made what I'm going to call "edging" because I don't know the right terminology and then I attached the lace at the very end.

I think I have decided that I like when things aren't perfect. As you can see, I decided to do a zigzag pattern for the stitch and I used bright purple thread all so that the neckline would stand out a little more. The edging also isn't perfect because I made it all from teeny-tiny scraps from the square cut-out and then I also salvaged the edging from the original holes.  

After two hours on the sewing machine, I came up with this:

(I wore it to work this week and snapped this photo in the bathroom!)

All in all I am very happy with how it turned out. I love the colors and now it has a very unique neckline that doesn't draw attention to the crack between my boobs! Hah!

Just for Fun: Invitations

Another little side thing that I like to do is play around in Photoshop--not just to edit photos.

This past week I have been working on invitations for a couples bridal shower that I am throwing in honor of a best friend from high school and her upcoming nuptials. 

The shower is going to be a laid back, outdoors, night time, barbecue with TVs located on the patio for football. The backyard is heavily treed and our plan is to have tree lights, Christmas lights, globes and candles to light up the yard--I think it's going to end up being very mystical. 

The brides colors for her wedding are plum, turquoise and then metallic silver and burlap additions.

With all of that in mind, I wanted the invitations to kinda show that it was going to be an outdoor dinner, pretty casual and of course, I wanted the invite to be unique and quirky like me!  

My favorite shower invite thus far was actually from the second to last wedding I was in. 

They were hand-drawn and then printed on card stock--pretty easy to do.   

My next favorite were done by hand as well, but they were hand painted with watercolor paints and then color copied--a little bit harder to do.

Both ideas involved one thing: drawing by hand.

So, I one day at work when I didn't have much to do, I sat down and started sketching a table. Once I had it to where I liked it, I scanned it into my computer and put it in photoshop.

After a few edits, here's what it turned out to look like:

Pretty cool, ehh?

The next task was to find a tree and chandelier that I liked and try to sketch that and then scan it in as well. The chandelier was pretty easy: 

But the tree on the other hand posed some problems for me. 

I ended up using a photo from google and then editing it in photoshop until I liked the way it looked: 

Then it came time for the text of the invite. This kinda took me awhile because I wanted it all to line up straight and perfectly and have different fonts for variation. 

After several hours of being meticulous, here's what the invite ended up looking like:

I tried other color options and adding/removing the table, like the picture below. 

The bride liked the dark grey color instead of the turquoise so, we decided to remove 

the table because it was too crowded :(

The next idea I had was to do an invite with just text and then a burlap border. Here's an example of what that one turned out to be like: 

After having two options for the bride to choose from, 

I sent her an image like this one explaining what the differences are between the two options:

The bride liked what I sketched and we decided to go with the tree/chandelier invite! I printed them at OfficeMax (I receive a company discount yea!) and then I went to Paper Source to get the perfect sized and color envelopes! 

All in all, for 40 invitations, I paid just under $27 not including postage! 

I am very happy with the results and price!! 

Upcycled: My (Kinda) Blank Canvas

For a little while now I have been carrying around this canvas that was given to me. It was of a tree and was painted by a friend who disliked it after having painted it for her own room. 

Ever since then, I have always wanted to paint something for myself, but I couldn't quite figure out what I wanted to do. 

I have a few things that I want to paint--but out of all of them, this photo of French (I believe it's in French) words on canvas really stuck out to be my favorite.  

Now if you don't know, writing in cursive, with a brush and paint, is very difficult. And I think that's why I chose to go with this one--I wanted a challenge and I wanted to do something meaningful.

Since I speak Italian and love the language, I thought I would do a excerpt in Italian, but then after hearing suggestions from friends and family, I decided to do lyrics from Nickle Creek's song, "Doubting Thomas"--that way I don't always have to translate the text when questioned.

First I had to cover the canvas in white. 

(I left a little blue in areas so that there was a little color variation)

Then I started writing the text in colored pencil and then painted over it with black paint. 

I think I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Of course there are little words that I'm not too excited about with regarding my cursive, but all in all, I like it. 

And I think it looks pretty nice up on my wall :)

The next art piece I want to paint will be on a large rectangle cardboard cutout. 

That one should be fun!

Upcycled: Silver Leafing

So, I just moved into a new place recently, and I wanted to redo this children's mirror that I received! I decided that I wanted to do a faux mirrored look by attempting to use silver leafing. 

The mirror was really cute, hand painted and all--I just wasn't loving the hot pink walls with the hot pink painted flowers and to be honest, it was time for another craft. So, why not?

First things first, I had to cover up the original painting--so I just used white wall paint. And then after a few hours, I sprayed the wood with a bond spray or adhesive spray--whichever you prefer to call it! After a few minutes of waiting, I started to apply the silver leafing.

I couldn't find this brand above, but Michael's has a brand that is just as good. It comes just like is shown above. To apply the leafing, you seperate the wax paper from the packaging and place the leafing face down on the surface you just put your adhesive on. Then take a paintbrush and brush over the wax before you peel off the wax. Once you slowly peel off the wax, take a sponge paint brush and gently brush over the silver, making sure that all of it has made contact with the adhesive. 

(You can see your brush marks through the leafing)

Continue to follow those steps with each new silver-leafing square until the project area is completed! Once it's completed, wait a few hours until the adhesive has fully bonded with the leafing before applying the sealant. 

Now, here's the part where I had to get creative. My mom and I were being cheap, so we purchased the not-so-expensive brand of sealant and once it dried, it left water-like bubbles which dried into what water residue looks like once it has dried on glass showers... I mean, not so great looking on silver that's supposed to be shinny. 

So, my mom and I got to work, we grabbed water, and two sponges and started scrubbing. The sealant, thankfully started to peel off, but the sponges also took off a little bit of the leafing as well. 

I actually ended up loving the way the sponges made the leafing look antique, so we continued to scrub until we thought it looked it's best. 

Here's what it looks like now :) so much better than before! And, notice the wall color? No more hot pink!