Favours....

For my favours I wanted to have mini candy canes inside them so they needed to be bigger than the conventional 'make your own' favour boxes on ebay. 

This meant only one thing - making my own from scratch and lots of cutting and sticking for me. Well actually my sister, Cat, offered to help with them so she has spent many many hours cutting out the 50 box and 50 lid templates I drew up on red glitter card. Thanks Cat!

This is how they are made...

Here are my templates for the boxes. Cat has scored them and cut them out so now they just require folding and gluing into box shapes.

This is the box template. The measurements are 6cm x 6cm for the squares.

This is the lid template. It measures 6.6cms for the square and 2.25cms for the width of the rectangles.

This is the lid folded in the corners along the lines.

This is the box folded along the lines - ready for gluing. 

The glue is placed in the corners of the lids and the boxes and then they are pegged in place until the glue is dry.

A box and a lid glued and pegged. Just got to dry now...

And voilà....a finished red glittery favour box.

These are going to have tinsel inside with a 2" mini candy cane and 2 chocolate hearts in them. They are going to be tied with gold ribbon with a bow on the top of them. Like this.

Glue Flakes...

I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to have a go at it...

Draw out the outline of a simple snowflake onto grease proof paper. Then gently rub some washing up liquid over the stencils. This reduces the glue sticking to the paper.

Carefully, use a glue gun to glue over the snowflake stencils.

When the glue is cool and dry, it should peel away from the paper with no problems.

Cover the snowflake with some PVA glue and then dip your wet snowflake in white glitter.

Before PVA and glitter and after.

Do this on both sides. Then you can attach string by using a needle to pierce a hole through the top of the snowflake and make these into tree decorations or Christmas tags or anything you fancy really.

The ring box...

Kris' nephew has been allocated the job of 'ring bearer' at the wedding. He is only 5 years old but very excited about his role in the wedding.
Initially I wasn't sure if I wanted to go for a ring pillow or just the boxes that the rings came in but then I decided no, this was far too safe and 'normal'.
I then got it into my head that they should be inside a cut-out compartment within a Christmas book.

I searched painstakingly through our local charity shops looking for Charles Dickens 'A Christmas Carol' but to no avail. So in the end this is what I did....

First, I found a mini book for a steal at 75p in a charity shop. I chose this one as it has a gold trim on the pages and it's small enough to containing 2 rings.

Next I made a heart template and marked the book where I wanted it. Then I got a scalpel and began cutting out the hearts...be warned...the bigger the book you choose, the more hearts you will have to cut out! 

Note: don't cut your hearts right through to the back page. Leave it on a page with writing on it.

Then I covered the front page with gold glittery card and stuck ALL the pages together. This is quite time consuming.

Once I'd done that, I covered the spine of the book that said 'Chocolate' with PVA and then dipped it in gold glitter.

And here is the finished article complete with rings! I will probably tie the book together with gold ribbon so that the rings are kept safe in there until they get up the aisle.

Job done for 75p!

Glitter pine cones...

I'm probably going to use a few of these on the dinner tables and then in the evening reception room. I will probably also use them for decoration throughout the venue to give it that added festive feeling. Not bad considering they cost next to nothing to make!

Here's what I did...

What you need: PVA glue, pine cones, white glitter and 2 tubs big enough to get your pine cones in.

Next, trim off any 'ugly bits' from the bottom of your pine cones so that they sit nicely on a worktop instead of rolling all over the show.

Find some old trays and put your slightly watered down PVA solution in one and the glitter in the other.

Roll your pine cone in the glue.

And then in the glitter.

Do this with all your pine cones. Then wait for them to dry.

Job done!

Something blue....

My something blue is not only going to be my sapphire engagement ring but also something a little different...

Here's how I jazzed up my wedding shoes.

Here are my wedding shoes as they were originally. Elegant, classy but lacked a bit of something... 

 First thing I did was paint the bottom of the shoes in a white nail varnish meant for French manicure tips.

This provided a blank base to paint on.

Then I found my fiancé's favourite shade of blue nail varnish and painted over the white.

This required 2 coats as you could see the white underneath when the 1st coat had dried. This was quite fiddly and I found myself sweating like I was diffusing a bomb because the thought of me splashing blue nail varnish over my wedding shoes kept running through my head.

Looking good, but needed something else....too shiny....not festive enough either. What could I do to make it look more festive??? I know....GLITTER!

So I got a Barry M blue glitter nail varnish and painted the soles with another 2 coats of this. And voila...my beautiful 'something blue' shoes.

It just gave them a bit of sparkle and made them less straight-laced as I am far from straight-laced.

I'm really happy with how they have turned out :)

Frosty glitter jam jar candle holders

I wanted to have some cheap home made candle holders at my Christmas wedding and began frantically collecting jam jars. I envisaged something really Christmassy and winter wonderlandy but I wasn't sure what to do with them so was planning on just putting some ribbon around the tops and having them lined up down the aisle. However, this looked a bit too cheap and naff so I went in search of something better.
Here is what I came up with....

Take some plain old jam jars with their labels removed....

Cover the jar in PVA glue completely...

and then sprinkle the glue covered jar with white/snow glitter (bought from ebay)...

And this is what you end up with....

You can then experiment with designs using masking tape to tape off stripes on the jar... 

 

or you could even use a heart stencil....

add a candle in your jar and hey presto...a snowy/wintery candle holder for next to nothing!

DIY dress hangers

I was perusing Pinterest the other day and I saw a pin about 10 things a bride wished she had done in hindsight on her wedding day. One of them was to have decent hangers for her dresses as she had used plastic ones and it ended up looking like she'd bought her dress from Walmart.

I started having a look on ebay and found that they were really expensive (it seems anything with 'bridal' or 'wedding' in the title means it's going to be overpriced). So I decided (once again) to make my own hangers.
Here's how I did it.

Take a wooden coat hanger...

Print off 'Bride' written in a font of your choice from the computer and used masking tape to tape it in place...

Etch over the writing with a biro so that it indents into the wood of the hanger...

Go over the etched font with a permanent marker carefully and then place a diamanté stud over the dot of the 'i'...

 

Tie a white ribbon about 1" thick around the hook of the hanger...

 

Then tie in a bow...

Glue the bow to the wood of the hanger with a glue gun...

Trim off the excess ribbon from the end of the bow...

Then to finish, glue a diamanté button on the front of the bow for that bridal finish...

Then do exactly the same process for your bridesmaids' hangers. I chose to do mine in red to match the dresses...

Just need one button on the right hanger to finish :)

I had the hangers already so that was free. The ribbon I got in a material shop for 80p each and the diamaté buttons were £2.99 + £1.75p postage on ebay. So nice and cheap for all three hangers and something personal for the big day :)