US meets UK

So…maybe because I blog, or because I bought a Mac (more for the non virus part), or perhaps because both of my parents and Mr.D work with computers, people tend to think I know my way around a computer.  The reality…not so much.  Whereas Mr.D, web guru that he is, runs circles around me with his computer and all three of them laugh at me for my lack of computer savvy when I cry for help.

We’re getting ready to mail out the UK invitations and thus have been researching fonts to address the envelopes with.  Using With this Ring’s (aka Almost Anderson) fabulous faux-ligraphy idea we plan to address these ourselves.

After visiting Dafont.com, UrbanFonts and the like I began to download a few fonts…if you, like me, don’t fully understand how to get from point A (see font/like font) to point B (effectively use the font) then this post is for you.

Basically I had Mr.D show me several times and then I took a screen shot of the process (why yes, I did have to google how to take a screen shot…). After you download the font you should double click the zip file to open (un zip) it.  Open “Font Book”.  If what you unzipped becomes a file, you should open the file and drag only the ttf (true type font) not the txt (text file) to font book. If it becomes an icon with the letter A on it then all you have to do is drag it into Font Book in the folder you’d like (in our scase “scripts”).

What font did we choose? Well…we haven’t chosen one yet, but we could certainly use your suggestions!

What are your favorite script fonts?

I have a confession, for almost a year I’ve been heavily addicted to the site One Pretty Thing.  I check it daily and have been saving DIY projects from it for a long time.  I just wanted to share some of my recently featured favorites with the hive.

If you like Mrs. Pineapple’s clay flowers (and you’d like to take it on yourself) check out this Martha tutorial:

I love, love, LOVE terrariums and succulents; these would make fantastic centerpieces.  Not to mention they’re the kind of centerpiece that you can take home and will last for a long while. Can’t you just imagine these surrounded by tiny votives?

These waxed flowers (from Martha) seem out of my league but the comments make it sound like a great project!

Can you tell how much I love succulents yet? As a former Arizonian I really can’t get enough of them, I even drove a poor baby Organ Pipe cactus all over the United States in my trunk because I couldn’t part with it!  Mr.D and I have debated about using succulents or not and we still haven’t decided (I can’t believe we’ve honestly be discussing these for 8 months). These are intended as favors, but I could easily see them places on a table with votives.  If you mixed up the potting height they’d also be great as stand alone centerpieces/favors (favorpieces?).

The Cherry Blossom Festival is about to kick off in DC.  If you’d like to bring the outdoors in to your wedding you can try these cherry blossom centerpieces from (who else?) Martha.

Who knows what Ikebana means? I didn’t until I checked out these flower arrangements.  We’ll be doing a take off of the curly willow/orchid arrangement but with delphiniums and curly willow (card tables etc).

Okay, I know this might feel like a DIY/Martha Overdose, but I had to share one more.  This one doesn’t contain flowers - they’re  luminaries from Martha. I honestly squealed when I saw these!

Ahhh, too much inspiration!  Anyone else on the DIY path for centerpieces? Where do you find your inspiration?

Early on in wedding planning I found this photo on engageology (aka Kenziegirl).

I loved the idea of using “found” elements and re-using items, I thought it would be great how personal and handmade these could look. Little did I realize that most people BUY these corks like that. I thought who ever made them just really liked that type of wine…

Many people began collecting corks for me and at first I thought synthetic corks would be better for this project. As it turns out, the real corks are better to sand down and are much easier to play around with.

We thought an Xacto knife would do the trick of cutting the line in the top, but it was too thin. So my dad (who is a carpenter) whipped out a vice and his backsaw. Which worked, but wasn’t fast enough for my dad (imagine Tim the Toolman Taylor from Home Improvement).

So he borrowed my neighbor’s scroll saw….

I think if you’re not related to my dad, then the back saw would work just fine. The other tool we used was 60 grit sandpaper to flatten the bottoms.

Here is the finished product sans the actual place card:

Check out the guest, groom and bride!

How are you doing your placecard holders?

So after you’ve seen how NOT to emboss your invitations, I should probably show you how to emboss them.

We ordered custom stamps, used dark brown ink and took the pads out of their containers to make a larger stamp pad, a stamp-a-majig, a heat gun from Joann’s and last but not least clear embossing powder.

Step one: Set your stamp a majig to where you’d like to stamp.

Step two: Stamp down. Our stamps were a bit large, so it was best to use two sets of hands for this project. For the bird stamp; Mr. D’orsay would stamp down, MOH MB would push down again using the wooden handle to make it even.

Step three: Quickly powder. Glittering hills of clear powder, tip off then hand to your heat gun operator. If you don’t have a heat gun operator, then you can leave all the stamped/powdered ones until you’re ready to heat them. The important part is quickly applying the powder to the stamped area. Don’t tap the paper to removed excess powder, wait till after you’ve embossed and simply dust the sheets with a rag.

DO NOT leave your cat alone near a hill of embossing powder…

Step four: Bring on the heat! Hold your heat gun an 1-2 inches away from the paper, be careful because you don’t want to burn the paper! You can see below when the powder begins to turn.

Un-official Step five: Attach the invite, we used tombow adhesive and it worked great!

This was a fun and rewarding project once we figured out all the kinks. I highly recommend practicing on scrap paper till you work everything out.

Most important lessons learned:

• Figure out the best stamping method for you and your stamps. Its very important to get an clean equal amount of ink on the page
• Use colored ink and clear powder - NOT the other way around
• A stamp-a-majig, though$12.00 turns out to be worth it

Did you have to learn any DIY lessons the hard way? Do you have any helpful embossing tips?

I fell in love with these centerpieces:

they were quirky, different and I loved how the uhule/fiddlehead fern scroll matched the scroll in our invites. There was just one problem, each centerpiece would use three vases, and cylinder vases add up! Currently they’re about $3.99 for the tallest one, but at $12 per tables and multiplied by 13…it just came to be too much. I also wanted many votives on the mantle to give the house a warm candlelight glow. While calculating these with my dad he made the obvious suggestion, why not get a bottle cutter and create vases/votives?

I quickly found ephrems bottle cutter here and purchased it. I figured the $40 would be worth it, as I’m always up to add another craft skill to my repertoire. I told my bridesmaids and friends to get drinking, because we’d need a lot of wine bottles for this project, and many wine corks for another.

There is a less caloric and less liver abusing option though, head to a wine bar and ask for their old bottles.

So with our cases of empty wine bottles in hand we began the process.

Step one: Clean the bottles and soak them to remove the labels. Some will peel off easily, some will scrape off, but you should NOT use the xacto knife. Otherwise you’ll cut yourself like one of my MOH’s did.

Step two: Score the bottles using the bottle cutter. I had my dad do this because he is handy and the sound of scoring glass is equal to nails on a chalkboard. Remember to maintain pressure on the bottle towards the back end of the bottle cutter. The lines should be even and match up with each other at the end.

Step three: Get in touch with your inner pyromaniac. Slowly rotate the scored line of the bottle over a candle flame maintain inward pressure on the bottle (gently gripping and pushing the neck and the dimple/bottom rim toward the center). MOH MB had a great systems of 2 sloooow rotations over the flame combined with step four.

Step four: Break out the ice. Take an ice cube and quickly make your way around the scored edge to quickly cool the bottle.

Step five: Repeat steps three and four as necessary. Often the bottle will sort of slide off the edges.

This takes a fair amount of patience. DO NOT try to force the bottle. You’ll end up with rough edges, glass shards and a ruined bottle. Bottles range in thickness so some bottles will be easier than others. Seriously, only tackle this project if you are either A) blessed with patience or B) willing to learn patience (after my 2nd broken bottle I learned!).

I recommend only tackling a case of bottles at a time, because it does get tiring and they add up over time. The darker colored ones will be used as votives with a floating candle in them for the mantles and the clear ones will be centerpieces.

I’m excited, because I don’t think I’ll ever buy a votive holder again. “Found” elements are important to me and I’m glad I could give these bottles a second chance at life!

Are you planning on DIY-ing your centerpieces?