Dazzle

The dazzle I am speaking of is ShoeDazzle. Everything for $40 and the stylists find you shoes. O. M. G.

Thus far the stylists have been a little off for my taste, but then in my alternative selection for March, there were the most Beautiful shoes my eyes have seen. They are named Pixie.

Pixie from Shoe Dazzle

The dusty rose is to beautiful and the shape and style of the shoe is so classic! They arrived and the shoe in person did not fail to meet my standards:

The heel height was a bit taller than I had imagined (I'm not used to wearing heels anymore) so I had a little trouble walking in them the first day, but I managed. The second day I wore them I purchased gel stickies for the pads of my shoes and they fit and felt much better.

So before you stop reading this post because you are saying to yourself, "girl, your colors are not pink" I have so many pre-wedding activities to participate in.

I have purchased a black and white polka dot dress from White House Black Market and thought that these shoes would be perfect with it. I am planning on wearing this dress and maybe these shoes to at least one of my bridal showers.

WHBM

A terrible phone pic of me in my dress and shoes!!!

My fiance even said he like the outfit and didn't ask how much they were. He only asked if they were a "just because" buy or a "useful" purchase.

Have you made clothing purchases for pre-wedding activities?

Fabric flowers

I guess a theme for our wedding is, no real flowers. I laugh about this because I LOVE flowers. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE! Being that our wedding is outside at my parent's farmhouse, there will be flowers in the gardens. But, as far as corsages, bouquets, and centerpieces, no real flowers.

Source

As you can imagine, I have scoured the internet for every tutorial imaginable. I was looking for flowers that I thought were pretty and easy/quick to make. I didn't want to be stressing over making a dozen fabric flowers if each flower was going to take a long time to make.

I first found tutorials in the Martha Stewart website:

Martha Stewart for above 2 photos

I tried the tutorials for the Dahlia (1st pic) and the garden rose (2nd pic). The dahlia DID NOT turn out well! It may have been the fabric I chose, but it was not good! But, the garden roses turned out well:

Garden rose I made

I was hoping to put a fabric flower on a headband for our flower girls, but this flower come to a point in the back and would probably not sit right. So, on to look for more...

I kept finding similar tutorials for flowers shown in the very first photo above, so I tried it out. They seemed easy to make since all I had to cut were circles of the fabric in the same size. Some tutorials told me to sew and some told me to hot glue. Since I am a sewer, I started with that. The flower turned out nicely but it took longer than I had expected.

So, next I thought I'd try the hot glue. Boy did this go faster than I could ever have hoped. Even though there was a lump in the middle from the glue, you couldn't tell and the flower still looked good. I was able to knock out 2 flowers in the time it took me to sew one.

These flowers I made are all a little large to go on top of my flower girls' head, so I will have to make more that are smaller.

Tutorials I have found:
Chrysanthemumfelt flower
Fabric flower similar to one I did above
Fabric Carnations
Hot Glue Flower I did above

Some other ideas I have for fabric flowers are wrist corsages and brooches for clutches I am going to make.

Source

What do you think? Great idea or what?

DIY Chalkboard

I thought I'd share with you how I made the chalkboard for my photobooth. It is really easy and staight forward.

1. Gather supplies: Fine sandpaper, very fine sandpaper, challkboard paint, painter's tape, wooden board.

I purchased the wooden board from AC Moore. The edges are grooved similarly to baseboard.

2. Sand the wooden board. I started with the fine sand paper and finished with the very fine so the board would be very smooth and easy to write on:

3. Decide on the design. Do you want a wooden border; do you want only the edges to be wood?
I chose to do a wooden border so I placed my painter's tape around in the design I wanted:

4. Paint; I took the board outside and used the chalkboard spray paint. I made sure to cover all the areas. Let dry and repeat as many times as you think necessary.

5. Once you have put on all of the coats of paint and it is dry, remove the tape. DONE!

Do you think you will make a chalkboard?

Photobooth

My photographer, cousin Rolf, sent me a facebook message last summer/fall encouraging us to do a photobooth. I had been wanting one of these, but since I was getting the family discount, I didn't want to impose and cause him to have to do more. So, with Rolf's go-ahead, I started thinking and ordering supplies.

Rolf is going to supply the backdrop for the "booth."

I purchased a box full of photobooth props from someone off of the Weddingbee Classifieds. The box is full of awesome stuff: red parasol, big sunglasses, hats, and feather boas...

Picture seller put up in the ad.

I thought I'd make a few things to add to the pile of stuff. It is always nice to see messages from friends and family, so I made a wooden chalkboard sign:

Unfortunately, the wood's natural lines show through the paint even though I put on lots of layers.


I also made lips and mustaches on sticks. I don't have a personal photo, but this is pretty much what they look like:

Etsy Seller

Of course these are a little nicer than mine. This etsy seller is actually talented at working with clay.

All in all, I think I have enough costume/decorations for the photobooth and it is going to be epic!

Are you thinking of doing a photobooth? How will you provide props?

On your mark, get set, ...

With just under 3 months left, I have begun to stress a bit. There is soooo much to do! It is comforting to have less items on the to-do list than have been done, but the ones still on there look so daunting.

Over the past week, the groomsmen gifts arrived, I've been putting together the invitations, I purchased the flower girl and ring bearer gifts, and made some of our parents gifts.

I will take some photos and get them posted ASAP, I promise!

Forgive my lack of posts, please! I've been getting things crossed off.

DIY Pocketfolds

I was able to find some instructions on how to make my own pocketfold:


Mrs. Ballet Flats gave instructions on how to use a 7" x 19" piece of cardstock.
Mrs. Deviled Egg gave instructions on how to use a 12" x 12" piece of cardstock.

I chose to use Mrs. Deviled Egg's instructions since I knew 12" x 12" cardstock is very easy to find and comes in many different colors. The pocketfold would be black allowing for red and white to be featured elsewhere in the invitation. I then did some research to find black #80 cardstock at a good price.

I ordered 80lb 12x12 cardstock (CV12-BK) from LCI paper. For 3 packs of 50 I paid $46. Beat that pocketfold seller people!

On the blogs and boards, everyone was saying to use double-sided tape. I went to my local Michael's and chose the tape that looked the strongest. I needed strong tape because I was working against physics. The pocket has flaps that are folded under and taped to the invitation. This flap will be pushing out against the tape holding it down.

I followed Mrs. Deviled Egg's instructions and used the double-sided tape. The fold didn't want to stay on the invitation. So I tried different tape, no luck. I went back to Michael's to look for another adhesive option and that is when I found the most wonderful glue EVER! I mean it, this stuff is awesome. It is called 2 Way Glue. It is blue when wet but dries colorless. If you adhere two things together while wet (wet bond), it is permanent. If you allow the glue to dry and adhere something to it (dry bond), it is temporary.

2 Way Glue

It was a little more than I wanted to spend ($6 before I used a 40% off coupon) but it was WELL worth it! I applied the glue to the flaps and held them down for a few seconds. I then put the invitation under something heavy and allowed it to dry while I made more. None of the ~130 invites I have made have come undone. This bottle of glue lasted me through all of the invites and for some other projects.

So for $52, I made ~130 pocketfold invitations, 1/3 the price if I had purchased them pre-made.

Have you had huge savings so far in your planning process?

Pocketfold Wha????

Once I had decided our invitations would be pocketfolds, I needed to investigate our options. I new I wanted to keep it to 5" x 7" instead of square invites due to postage charges.

The pocketfold can me arranged in many different orientations:

The Himalaya (A7): $35.99 for 50 (paperandmore), $75.50 for 50 (envelopme)

Himalaya

The Cascade (A7): $35.99 for 50 (paperandmore), $75.50 (envelopme)

Cascade

The Atlas (A7): $35.99 for 50 (paperandmore), $75.50 for 50 (envelopme), $35.75 for 25 (LCI paper)

Atlas

I was beginning to see that purchasing the pocketfolds was going to be very expensive since I needed to send out 121 invites. The orientation I fell in love with was the Atlas, so I now needed to find instructions on how to make my own pocketfold.