Birds of a Feather

It’s no secret that I love escort card boards. And let’s be honest, without a plated dinner, I really didn’t need one. But no one likes that awkward third-grader feeling of wondering if you’re allowed to sit at the cool kids’ table, so I figure I’m doing people a favor.

When I was in Glendale in the fall, I found an easel at a going-out-of-business sale for $30. What a steal! It had a distressed taupe finish, but a little spray paint — and a handsome man — can fix that. (Isn’t that true of most things?) Josh painstakingly put several coats of white glossy spray paint on the easel:

(Complete with empty wine bottle weights that we stole out of our neighbors’ recycling bin. Classy.)

I searched high and low for a large picture frame that a) didn’t cost more than $50, b) was white, and c) had a super-wide or vintage beaded edge. I was about to attempt to sand and spray paint a black frame when I found an almost-white frame for $25. No beaded edges, and not as wide as I hoped, but the price was right and I’d already been to five stores, so I went for it. Once again, glossy white spray paint solves all the world’s problems.

For the magnetic surface, I attached sheet metal to cardboard and then wrapped it in fabric. A helpful tip: Bring a magnet and a piece of fabric with you to the hardware store. Not all sheet metal is magnetic. I was sure to bring a super-weak magnet so that I knew just about any magnet in the world would stick. To attach the sheet metal and then the fabric, I used E6000, which will pretty much adhere anything to anything. Metal, wood, cardboard, fabric, plastic — it does it all.

The finished product!

Now, if you’ll remember, I’m using these Kikkerland bird magnets to hold the escort cards to the magnet board (and to double as favors):

I was hoping to have birds associated with table numbers — so everyone at table 1 has a brown bird, everyone at table 2 has a blue bird, etc. — but I knew it would be hugely dependent on how the seating chart panned out. Well, five painstaking attempts later, it worked! Turns out that it helps if you can count and if you remember that there are eight colors of birds, not seven. It’s little victories like this that make me feel better about the fact that only 50% of our invited guests are attending.

My escort cards just arrived, and I can’t wait to put it all together. Only a few more days now…