The worst part about my third readopted project is that it has two components and I dragged my mom into it with me. Sorry, mom.

Previously abandoned project #3: blue silk integrated into the ceremony decor combined with previously dropped dream #437: screenprinting on fabric.

My mom already made 14 table runners out of the gray-blue dupioni silk that I bought on eBay in the fall (love you, mom!), but we had several yards, and some remnants, left over. I met with my day-of coordinator at the venue, and we decided that it would be awfully nice to have some gray-blue silk curtains for the altar area of the ceremony.

Then, “Are you tying in the blue anywhere else in the ceremony?” she asks me, as we talk about my creamy ivory sheers and twinkle lights. Oh, of course I am, I say as if it’s already done, I’m using fabric with the programs, somehow. Fortunately (for my sanity), we didn’t have enough remnants to make fabric envelopes for the programs, but we did have enough to back the programs in fabric. That presented a problem, though, because I had three pages of text for the program and only enough Arturo stock for two pages per program, so I planned on printing one page two-sided.

Wait… Wouldn’t it be the best of everything to screenprint on the fabric?

Off to Alchemy I went, and I found Sarah, who generously offered to not only screenprint the fabric for me but also adhere it to Heat-n-Bond and trim it to size. Are you kidding me? How did I find this girl?

As I’ve mentioned at least twice, I really, really wanted to do letterpressed wood bookmarks as favors, save-the-dates, something. Ever since I got a little sample from Victoria that was printed on balsa, I’ve wanted to do a project of my own on wood. But the money simply wasn’t in the budget to make 100 two-color letterpress pieces, and I had this strange paranoia that no one would know what they were for. (A non-descript rectangular item doesn’t exactly scream “put me in your favorite book.”)

When I decided that I really wanted to do little gifts for everyone at the rehearsal dinner, I knew I’d found the perfect opportunity to do my bookmarks. But at that point, two weeks before the wedding, I needed someone who could do it fast and wouldn’t mind doing a small quantity of around 20.

Previously abandoned project #2: wood bookmarks.

I posted my fifth Alchemy listing in the last six months and starting looking at artisans. Then, by accident, I found these:

When they’re in a book, the wings float above the pages. Super cool. I convo’d them and asked if they’d be willing to modify the design and use the bird that I illustrated for various wedding items:

…and they accepted! So 18 of these beauties will be on their way to me in the next couple of days, and they’ll go along with the CDs that I made for our wedding party and family.

Almost two weeks ago, I entered into a new phase of wedding planning: the “oh, the wedding is still a few weeks away and I’m still sleeping more than four hours a night, so I need some new DIY projects” phase.

It’s also called the “she has totally spun out” phase.

A couple of months ago, I was cutting DIY projects. I gave myself quite a pat on the back for cutting not one, not two, but three items from my checklist. But I clearly congratulated myself too soon, because I brought all three of them back — in different incarnations — in the last two weeks.

I planned to keep these projects secret, but I can’t keep much to myself these days, so shhh… don’t tell anyone.

Previously abandoned project #1: fabric envelopes. Reincarnated as: fabric CD sleeves.

I only made 14 of these — one per person (or per couple, in some cases) for everyone at our rehearsal dinner — and let me tell you, I’m glad I didn’t make 72 of these to use with our invitations (or 100 to use with our programs, as I once considered in a certainly sleep-deprived state). I make hand-sewn paper CD sleeves pretty often, but this was my first time using fabric. Overall, I think that paper makes a better sleeve (because it’s more rigid), but I’m pleased with how these turned out.

Materials:
Cotton fabric (Jo-Ann Fabrics)
Thread and sewing machine
Eames Furniture Weave cover stock
Blank CD-Rs (the ones I used are white Sony CDs)
Printer
Photos
Rotary paper trimmer
Rounded corner punch

Preparation:

1. Cut fabric to size. (I cut mine to 6″ square, but if you’re a better seamstress than I am, you could go smaller and have smaller seam allowances.)
2. Trim photos to size. (Mine are 4.5″ wide by 2″ tall, but you can use the dimensions of your choosing. Going 2″ tall enabled me to print two per 4″x6″ photo sheet.)
3. Print front piece (with your names, the date, or anything else) and trim to size. (Mine is 2.125″ wide by 1″ tall.)
4. Choose songs and burn CDs. (I selected songs from our reception playlist.)
5. Print CD track list on cover stock, trim to 5″ square, and round corners using corner punch.
6. Attach the front printed piece to the photo with a small piece of double-sided tape, placed 1/4″ from the left edge. (This will make your life infinitely easier when you go to assembling the sleeves.)

Assembly:

1. Fold over top edge of fabric and sew along the edge. Repeat for all fabric squares.
2. Place the right sides of two squares together and sew along the three unfinished edges. Trim threads and turn the sleeve right side out.
3. Position photo piece as desired along edge of sleeve and sew it to the sleeve. (I use much smaller stitches when sewing on paper than I do on fabric; it looks more polished and less crafty.)
4. Place track list and CD inside of sleeve.

Stay tuned tomorrow for revived project #2…

I’ve received several comments and emails requesting the coat check tag and sign templates I mention here, so I thought I’d post them here so I don’t miss any interested parties.

Coat check tags
InDesign CS3 template (4.7MB)
PDF template (0.3MB)

Signage
InDesign CS3 template (1.1MB)
PDF template (0.1MB)

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…

One wedding + one bride who loves to give gifts = trouble. Over the last year, I’ve had more than half a dozen different favors picked out. Fortunately, I’m an adamant believer in useful favors, so my prospects were limited to food and practical items. My first love was this luggage tag:

Perfect for all of our out-of-town guests, utterly practical and classically beautiful. But, despite my best attempts, I couldn’t find the source of these specific tags, and all the ones I found were either ugly or unbelievably expensive.

Of course, there’s always repackaged candy in all its lovely forms:

I especially love the last image (thanks, Martha). But then I got distracted thinking about flowers and plants, despite being completely impractical for out-of-towners.

Of course, from the get-go, I’d wanted to do letterpressed wood bookmarks. Originally, I wanted to use those as save-the-dates, but then I thought they’d make great favors. That didn’t seem like enough, so I somehow got the crazy idea to do cookies too — bird-shaped sugar cookies, made with a custom cookie cutter, packaged in glassine bags and sealed with cartouches cut from various papers. When the wedding was still six months out, the idea of baking 200+ cookies a week before the wedding didn’t phase me.

Sometime in January, I went into super strict budget mode — both for our financial budget and for my time budget. We couldn’t afford the bookmarks, and I certainly wasn’t going to have time to bake that many cookies, so I dropped the favors altogether, telling myself that the photo booth pictures and bird magnets and welcome bags would qualify as favors. (Which, by the way, I still think they do.)

When I was in Spokane in February, I found these great miniature chocolate bars:

They come in sets of three, in little boxes. Adorable. The chocolate is delicious, and I’ve used “rejoice” on our website, welcome card, etc. to refer to the wedding and all the pre-wedding festivities, like the wine tasting the day before the wedding and the bachelor(ette) parties. It seemed like fate. But I couldn’t quite swallow the price, even with the generous bulk discount.

So now, eight days before the wedding, I’m back to the cookies. As if I didn’t still have programs to print and assemble, playlists to finalize, vendors to coordinate, welcome bags to deliver, a honeymoon to pack for…