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…

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…

Forty-two blue bags, all in a row (excuse the terrible iPhone photo)…

I’m a little bit ahead of myself, but I assembled our welcome bags this week and seeing them in my dining room makes me even more anxious for April get here.

I originally bought paper bags from Target, but my test run made it clear that they weren’t big enough. At first I decided to leave out one of the beverages and just cram everything else in there, but the bags also seemed too plain and I couldn’t find a way of dressing them up that I really liked. Doing a label over the top to seal them wasn’t an option because they were so full, and wide satin ribbon for 42 bags costs a fortune. So I returned them and bought larger, sustainable, reusable bags from Paper Mart — for the same price!

They don’t stand up well on their own, but I had a ton of extra chipboard laying around, so I cut 8.5″x11″ sheets in half and put them in the bottoms for support.

I didn’t want any of the paper goods to get lost in the bottom of the bag, so I bought 9″x12″ clear envelopes in bulk on eBay (less than $9 for 100) and put everything in there.

From left: clear envelopes, eBay ($9); Travel Salem guide, visitors center (free); Oregon state maps, state department (free); Willamette Valley wineries guides, WVWA ($25 for 50); welcome cards, printed at home on leftover Eames Furniture Weave cover stock (free); Oregon postcards, printed for free through VistaPrint (free); Oregon stickers, Heart in Oregon ($20 for 50).

Several months ago, I went to Costco and priced a ton of beverages, snacks and candies to figure out what I wanted to put in the bags. I settled on Sunchips, mini chocolate chip cookies, peppermint patties, bottled water, S. Pellegrino, assorted nuts, dried fruit and ginger cookies. (That’s one of the returned Target bags hanging out in the background.)

I didn’t like the nut assortments that came in individual packages, so I bought spice jars at Ikea and then layered in chocolate-covered raisins, almonds, walnuts and peanuts.

And the ginger cookies came in bulk, so I ordered super cheap little glassine bakery bags on eBay, split the cookies between them and sewed them closed with my sewing machine.

I have to do the same thing for the dried fruit, but I have to do that closer to the wedding.

I absolutely cannot wait to hand these out! But here’s a logistics question for all you brides out there: Did you run into any trouble with the hotels accepting the bags, distributing them to the guests, etc.? I was hoping that I could bring them to the hotel with a list of guests and each party’s arrival date, but any guidance would be appreciated.