Wedding Craft #10: Quilt Guestbook

One of the things I worried about most on our wedding day is about how everything would look at the reception hall. I had a very specific vision I really wanted to capture, but wasn't there to put it all together myself (though I left extremely thorough directions - I literally drew pictures of how I wanted everything to look). I told myself that no matter what happens, I'm going to just have a good time. I was prepared for the worst, but hoped for the best. I really didn't know how everything would look once it was all in the venue. I had been collecting bits and pieces of the decor for a good year, but it was all so abstract in my little apartment. I'll never forget walking into the reception hall for the first time on that day.

It was A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. It exceeded all of my expectations. It made all my hard work worth it! Hearing people say that the wedding was so "us" made it worth it.
One of the details of "us" I really wanted to capture was my love of quilting. Brian inspired me to start my first quilt and I haven't stopped since. I thought it would be fun to create our first family heirloom, a wedding quilt.

I cut approximately 300 squares, with fabric matching our wedding favors. I placed the squares in an old library card catalog drawer and included several fabric markers for people to add their notes and drawings.

The notes and drawings we received were amazing!

My plan is to eventually embroidering each note, all by myself, all by hand. It's gonna take a while.

Some of the drawings are just incredible!

I may not finish this quilt anytime soon, but the sweet notes and wonderful drawings keep me inspired to hurry it up!


Up next: Wedding Craft #11: Quilt Banner

Wedding Craft #9: Bow Napkins

While I was preparing sparkly meringues, my best friend Junko, was on my living room floor folding 200+ napkins into adorable bows.

Junko folded the napkins, then wrapped a piece of fabric ribbon around the middle and taped the ribbon in the back, to make these sweet little bows (below image by Our Labor of Love).
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They looked perfect with our homemade jam favors!

Up next: Wedding Craft #10: Quilt Guestbook

Wedding Craft #8: Sparkly Meringues

The dessert table at our wedding was my pet project. Forget the dress, forget the venue, I was all about the dessert table. I wanted something whimsical, fluffy, and a little ooey gooey. We were lucky enough to have Sweet & Saucy Shop make our cake, caramel apples, and strawberry shortcakes and our friend Jill made us hundreds of French macarons. We also had a fun array of candies, fluffy pink donuts from Colorado Donuts, powdered donuts, cotton candy (thanks to our friend Maegan), and my sparkly meringues!

Everyone said I'd be totally stressed days before the wedding, but I was surprisingly calm. Brian, my friend Junko, and I all hung out, preparing last minute details, but we were all pretty mellow. Mellow enough to drive down to Trader Joes and buy a few cases of meringues, some white chocolate, and some pink and blue shimmery sprinkles. First, I melted the chocolate.

Then, I dipped each meringue lightly into the chocolate.

Before the chocolate dried, I dipped the meringue into a plate of sprinkles. Either blue or pink.

I had quite a little assembly line going on.

I was so excited about how they were coming out, they looked like little jewels.

Or, exotic underwater sea creatures! They looked so lovely at the wedding, here they are, photographed by Our Labor of Love:


Up next: Wedding Craft #9: Bow Napkins

Wedding Craft #7: Wedding Cake Topper

I realize I've been missing on the blog scene for a while. Let me tell you friends, lots has happened. I got a new job and it's been pretty great. I love what I do. Being a librarian is really fun! Really! It's been an intense few months settling in, but I think I'm finally ready to throw myself back into blogging and crafting again. And now the long awaited wedding craft #7! It's a really funny story actually. I was really touched when my mom gave me her own wedding topper to use for my wedding. She had been saving it in a box with her wedding dress, her veil, and other wedding memories.

This is what it looked like when my mom gave it to me. I loved it, but I have to admit, the fabric around the bride's dress and the dingy white base wasn't ideal - but it was my mother's, so I couldn't change it. I mean, this is the same exact wedding cake topper that my parents used on their own wedding cake! Right? Wrong! Yes, wrong! So, for 1 year, I held onto my mom's cake topper, as-is. Then, only weeks before the wedding, I was looking through my parent's wedding album and discovered that their cake had a completely different topper! I'm not sure why my mom held onto this cake topper or for that matter, what happened to her actual cake topper? Either way, this was my green light to make some guilt-free changes.

I wanted to work on the base of the cake first, so I wrapped the rest of the topper in foil and some tape.

I then applied lots of glue and lots of sparkles.

Gold sparkles cover the entire base of the new topper, which helped inspire the design of the wedding cake.

Here the topper is, almost done, but not quite yet.

I added a small veil and removed the fabric on the bottom of the dress and it was all ready! Below are a few photos by our photographers, Our Labor of Love, from the wedding day.

The gold glitter from the base inspired the gold glitter sprinkles around our big pink cake.

And just in case anyone was wondering, our cake (made by Sweet & Saucy Shop) was delicious!

In fact, our entire dessert table was pretty grand.


Up next: Wedding Craft #8: Sparkly Meringues

Wedding Craft #6: Ring Boy Pillow

I have the greatest nephew, ever. He's super cute and knows everything and anything about dinosaurs. He loves himself some T-Rex, but he also really loves being a "good boy" and taking on lots of responsibility. He took his duties as ring boy very seriously. Holding onto a pillow with our rings was not a joke for Andrew, he was extremely focused and ready to protect these rings and the pillow. I made the pillow using vintage handkerchiefs, from the same batch of hankies I used to make our invites.

First, I sewed a piece of vintage ribbon in the middle of one of the hankies. I then sewed the two hankies together, leaving room to stuff the pillow. After stuffing the pillow, I sewed it shut, and that was it! Super easy! It looked real cute with Andrew's snappy outfit too!

Here he is, pictured with my sister (his mama). Thanks for all the good work, Andrew!

Up next: Wedding Craft #7: Wedding Cake Topper

**Photographs by Our Labor of Love

Wedding Craft #5: Flower Girl Accessories

Brian and I are the luckiest auntie and uncle in the world, seriously. Today, we're going to focus on the little ladies in our life, Hannah, Anabelle, Julia, and Megan.

Really, have you seen a cuter group of girls? Every time I see this picture, I can't help but to giggle at their funny little expressions! I knew I had to do these girls right. I really wanted the girls to have little gloves and headbands with bows on them, but since there were 4 girls, it was looking like a very expensive detail. At $15-20 per pair of gloves and about $10 per headband, I was looking to explore other options. Downtown LA, I went and found these lovely simple gloves for about $3 a piece.

I also found 4 white fabric headbands for $5, and then spent about $1.50 on sparkly fabric.

I cut the fabric into strips:

Then gathered the middle together to form a bow and sewed the gathered portion down.


After I had all the bows, I began sewing them onto the gloves.

I really like how big the bows looked on the gloves. As it will eventually be revealed, big bows were sort of a theme in our wedding.

The big bows made it easy for Julia to hide for photos too.

The headbands were a little trickier, but just as easy.

In addition to the headband and bow, I also used a small piece of ribbon and some hot glue.

I glued the bow on first, then hid the hot glue under the ribbon. The trick is to hide the glue, but also to use the glue to hold the ribbon down.

All in all, the girls got gloves and headbands for under $20 total! Not only that, but I almost like the ones I made more than the ones I saw for sale. They were fun to make and I think the girls really liked 'em too!

Up next: Wedding Craft #6: Ring Boy Pillow

**The gals were all photographed by Our Labor of Love

Wedding Craft #4: Chris & Susana's Embroidered "Guest Book"

Greetings from Seattle, WA! We are so happy to be here and to help celebrate the marriage of our friends Chris & Susana today! Since they live approximately 20 hours away from us, there wasn't much we could do to help them plan their special day. However, Susana really wanted something different for their guestbook. She also mentioned something about fabric, having a hanging piece of art, and somehow tying in the fact that she's from Texas, Chris is from California, and they live in Seattle. I kept thinking about ideas for her, then texted her this horrid drawing that I quickly sketched while at work. I thought this might be a cute idea for embroidering this on a fabric, then having people sign it. I think the drawing left them a little skeptical, but the more we talked, the more they liked the idea.

I embroidered the design onto one large piece of fabric, which people will sign around.

I was going to put a nice edge on the fabric, but Susan and I decided it might be best to leave the edges of the fabric open, so they can be cut down if needed.

After guests sign the fabric, we can cut it down and add a decorative edge.

I'll be sure to post pictures of how the "Guest Book" looks after people sign it too!

Happy Wedding, Chris and Susana!!!

Up next: More wedding crafts from our wedding...

Wedding Craft #3: The Wedding Favors

We really tried to make this wedding as homemade and crafty as possible, so when it came to favors, I knew they had to be homemade, I just didn't know what. After seeing the trend of jars of honey or jam or pickled foods, I knew I wanted little jars of something as the favors. I've always wanted to make homemade jam, so I thought what better time? Now, there were exactly 235 jars of jam made - but I, personally, can only take credit for 21 of these. See, my mom really got into it. She would call me randomly and just let me know that she just made 51 jars of Kumquat jam... or 43 jars of fig. After she was almost done with most of the jam, I insisted on being there to help.

I joined her for making some cherry jam, which all started with pitting lots and lots of cherries.

We didn't really use a specific recipe, other than cherries, sugar, and pectin.

We made sure to sterilize the jars before filling them. We ended up with 21 jars of cherry jam. As I looked at my finished work, with stained red cherry hands, I then decided, if mom really wants to make the jam, I'm gonna let mom make the jam. And she did, and I think she had fun.

I did too... but with the 800 other things I had to do for this wedding, it was nice letting my mom have this one. Once all the jams were made, I wanted a little something extra for the tops of the jars, so I went out and found these gold foil award labels at Office Max. They were perfect for printing a little thank you and our silhouette.

As I screen printed all of our invites, I also created the screen to screen printed little fabric tops, with Brian and my silhouettes.

I also purchased little clear round labels to list the jam flavors; however, those just kept falling off the jars. After a while, we started loosing track of which flavors are which, so we gave that idea up quickly. Brian reminded me, "Annette, no one is going to leave our wedding angry because their jam jar has no flavor listed on it..." and I let it go. He was right, of course, I think people really liked the jam - especially when they found out it was homemade.

We finished the jam decor off by tying the fabric tops on using twine. Who knew twine was so hard to find??? It is! Well, cute twine is anyway... but we finally found a bunch of it and tied it on one by one, as we watched lots of tv. Brian was kind of a rock star at tying twine on jam.


Brian and I are now on the road, driving up to Seattle to see our dear friends Chris and Susana get married! We're so excited! When I get back home, I'll be blogging about a little wedding craft that I created especially for their wedding!

Up next: Chris & Susana's Wedding Craft