Wedding DIY Love Letter Wine Box Wood Burning

 When I first met my husband, he had a 3 slot wine bottle box that he'd gotten from a winery somewhere. I think it used to say Savannah. We kept the box when we moved and when I told him about alternate unity ceremonies for our wedding, he was really interested in the love letter wine box ceremony. I looked online for boxes and was shocked at the prices. I don't know how to carve, but I had the idea to do wood burning/etching on the box. I knew that I wanted the back to be our monogram theme that had been everywhere in the wedding. Although I designed the logo, hand drawing it would have been a disaster.

I printed out a large letter size copy of my monogram. Now obviously I can't see through the box to trace so I had to make my transfer by shading the back of the monogram. 

 It's best if you have charcoal, but a good drawing pencil can do the job as well. Shade the entire back (well only the parts that have the shape you want to transfer).

Using a pen or pencil, trace the outline of the image onto the wood. Then use the wood burner to trace your outline and burn the design into the wood. Make sure to cover areas you want to be darker and keep the heat lighter on the areas you want to shade lighter. 

 For the front of the box he had a family crest that I thought would be perfect. I also wanted our initials on each door and behind each door would be the glass for when we open the box.

 The method is the same as was done to the back. Print out the image, shade the back and trace.

The main difference between the front and back was that the front had color to it. I used color pencils to color in between the line and used a piece of tissue to rub in and even out the color.

My baby installed two locks on the front before the wedding day. We each got a set of each key for safe keeping. I should put that in the safe.

Here's the box opened.

 You can see the opened box at the end of aisle. Our mothers walked in the glasses and placed them on our respective sides. Within the week leading up to the wedding, we each wrote our letter to one another and after the preacher performed the ceremony, we placed them in the box without reading. We changed up the tradition slightly by adding that we want to do a recurring wine box every 5 years.

It currently sits at the top of one of our book cases in the study.

DIY Wedding Flower Petal Aisle Runner

This project was completed with the help of 5 Superman movies, numb butt, trigger finger syndrome, several bags of flower petals and a few large sticks of glue. I also used several feet of tulle (80 feet total). The project included some early lessons learned. I'd seen a tutorial that said it would be fast to use adhesive spray and place the petals on top. The two cans I got was a waste of funds, IMO. I would have done better to just go the hot glue gun route right from the start. To make it easier to pull up the tulle without tearing, I use a cookie sheet flipped over as my work area. The silver and blue petals were all dumped into basket and shaken so that I could randomly pull and glue. I kept the white ones separate so that I could use them as the back drop.

 After each pan length would cool, I'd gently pry up the tulle from the pan and start the next section.

Randomly I placed the silver and baby blue petals all over the whites. I also made sure that the petals overhung the tulle so that the final produce actually spanned about 8 inches.

 I liked looking at my progress as the aisle runner took shape. But slowly I started to run out of space.

 The plastic on the floor was my first failed attempt using the adhesive spray. All I got for that was a sticky plastic and time wasted.

 When I ran out of space, I rolled up the finished portion and kept working. I completed everything over a few days, but took breaks in between. And Superman can be quite distracting. Even the bad ones like with Richard Pryor as a computer geek.

 At the end of the long hallway and into our bedroom, I placed a piece of tape at the 40 foot mark and as my roll increased, I'd go out and unrolled it out and measure.

 After nearly 18 hours total (with breaks in between), I completed two 40 feet by 6" role of flower petals.

The final product in the church filled me with pride. Since one of my MIL's coworker was so generous in letting us borrow some of her columns and artificial flowers for the church (you can sort of see them at the end of the aisle), I gave her the runners as a trade. Initially I'd planned to sell it, but the trade was worth it and we saved a bundle.