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.

Wedding DIY: Foil Envelope Lining for Invitation

Here's a quickie tutorial. I ordered my invitations and envelopes from Vistaprint. The invitations were beautiful, however the default envelopes that came with them were really thin. 

I saw somewhere in the Wedding Wire forum where someone did the lining with colored paper. I wanted to keep with my silver and ice blue theme so I got a silver gift wrap and cut to the shape of the envelop. Sorry I'm missing some pictures, but hopefully you can get the gist. 

First I cut a rectangle the size of the envelope using my mat with ruler, I then sliced off a tiny bit so it could fit in the envelope. Then I put the rectangle in the envelop and folded it to the shape of the envelope flap. Since it was my prototype, I didn't care if it was crinkled. I used that and my paper cutter to mimic the sample and cut all that I needed (110).

After cutting up all of my lining, I stuffed them into the envelopes.  

 Then I used glue stick to stick the flap of the lining to the flap of the envelope. I didn't bother to glue the inner part of the lining. Placing the invitations in there kept it in place. Yes this cost me time, but I had that during my planning and it saved me some more dollars.

Wedding DIY Stamped Coctail Napkins

I wanted personalized napkins with the monogram/logo I'd designed for the wedding. I went online searching for someone to do the stamp and found a website http://www.rubberstamps.net/ to do my custom job. For about $15 I got my 1.5"X3" rubber stamp including the shipping. I picked up an ink pad (permanent) from Joann's on sale an used it and I was ready to stamp.



 With a movie ready, I stamped over 200 cocktail napkins that I'd picked up from Ikea. $1.99 for 100 in a pack. I purchased 2 packs. I used regular paper to do a couple of stamps at first to make sure there was no blotches, and then proceded. As you can see to the left of the two lower images, I'd lay out 3 napkins and stamp, stamp, stamp, stack and repeat. I made sure to apply even pressure. I had to reapply everytime to make sure I had a clear image for each napkin.

 This was the final look at the wedding. The worked perfectly and there was no running of ink onto anything or anyone. Athough my arm was tired by the end, I got a lot of use out of that stamp in many other areas of the wedding.



Wedding Gift Card Box DIY

When I ordered the rosette fabric for the godet and train for my wedding dress, I made sure to get extra of the rosette for other areas in the decor. One area was our gift card box,. I went to Ross and got a large hat box. I cut a 1" X 8" rectangle into the top of the box.

 Then I covered the lid and the bottom separately using fabric glue. In hindsight, I would have used hot glue gun, but the fabric glue work.

 First I cut a circle a little larger than the top of the lid and then made a slit in the same area that the rectangle was cut from. I didn't cut a rectangle, I wanted the excess fabric to fold around the hole.

 It worked best for me to cut a rectangle the entire circumference of the box and about 4 inches taller. Then I wrapped the fabric around the cylinder and then folded in the excess fabric (about an inch) inside the box and underneath (the remaining excess). I didn't bother to cover the exposed piece. I also cut out triangles out of the bottom to make sure the excess could lay flat.

 I used a blue ribbon around the lid and and 3 adhesive rhinestone usually used for scrap books or invitation decorations.

For a final touch, I got artificial grapes and when my then fiance was stray painting the bottles for the centerpieces, he sprayed the grapes silver for me. I used hot glue to adhere it to the top of the lid. The lid was a really tight fit because of the fabric. I liked it because not anyone could just go and pull off the lid and take a card away. It held up perfectly well for both wedding ceremonies and was large enough to fit every card that we got. 

Wine Bottles Peel and Paint

This was a fun but dangerous project. When we decided to go with the grape and wine them, it was partially because I'd seen some postings on Pinterest of painted wine bottles. I loved them and thought that would be such an affordable way to have center pieces.

First I asked my friends and family to please give me their empty wine bottles. My mother-in-law was awesome help. She contacted her book club and since they were avid wine drinkers and one of them was dating a guy with a wine store, I had more wine bottles than I needed in no time. With the bottles she got and the ones my then fiance had emptied, I had over 90 bottles in various sizes and colors. Then I had to figure out how to peel them all.

I looked online and some methods said to soak the bottles in hot water and then peel. That was not working out so well for me. Another said to bake the bottles and then peel the labels. that worked for some bottles, but what really worked was a combination of the method. I dipped the bottles in a sink full of water and left about a teaspoonful of water in each bottle and placed them in the oven and set the oven to 350F.

 Note the oven was cold when I placed the bottles in. I cooked the bottles from cold to hot. When the oven was at temperature, I let it stay in there for another 5 minutes the removed and peeled the labels off. The adhesive was loose and the labels peeled off easily for most of the bottles. For those that were difficult, I scrubbed it with a scour pad to removed all the residue.

By the way, this project took a while to complete. Since I started the peeling process in October, I had to wait for another warm day for my now husband to paint the bottles.

 He also cut off the bottom of a third of the bottles to be used for the artificial candles. Then before he painted those I used painter's tape to make different styles on the bottles to allow the light from the candles through.

 Using a cardboard box as his paint station, he spray painted a third of the bottles in blue, the other third and the ones with tape were all done in silver.

 Following the Christmas Holidays, we went to Michael's and bought out all of their silver tings at the 70% discount and used them to stage the centerpieces for the reception.

 For the final look at the wedding, we placed the bottles on a mirror and used corks with slices in them to put the table numbers at each table. If there's anything I could have done differently, I would have maybe used ostrich feathers for the fillers. Something more eye catching, but I still loved the final look.

Goofed on first big order

I ordered a bunch of supplies from the Webstaurant store, but didn't pay attention to the guest towels. They were supposed to be plain (so I thought), but it turned out to have "guest towel" written across the front so there's no way for me to stamp the monograms on them. I'll have to order a new batch since I'd be out $20 by returned and ordering the new set. I'll make sure to read carefully this time.
The forks, dessert spoons, wave plates, cocktail napkins, wine goblets, tumblers and spoon straws all came in. I hope I'm still sticking to the budget.

Save the dates.

Mailed out the save the dates on Tuesday or Wednesday morning. I'm so excited because everything turned out well. People have received and have been visiting the site.
Ordered the napkins, flatware, etc from Webrestaurant on 10/6 and can't wait for those to get in so I can stamp our monograms on them.
We also went to the wine festival yesterday afternoon and had fun, but I can't repeat that for a while because that will totally mess with my losing weight in time for the wedding.

From Engagement until 10/2

Wow it's been about 6 weeks since I got engaged, August 17th, two days after my birthday to be precise. How time flies. On our website I shared the story of how it all happened, but even though I knew the proposal was coming it still caught me by surprise. As soon as I got back and shared the ring pictures with everyone and wanted to get right to trying on dresses to figure out my silhouette before going in for surgery. I was going to be getting a sessamoidectomy on my left foot which had been bothering me for well over a year. Almost as long as Brian and I have been together.
We selected our venues: Church of the Ascensions and Bay District Volunteer Firehouse.
We took our engagement pictures on September 14th at National Harbor...thanks to Garrett James of Capital Media.
Designed our monogram  and order a stamp to put or monogram in various places where possible.
Designed and ordered the save the dates.
Completed collecting the addresses of my A-Listers and plan to mail things out tomorrow.
Chose my caterer today, 10/2...Quality Street Kitchen and I'm excited with the way she tailored the menu to what we envisioned. Now I can start with the rest of the planning.

As for my dress, I did a fitting of my muslin on 9/28 and we decided to wait until February to start because I want to drop a few more inches and don't want to have to alter the dress later. In the meantime, I've got plenty of other projects.
I'm in the process of collecting wine bottles from everyone I know for the centerpieces.