{DIY} Ruffled Ombre Wedding Card Box

These are the first set of photos I've posted since switching to a Mac, so pardon the bad lighting in the photos. I used to use Photoshop to clean them up, but for this post I just used the editing functions on the Mac and I clearly have no idea what I'm doing.

Once all the bridal shower craziness was done with, I got to working on the wedding card box and table assignments for Michelle and Allen's wedding.

This was such a labour of love. It took me way longer than I expected but I loved it in the end. And now it'll just sit in Michelle's closet until it collects too much dust and will need to be thrown out!


My inspiration came from this wedding featured on Style Me Pretty with the cake by Cake Coquette.


For the ombre effect I was able to find two different shades of coral/pink streamers that worked well together and I picked up white as well. The other supplies I used included two recycled boxes (plus some cardboard pieces to lift the lid of the green box higher, otherwise the base of the "cake" would be really short), white glue, a glue gun, white spray paint (so the green and brown would be less noticeable under the streamers), and a sewing machine.


I thought I took pictures of the boxes with the hole cut in the green lid and everything pieced together, but apparently I failed to do so.

I'll have you know, I had not touched a sewing machine since the 8th grade where one of our projects was to sew a pair of boxer shorts. I never even finished mine because the school year ended halfway through my shorts so my mom finished sewing them. Basically I have no skills with a sewing machine.

I started sewing as centered as I could down the streamers. I did the dark coral first and the white last, but I wish I had done it in the opposite order because the dark coral streamers were much more delicate than the white ones. Starting with the thicker streamers would've been better to ease back into sewing!


This is how I kept the streamers as I was sewing - chopstick right in the middle of the roll of streamers and then placed in the well of the sewing machine's lid. It was a lot easier as the streamers then wouldn't get tangled as I was sewing.


For the most part I was able to stay centered, but after a while I would daydream and the stitches would get reeeeaaaally close to the edge.


First roll of 4 done! To make the ruffles I just held onto one thread (the bottom stitch) and pulled the streamers down with the second (top) thread. This took waaaay too long, but watching TV while you're doing it helps. I've seen instructions for making ruffled streamers where you set the tension high and something or other so that it'll ruffle as you sew, but that was method was way too complicated for me.


Bottom layers are done!



I just put a line of white glue and glued the top half of the streamers down.


After a million years of sewing and ruffling, gluing was a piece of cake! (Pun not intended). I even made roses out of the streamers to dress it up a bit.


I hadn't thought about the placement of the card slot until I had to glue the streamers down and this was the best I could come up with. It might've been better to put the card slot on the side of the box because you had to shake the box every so often when people were putting cards in because they would stay standing up instead of laying flat at the bottom.



I maybe should have put more light pink layers at the base of the top tier... This looks more like colour blocking than ombre.


Below is a little photo heavy with the details.








So if you're wondering what I did during my summer, this took up a good 3 weeks of it (at least)!

Total cost? Maybe $10, if even? Mainly for the streamers and spray paint (which I plan to use for other stuff). Since I had the boxes, I didn't have to buy any from the dollar store, otherwise it'd be $20 maybe? (Large boxes were around $6.)

It was easy enough to get the cards out too as I didn't glue the box closed. The green lid came off as usual, which just meant when carrying it you had to carry it from the bottom.

And for the table assignments, I turned two of these framed posters:


Into this:


I just found some wrapping paper at Hallmark and used black pens and sharpies to do the table numbers and guests. Easy peasy!
(Actually, not too easy taking the frame apart since it was meant to just buy and hang. The backing was not removeable to I had to be careful peeling the backing off and taking the photo mat out.)

Anyways, the wedding turned out great! We weren't as hurried as I expected for the tea ceremony or bridal party photos, but everything after the wedding ceremony is a complete blur! I honestly have no idea what happened during the reception...

{The Condo} "Construction" So Far...

This is going to be a long two years...

Construction on the condo was originally slated to begin in March but then was later delayed to May. Fences and hoarding went up and they only closed off the parking lot it's being built over in July. Finally in August they brought in drilling and earth moving machines and this is where they were at a few weeks ago:


I passed by during Labour Day weekend and it was just earth/pavement and trucks everywhere.

I'm getting antsy but we still have a long ways to go!

{Snapshots} Summer's End

Just some photos from the last few weeks of summer! I can't believe it's almost fall!

I stopped by my local Value Village and found these beautiful bowls. Only a few scratches on the smaller Friendship bowl, but I swear the orange one is brand new. There is no evidence of use inside or outside the bowl!

The orange one is the same size as the other two Pyrex bowls I picked up last time, so I'm glad I found the smaller one as well.

Somehow, within three weeks I picked up four pairs of shoes. The striped espadrilles were not on my shopping list but at 60% off, they got on the list.

I didn't think I would be going to the CNE this year, but I had forgotten that with a concert ticket for the Molson Amphitheatre you get access to the CNE grounds as well, so of course we went to try out some of the food.

I cannot even believe the details on this sandcastle (literally)!

Little person on another sand sculpture.

I think this was the 'Lumberjack' poutine?

Pulled pork poutine. I preferred the fries of the Lumberjack poutine but the meat/sauce of this one (different food stalls).

Red velvet funnel cake. Yum!

The Fray. Five songs into their set I realized I had seen them years and years ago! Lol, whoops!

The Fray. Still amazing live.

Isaac ran to the back of the amphitheatre and was singing in a crowd of people. Of course it was the complete opposite side of where we were... For one or two songs he also sat down with a keyboard in the crowd.

Packed venue! I hate the Molson Amphitheatre though and it was crazy windy that night.

Kelly Clarkson.

Kelly and her backup singers also ran into the crowd to sing on a mini platform.

Isaac and Kelly singing 'Don't You Wanna Stay'.

Airborne Kelly.

Kelly Clarkson.

Sometimes Spider-Man needs help too.

The CNE midway and the CN Tower.

The CNE midway. I love the colours here.

This guy was a rockstar getting the rubber chickens into the pots! His friends though, not so much.

The Dufferin gate.

{I Heart} Girls' NYC Weekend Blurb

For a while now I've wanted to get some photo books printed of the various trips I've taken instead of developing individual photos and getting massive photo albums for them. I love seeing full bookshelves and having organized photo books on them would be just lovely!

So when I won Kait's Blurb Giveaway right before our girls' trip to New York (seen here and here), I figured it'd be the perfect test trip since I was going to print multiples and I could see how both softcover and hardcover were. I don't think it made much of a difference (only a few bucks), but I Googled for a coupon code as well (I think I found 20% off) and placed 2 separate orders since Blurb only allows for one promo code to be used per order.

On the left, the ImageWrap hardcover and the softcover on the right. I chose the Standard Landscape size (10 x 8 inches).

Sadly I'm not made of money so the bride-to-be and I got the hardcovers with premium paper (in lustre finish) while the others got the softcovers with standard paper. Only softcovers with over 80 pages can have text on the spine and I made them to be 60 pages, hence the lack of text on the top two copies.



Inside!

The photos are a bit grainy so I think I need to use a higher resolution on my camera if I plan to make more of these books.(Though I'm not sure if it's because of my camera settings or the printer...)

For the most part, I had a ball of a time playing with the pre-set layouts as well as creating some of my own.

I like that you can cram as many photos as you want on a page, without having to pay for each individual print if you were to develop them normally.

Next time I need to scrutinize every photo edge though. I found a few of these slight gaps throughout the book.

I even listed the things we ordered at Marea, otherwise we will never remember what we ate despite having all those photos.

Mandie's a rebel and uses Hipstamatic instead of Instagram, but I picked my fave ones from her photos and put them chronologically across two pages.

On the back cover I listed our itinerary and put the photo I took of the map of Central Park. 
No matter how many times I refer to this map, I always take the wrong path! (And I don't mean just on this trip.) Oh well. We still got to where we wanted to go, we just took a bit of a detour.

I was pretty impressed with the packaging! Those babies did not budge in the box at all.

I was really impressed with the speed! I submitted my orders on the Friday before the Canada Day long weekend and had the books in my hands 10 days later! I thought it would take at least 3 weeks! The quality of the books were great as well, though after reading through the forums I'm not sure if the graininess of the photos were due to my photo resolutions or the Canadian printers.

I definitely want to make more books and have a neat little collection, but I take forever to sort through photos, let alone formatting them in the different layouts.

Have any of you started a collection of photo books?