{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...

{DIY} Michelle's Bridal Shower

So you saw the decorations and towel cake I made, now here's the final product!

We were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying to get everything set up before people showed up and we still started half an hour late. Oops! Running between the parking garage, apartment, and party room while also waiting for the elevator really sucks up a lot of time! Next time if I were to use a condo party room again, I would definitely allocate more time beforehand in the party room to set up.

Aside from that, I think it went pretty well and I hope everyone enjoyed themselves!

As guests walked in, they were greeted by a little pom pom.

Sparkling Citrus Punch, Oreo Chocolate Chip Cookies, Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes (with my paper flags), and chips & guacamole.

Angus Beef and Chicken Sliders with the food picks I put together. And there's one of the three large green pom poms. I didn't have time to fluff them properly...

Yay, food!

The guests waiting for the party to get started! You can see how badly I fluffed the green pom pom on the left...

We asked the guests to write a message or leave Michelle some advice which we would use to compile a little book for her new life as a Mrs.

The first activity.

Guests filling up their plates!

On paper I felt like we had no food. In actuality, there was A LOT!

We came up with a list of questions and sent them to both the bride and groom to answer on their own. Then Mandie picked the more ambiguous answers and guests had to guess whether "He" said it, if "She" said it, or if they both said it!

"He Said, She Said".

It was hard getting the moms and aunts to pay attention! They're a chatty bunch!

The young crowd paid attention!

For the second game, a list of items were allotted points and if you had that item, you got the corresponding points. The person with the most points won. And you bet Mandie did surprise "audits"! We had to make sure that they actually had what they claimed to have! Some people (Michelle) claimed to have a hair brush but couldn't prove it because it wasn't there!

Tallying up points for the "What's In Your Purse?" game.

The girls checking what they have in their purses.

Some of the resulting advice/message cards. No clue what that says...

For the little "photobooth", the original plan was to use a white table cloth behind so that the blues and greens would pop... buuut, the plastic of the table cloth kept sliding out from the tape so that was a bust.

The paper dot garlands hung up!

Bridesmaids with the bride! We've known each other for half our lives! (Well, Fi and I have known each other longer...)

Michelle and her bouquet of gerber daisies.

Group shot, though we did lose some people before this.

Gift time!

Kathy monkeying around with the paper dot garlands.

I love this picture. Michelle's grandma is watching Kathy play with the garlands, probably wondering who the crazy girl is!

Michelle and the two moms.

Forget the veil and floral bouquet, I think this is the look to use on wedding day!

Now that both the bachelorette and bridal shower are done, it's time to get cracking on some of the stuff needed for the wedding! Only two months to go!

What about you? Anyone else helping out with wedding festivities this year? Or attending many weddings?

{DIY} Bridal Shower Prep

After all the bachelorette fun, it was time to get working on the bridal shower for Michelle. She wanted a simple gathering with family and close friends so I got started on the decor to jazz up the party room.

A few months back I saw Oh Happy Day's Jordan's tutorial for Paper Dots Garlands and loved them, but wasn't sure where to buy crepe paper folds so I thought nothing more of it. Then I was browsing the aisles of Dollarama and spotted these 10 metre rolls of crepe paper in the green theme that we wanted (they also had packages of pinks/purples and yellow/orange/red). They weren't stretchy like regular crepe paper but they were already pre-cut and they did the job.

I followed these steps and it probably took me about an hour (in front of the tv of course) to do each roll.

Paper Dots Garland tutorial and images by Oh Happy Day.

My finished garlands!

We planned for a little photo op with the bride-to-be and these garlands were to be the backdrop.

Up next? Tissue paper pom poms! Seriously, these days you can't have a bridal shower without some tissue paper pom poms! I consulted the millions of tutorials already online to make 3 large green pom poms.

Tissue Paper Pom Poms tutorial and images by Martha Stewart.

These are so easy to make, I'm always so curious as to who buys the pre-cut packages. Aside from Martha selling them, I was at Michael's and saw another company's package of 6 in the bridal aisle selling for $29.99! That's crazytown! Our green pom poms were essentially just $1 each for each pack of tissue paper and I used other materials I already owned - instead of floral wire I used twist ties and just used some thread for the string.

I made two smaller blue ones with tissue paper I already owned since we had three large bright green ones and I figured it'd be nice to break up the colour a little bit.

The view from below. I used 8 sheets for the dark blue pom pom and 10-12 sheets of tissue paper for the light blue pom pom. I like the fuller pouf a lot more.

We planned to serve some sliders and needed some toothpicks to keep the buns and meat together. We tried looking in stores for some pretty toppers but couldn't find anything that wouldn't break the bank so I decided to make my own.

Food Picks tutorial and images by Studio DIY.

I used a similar process as Studio DIY. Instead of tissue paper I used a roll of crepe paper I already owned. Because the crepe paper was 2" wide, I cut 3-4" inch sections and folded the crepe paper in half so they would be an inch long, cut the fringe, and then dabbed beads of glue to wrap around each toothpick.

Crepe paper food picks.

We also wanted some cupcake toppers and I wanted different ones from the sliders. I wish I had washi tape because this would've been so much easier. Instead I cut up some blue-ish paper I already owned (thicker than printer paper but thinner than cardstock) into flags and poked two holes at the ends to thread the toothpicks through.

For the gift, the bridesmaids bought bath and hand towels and I constructed a towel cake out of them. To top the cake off, my mom made some wash cloth puppies.

Pretty from the front.

Hot mess in the back lol.

I used a paper towel roll to create a fuller base and so that I could wrap the towels for the top tier around instead of using pins to attach them to the base.

The profile of the towel cake. It's more padded at the front because of how I needed to fold the towels to show the monograms.

Do you have any "must have" party decor items? Have you made anything you've pinned or been inspired by on other blogs lately?

Come back Thursday to see how it all came together!