Washcloth Rose Favors

We used these for our wedding favors.  When I went looking for ideas for favors I wanted something that was gonna be useful to my guests and eye catching.  I saw roses created with a baby spoon and a baby washcloth, and decided to expand on that idea. These are using regular washcloths, a small drinking glass, and a small bottle of hand sanitizer.

Materials:
The glasses I used are from Ikea (love that place).  (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/80094014/)
2 washcloths (one the color of the rose, and one green for leaves)
a dowel (painted green)
hand sanitizer (small ones from Bath and Body Works)

For tags:
Iron-on adhesive,
cardstock (with leave shapes and thanks printed on)
green fabric (for leaves)

1. Fold the colored washcloth diagonally twice.
2. Lay the end of the dowel as shown in the picture, and slowly roll the washcloth around.
3. When you have a couple of inches left, start folding it down while continuing to roll.

4. On the long side of the washcloth, fold up.
5.  Follow the fold and wrap the folded part around the rose (as you would if you were rolling up a sock).
6.  Position and fix so it looks like a rose.

7.  To make the tags, take your printed cardstock (with leaves), and use iron-on adhesive to iron on fabric on the back side.
8.  Cut the leaves out.
9.  Use a hole puncher to punch a hole.
10.  Slip the leaf onto the dowel.  You can put a slight bend on the leaf to help it to hold on the dowel, and for looks because leaves have that natural bend anyway.

Final assembly.
11. Attach the hand sanitizer to the dowel.  Tape seems to work pretty well for us.
12. Lay out a green washcloth, and fold the top and bottom corner in.
13. Stand the hand sanitizer and dowel above the center of the washcloth.
14.  Bring up the sides, hold it and flip the whole thing upside down.  This allows you to fix the green washcloth so it fits nicely into the glass. Slip the glass on top.
15. Flip back right-side down.  Fix the green washcloths so they look like two nice big leaves or a bed of greenery for the the rose.

And that's it. We got a lot of compliments on these favors.

Makeshift Charging Station

I bought one of these Ikea laptop supports a few months ago. I bought two of them and found that really, I only needed one, So, I decided to make the other a charging station. This is actually one of the great things about the Ikea products, is it's adaptability to get hacked into other things. :)

I started out by drilling a few holes into the support, where you might want to put the cords thru. Important note: make sure the plug fits thru the drilled hole.

So, that's pretty much the gist of the whole project.  I added a piece of felt on top, and cut some slits where the holes should be.  This helps the components from sliding.  I bet a spare silicone baking sheet would be even better, but I didn't want to cut mine, plus felt made the next part much easier to do.

I added the prickly part of a few velcro pieces onto the support.  The felt easily sticks to this, so I didn't have to use the other side of the velcro.  This also meant that I didn't have to match up the two sides of velcro if I wanted to remove the felt (or even replace the felt).

Ta Da! That's it... pretty much a 5 minute project costing less than $3.  Here's a picture of the top, and of the side (where the wires are all hiding).  I tied up the wires with some sandwich bag twistie ties. 

Happy National Craft Month folks.