Beaded Wine Glass Charms

With a few beads, some memory wire and glue, you can make these simple beaded wine glass charms.  I made a lot of these for the wedding and got a lot of complements on them.

What you need:
- Memory Wire
- Seed beads (really small ones for ends)
- other beads for decorations (optional)
- bead glue (I use G S Hypo Cement)
- wire cutters (be warned that the memory wire does damage cutters, so maybe buy some cheap ones that you would use only for this application... at least, that's what I did).

Before you start, you should have a design in mind.  Remember that wine charms should be different from each other so people can use them to know which wine glass is theirs.

Okay so here's what you do:

1.  Cut the memory wire so that you almost complete a circle, minus a quarter inch or so.

2.  Put a small amount of glue to the end of one wire and put a seed bead. Do this to only one end of the wire. The glue should hold the seed bead in place at the end.  Lay the wire and seed bead down to let the glue set (ten or so minutes, I think.  Just check if it appears set.  Full drying time is more like an hour).  In the mean time, you can glue down more seed beads to memory wires.

3.  Once dry, you can put the other beads on as the design you would like.  I like making a big bead the focal point, and the small beads for added color variation.

4.  Time to close it up.  While holding the beads away from the open side of the wire, apply a small amount of glue to the open end of wire and put a seed bead.  Again, put it aside, and let the glue dry (about an hour for full dryness).

5.  Once the glue dries, you have your wine glass charm.  You should now be able to attach it to the stem of a wine glass.

(optional:  you can go back and add a drop of glue at both ends of the wire to give it a little more strength)

Tears of Joy Packets

People cry at weddings.  It's just a fact.  For this reason, for our wedding I created these small packets called Tears of Joy.  It's a super simple packet that adds a personal touch to the wedding with very low cost.

Here's what you need:

- Clear Plastic Treat bags (6" x 4.5")

- Travel size tissue packs

- Sticker or printed label (with double sticky tape -- I used repositionable double sticky scrap booking tape, but regular double sticky should work fine).

Here's how to assemble the packets:

1.  Fill each treat bag with 2 tissues from the travel pack.

2.  Fold down the top end twice so the fold makes it somewhere in the middle of the tissue.

3.  Use a sticker or double sticky tape with label to seal it closed.

So, really that's all there is to it.

For the labels, I printed them on cardstock.  You can also use those Avery sticker labels that can be printed on, or maybe those Hershey Kiss stickers that you can print on.

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.

Our DIY Wedding: Part 3 - Mail

This is the last installment (I think) of our DIY Wedding series.  I'm anxious to get started on some tutorials. So, that should be coming soon.

For this last installment, I decided to cover the wedding items that had to be mailed out.

First was the Save the Dates.  We actually went rather simple with these.  One weekend, we went out with our tripod, and Eric's new camera, and took some pictures with the camera timer, and Eric doing a lot of running. :)  We picked one that we liked, did some customization on it using Paint.NET (free software), took the image to Costco for prints, and sent them out.  Here's how it turned out.

Next, the invitations.  I did all the design work and printing at home.  I printed the information on cardstock (cheap at Big Lots!) and bought some corresponding scrapbook paper for the outer cover of the invite.  I wrapped it all with a soft mesh ribbon before placing it into the envelope.  Here's how it looked.

Once the wedding was over, I wanted to make something special with the thank you cards. Here's what I came up with.  Also, I wanted to play with embossing powder and a heat gun. :)

And lastly, the announcements.  Since our wedding was on the smaller side and a destination wedding, there were several relatives and friends that we were unable to invite.  So, I created these announcements with a "save the date" / invitation to a local family bbq reception.

That's it.  :)  Hope this helps inspire ideas.

Tutorials are coming soon. :)

Our DIY Wedding, Part 2: The Food

Food!  Yup, we love the stuff.  :)  Here's an overview of the food we had for the wedding, and then some.  Except for the cake, the food was made by us, friends, and family.  We could not have done it with out them.  Okay, so let's start.

First, we had a rehearsal dinner on the night before.  For dessert, we set up a s'mores bar.  :)  We used the flame gel cans that are used for chafing dishes for the fire.  We had skewers, marshmallows, graham crackers, and a random assortment of chocolates ranging from hershey chocolate, reeses peanut butter cups, and a variety of ghiradelli squares.  Best S'mores Ever!

On the morning of the wedding, I made these cinnamon rolls.  I used the allrecipes cinnabon clone, made the cinnamon rolls several days before, but froze them before baking them.  On the night before the wedding, I moved the cinnamon rolls to the fridge, and on the morning of, I baked them up.  Delish, and super simple.  I made the frosting the morning of too, and done!

Okay, so now the wedding food.  

First are the appetizers.

- 2 cheese platters (brie, jarlsberg, gouda, babybels, and dubinger, with apples and grapes)

- assorted crackers

- quiche lorraine

- veggie shooters (spinach dip with veggie sticks in a shot glass)

- gravlax (cold cured salmon) with cream cheese

- swedish meatballs

- hot artichoke dip

- french bread slices

Here's a closer look of the meatballs and artichoke dip.

Now for the main dinner. Everything was delicious.  The BBQ Chicken was marinated 2 days before and cooked the night before.  The Beef Brisket was also made a few days before and frozen then defrosted and heated in the oven on the day of.  The mashed potatoes, rice, and veggies were done on the day of (by awesome friends). 

- Roasted Mixed Veggies

- Mascarpone Mashed Potatoes

- BBQ Chicken

- Beef Brisket

- Jasmine Rice

- Mixed Greens Salad with homemade dressing

- bread rolls

- wine (toasted head chardonnay, and section 29 zinfandel)

- beer, water and sodas. :)

Okay, now let's go for the sweets!!!
Dessert

- chocolate fountain
- chocolate fountain stuff:  strawberries, bananas, other mixed berries, and pound cake.
- heart shaped sugar cookies (super awesome design  -- look below for a better picture)
- chocolate crinkle cookies
- oatmeal cookies
- peppermint and vanilla meringues
- coffee

Here's the closeup on the sugar cookies.  (Thanks Emily, I still get compliments on them.  And thanks for all the other cookies and meringues too.)

Lastly, we had cake.  We bought the cake from a local Safeway in the area, and it was perfect, and not nearly as expensive as others we saw when we were shopping for cake.  Along with this, champagne, and sparkling apple cider. Mmm!!!  We froze a small piece of the left over cake and plan to have it for our first month anniversary, cuz the thought of eating year-old cake doesn't sound all too appealing to me.

Well, that's about it.  :)  There was a topper that I was working on for quite some time that turned out pretty good, but because of the daylight, it was a bit difficult to see.  Here's a picture of it when it's lit up at a place where you can actually see it.  Pretty cool, right?  It's just too bad we couldn't get it to show up. Oh well.

I totally forgot this last picture.  We finished off the night with shots of patron and pickle juice. :)  If you like pickle juice, you should totally try it.  The pickle juice has an awesome neutralizing effect. 

Okay, so that's our food post. :)  I intend to prepare one more wedding post on the the stationary. Yup, those were all DIY too. :D  Stay tuned for those.

Our DIY Wedding

As mentioned in my previous post, Eric and I finally tied the knot on May 12.  Our wedding was an intimate home wedding at a rental home in Lake Tahoe, CA.  We planned the whole thing in about 4 months and did the majority of the wedding ourselves with the help of some awesome volunteers.  Eric did the planning for the food, and setup, while I did the planning for the details and decorations. I thought I'd show off some of our crafty wedding projects.  I'll do another post that that covers the food. :)

Both of us are t-shirt and jeans type of people, so the first thing we decided on were that we didn't want to wear dress shoes.  So, we decided that Chuck Taylors would be fun to wear, and is versatile enough that if guests were to wear them, they'd have options.  We decided that all of the wedding party should wear chucks, and we added onto the invitation that "Chuck Taylors are suggested, but not required".  To our surprise, most of our guests showed up wearing chucks. (yay!).

We decided against a traditional guest book and opted for a glass fishbowl, and a mad-lib type of guest book page.  We also created a blank one for those who didn't feel like filling a mad-lib page out.  We left stickers, and let people roll up the pages, affix stickers, and throw it into the fishbowl.  It was really cool. We had some funny responses, but with great advice. We also decided to order a photobook (actually, I got one free as a gift from David's Bridal, where I bought my dress) that we let people sign.  The last picture (bottom right), is a pot of nylon flower pens, so people can write on the pages, etc.

Here's a closer look at the mad-lib page.

The rental house we rented had a downstair game room type area with counters all around.  We used these to our advantage, and put all of the guest book things on the counter.  We created a card box by using an old picnic basket, and using one of our small chalkboards to tell people that it was a cards box.  I actually ended up re-lining the picnic basket because the original lining was red, and our colors (if you haven't noticed yet) were green and yellow.

My sister created this awesome candy bar full of yellow and green candy.  There were rock candy, lemonheads, appleheads, yellow, green and white jordan almonds, yellow and green jelly beans and m&m's.  Yellow and green lollipops, packets of juicy fruit gum and doublemint gum, lemon drops, frooties, sour apple belts, mango and lychee gel cups, and hugs and kisses (with little dot stickers on them - designed and cut out by us).  She made these cool circular fan decorations, that I think she found in Pinterest (love that site).  Also, instead of making a slide show of pictures, we opted for getting a few digital picture frames, and just letting it run with our pictures on them.  It was easy, and let people view them if they wanted, or not, if they didn't.  You can see one of the frames at the end of the candy bar.

 We also did our own flowers.  I watched tons of youtube videos, and learned to make bouquets corsages, and boutonnieres.  My mom did the arrangements for the urns that we used for decorations for the ceremony site.  For centerpieces (not pictured), we used small bottles and put a few flowers in each.  This worked great because our tables were rectangular, so we didn't want tall flowers that would just get in the way, plus this gave us more room for the wine and champagne glasses (important stuff!).  And with the rest of the flowers, several of us just had fun and tried our hand at arranging the remaining flowers in the remaining vases.  They all turned out really good and really put color around the reception areas.  We bought most of the flowers (roses, and carnations) thru costco.com.

 For favors, I wanted something that would look great, and would be useful to people after the wedding, so I came up with these.   Each favor consisted of 2 washcloths, a small glass, and an antibacterial bottle. I finished it off a tag shaped like a leaf.  I'll have a tutorial on this later.

Here are some other random things we had.  First we had our memorial candles.  I bought two candles from ikea, and two decals from Joann's.  The directions for the decals were easy enough to follow.  Below the candles is the tray Eric made out of acrylic to hold our veggie shooters.  The tray is basically an acrylic sheet with legs, that has drilled out holes.  The shot glasses we used for the shooters were small square plastic shot glasses that fit the holes so that people can easily pick up each one.  It's actually quite brilliant because it made set up super easy.  The middle picture is how our table setting looked.  We  cut burlap into strips and used that as a table runner, added the small vases of yellow and white flowers, and added a thick green ribbon around the napkin for color.  We used the chalkboard paint to create a larger chalkboard sign for the self serve wine bar.  Hanging off of the sign is one of the pomander (kissing) balls I posted about a few posts ago.  We used them for aisle decorations, which you can sort of see in the picture on the bottom right.

This last picture are some other random projects.  I took my old digital camera, added a little label to tell people to "Capture the memories, and pass it on."  With fresh batteries and a large memory card, we got some really cool pictures.  We designed and printed our own water bottle labels.  I also created wine glass charms with little tags that people could write their names on.  And lastly, I created little "Tears of Joy" packets, which were small packets with two tissues in them.

A few other things we did was set up a photo booth.  We bought an HD webcam, a license for some webcam software, and printed up or bought a bunch of photo booth props.  We also bought a small photo printer, hung some fabric for background and voila -- our own photo booth.  Everyone loved it!  I forgot to take pictures of the setup, but here's our photo booth photo.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the overview of our DIY wedding.  It was super fun.  I'll get a food post together soon. :)

Our Wedding Playlist

Here's our playlist from our DIY wedding.  An ipod, and some speakers is all we needed. :)

Spring Wreath

I found the idea for this wreath on pinterest.  This wreath is easy to make, tho a bit time consuming.  What I like about it is that you can make the base wreath (green grass), and redecorate it easily however you'd like year after year, or even day after day. 

So, here's how I made this wreath.

Materials:

- Lion Brand Yarn 320-194A Fun Fur Yarn, Lime

- foam wreath

- craft glue (optional)

- round head pins

- silk flowers (got these from the dollar tree store)

- ribbon to hang wreath

How to:


1.  Take the individual flowers off the silk flower stems, and set aside.
2.  Use a pin to attach one end of the fun fur yarn to the foam wreath.  You can also add a dab of glue.  (I put way too much glue in the picture.  A pin and a small dab will work great -- or even just the pin.)
3.  Wrap the yarn around the foam wreath until the wreath is completely covered. (This is the time consuming part.)  For a 12 inch wreath, I was able to cover everything with 2 skeins of fun fur (just barely.  I pinned the last end of the yarn to the beginning of the first skein of yarn, then slowly spread the yarn so it covered the foam wreath evenly.)
4.  Put a pin thru the center of the silk flower and stick the pin into the wreath in random places. Repeat for as many flowers as you'd like to use.
5.  Attach a ribbon.

Kissing Balls

Thought I'd share with you my first attempt to making silk flower kissing balls, also known as pomanders.   I plan on using these to decorate the aisle for the ceremony.

Materials:
- foam ball (whatever size you want to use.  The one pictured is 4 inches)
- silk flowers (lots)
- low temp glue gun and low temp glue sticks.
- ribbon to hang up the kissing ball.

Adding ribbon:
1.  Using an exacto knife cut a small slit (about the width of the ribbon) on the foam ball.
2.  Using a screwdriver, or something flat, wedge the two ends of the ribbon into the slit.  In this case, I used two ribbons together.
3.  Using glue gun, put glue around the slit and ribbon to help secure the ribbon into the slit.

Assembly:
1.  Prepare the silk flowers.  We'll only use the buds, so just remove the buds from the rest of the greenery.
2.  Heat up your glue gun.
3.  Put a little glue in the bottom tip (where the greenery was) of your silk flower bud, and stick it in the foam ball.
4.  Continue sticking buds in til you can't see the foam ball.

Tips:
1.  It may be helpful to draw lines that you can follow on the foam ball, particularly if you want to mix up flowers and be symmetric about it.
2.  Get more silk flowers than you think you'll need (like double the amount).  I'd check the dollar tree store, or online for the best deals.

Easy Chalkboards

Eric and I just got engaged recently (does 2 months still count as recent?).  That being said, you'll probably see more things related to wedding stuff in Rad Linc Crafts. One of which are these little chalkboards.  We plan on using these little chalkboards for a variety of things such as a fun way to do our "Save the Date" cards, also as a prop for a photo booth, and to label things for our wedding.  Other uses for them might be a message board on a door, or a menu planning board.  The best part about them are how easy they are to make.

Materials:

- Pre-cut wood shapes. (tho, if you want to cut your own shapes with a scrollsaw, I say do it!)

- chalkboard paint

- other paint for border (optional).

Here's how:

1.  Paint chalkboard paint on the wood shapes.  Let dry for a couple of hours (or an hour might be sufficient), and put on another coat.  I found that using a rag, to put the coat of paint on reduces the amount of lines left by the paint brush.  I think you might use a bit more paint, but I really wanted a smooth surface.

2.  Once the chalkboard paint is dry, paint the borders (optional).

See, I told you it was easy. :)