Project 38: Wedding fascinator

My first attempt at fascinators was for my friend’s hen do and it seemed fitting that I should try to make one for her wedding. I have changed my outfit 5 times for this wedding so now that I have finally settled on a dress I needed to get the fascinator made ahead of the festivities in 2 weeks’ time 

The dress is cranberry coloured so I’ve gone for an ivory and cranberry fascinator. First, a trip to the craft story to get supplies:

I bought a big flower as my base, smaller beaded flowers, feathers and a comb and knew that I’d be relying heavily on my old friend the glue gun. I'm going to have loads of feathers left so I'll have to make up a reason to use them in the future.

I started by taping together the smaller flowers to the wire of the big flower. 

Next I glued in the feathers one by one, adding a smaller flower in the back to keep the glue together.

It looked like this by the end with the ivory in the middle and the burgundy flowers neatly fanning out on one side with feathers on the other. 

Finally I bent back the wire from the flowers to give me a straight base to attach the comb.  I had to keep holding it up to my head to work out which way the comb's teeth should face. I had a second comb on standby in case I got it wrong and had to rip it off and start over. Luckily it wasn't needed but I'm an expert in getting things backwards in the final moment and having to start over. Ask me about assembling flat-pack furniture sometime.

Back to the fascinator story, once it dried it was time to model the finished product. I’m pretty pleased with this. Not the photo - the fascinator. The photo is the 6th one taken and I got bored of posing so decided to give up and use this one even though it's not great. Focus on the fascinator - not my awkward "how do you not know how to use the camera we've had for over 2 years" smile. 

Not sure if I love the feathers but I can always pluck them out on the day in a worst case scenario!

Project 33: Name card update

An update on the name cards for our friends’ wedding. We went for a modified version of the “Danu” card in the initial post.  

I ordered “doodle dots” Pink Petticoat paper design and printed out the Daffodil negative pattern to get the white on yellow. 

Then we cut them to size, punched a daisy corner punch in the front and tied a white grosgrain ribbon across the top. A bit more effort than I think I planned but I had my production line going (re: my husband sat measuring the ribbon and knotting them for me while watching television) and the cards were wrapped up from start to finish in about 5 days. 

Now I’m handing them over to the bride to write in the names – I’ll be sure to take pictures of them at the wedding!

Project 37: Joy fold cards

We had great success last playdate doing gate fold cards. We like using the craft days to try new things but I wasn’t convinced by this as I didn’t see it matching my style. I love this now and will do it all the time. 

The template we followed was called a joy fold card where you cut about an inch or two off the card and then add in a smaller piece of coloured card to overlap what you’ve cut off, wrapping a ribbon underneath and around the back before you secure it. Place another piece of card on top to hide the ribbon and you’re rolling.

The first one used a square card and I chose the colors with someone specific in mind. I like green and black, I think it’s a good contemporary mix. And Martha spotted paper in the background. Can't get enough Martha paper.

Next I tried a patterned card I love and finished it with an embossed flower. The embossing folder was one of Claire’s that I hadn’t used before so I got to add that in as well. 

Finally I tried a few different boy card options. I really liked the blue, green and orange stripes so tried two different options for making that work. The embossed greeting was something different, I usually go for the peeloffs. I think my friend is getting one of these in a few weeks!

My advice is to make your ribbon longer than you need. On two of them I cut the ribbon too short and now have to use a safety pin to knot them. I’m almost too afraid to untie them to write in them. Oops. 

I have another great post to update you on name card project so look out for that soon. 

Project 36: Mojo for a Playdate

Short post this weekend – saw the Mojo sketch and had to enter as Claire and I had a playdate and inspiration hit a lull so we used this as a challenge to get back on form. The challenge design is above.

It didn’t work – it was 10pm and we were really struggling so we finished the playdate after this sketch. It wasn't the sketch's fault, we were just getting silly. 

I used a patterned card paired with a golden yellow stock that I embossed. Busted out the lovely Martha dotted scallop punch for an orange contrast and some glitter card stock for the overlay. I don’t really like the flag-style greeting but it was in the sketch so I followed along.

I felt the greeting wasn’t enough as I used a small one (I’m loving these little square greetings at the moment – I used them in the last challenge as well) so I added a bit flower. I think it really ties in with the patterned card in the background.

Finally some gold dots to finish the sketch!

The playdate yielded some really fun cards and a new format I hadn’t tried before so I’ll post more on those this week. Enjoy the last bits of the weekend!

Project 35: Anniversary cards

I promised some anniversary cards so I thought I should deliver. My friend mentioned that she sends anniversary cards to her family and friends and how expensive they are – I had no idea that people buy cards for other people’s anniversaries. So I thought I should probably make some for the box of cards I’m keeping at the office. 

Then I sat down to make them and realized I have no “Happy Anniversary” peel-offs, stamps or anything. Oh dear. So this is how I made it up!

I found some really old greetings printed on purple card that I bought about 3 years ago thinking they were great and never used. So these are the two outputs that are real-life anniversary cards:

I kept the first one simple and liked the pearl bling instead of the usual blingy-bling. And knots are awesome so here we go again with that.

The second one is a bit more busy. A bit twee maybe? I tried a new approach with the boarder punch, having it not run the full length of the card and I like that with the off-centre greeting. But different papers next time.

Then we have the ones I made up to try and pretend they could pass as anniversary cards:

I played off the “love” messages I have with the love birds as I thought it was a corny little tie-in and anniversary cards are inherently corny. I tried adding little hearts to the second one, don't think it makes too much impact. 

So the lesson here is you don’t need the greeting really but I should really invest because only so many people are going to buy a “love” card for a friend/parent. Maybe it could double as an engagement card?

Project 34: More blog challenges

Today I thought I’d enter a Mojo challenge – I haven’t entered in a long time and I liked this week’s sketch. 

 
I tried 3 variants of it, but I think I like the one above the best. Yes, this is the simplest of all of them but I really thought the colours and textures worked. I liked the knot instead of a bow on the right. And I realize that I didn’t have to use the corrugated card just because that was the sketch example but I love how it punches for the scallop effect at the bottom.

The next one used two Martha Stewart papers and an illustrated piece of vinyl I found somewhere. I kept the embellishment simple with a flower decal that matched the greeting. I kept the oval very small because I wanted to keep the plaid paper the focus. For some reason the edges look sloppy in this picture but it's a lot sharper in real life.

The last one was from my femme fatale set. I used a die-cut for the centre as Claire gave me these as part of the $20 challenge and I hadn’t had a use yet. I like it though I’d probably keep the layout simpler next time as I think it competes a bit.

This week has flown by and there are so many things to mention. Name cards are in production; the bride chose the “Danu” headline image but we’ve made some modifications so I’ve been ordering paper and setting up a template. Last week we made non-sewing bunting but I forgot to take pictures so I couldn’t post about it. Sad. So even though I’m a post down please trust that I’ve been busy crafting! I'm working on some anniversary cards for my card box to sell at work so I'll post those when they're ready.

I'll leave you with the final craft of the week, my friend Beth painted my nails to look like owls and they're fab: