Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Blue and White Wedding Cake


There are 2 things in my mind when it comes to wedding, dress and cake. 
Well, there is one more thing, shoes. 

So, after settling on the dress, I moved on the next thing, the cake. Looking around and comparing wedding cake vendor, I found too many of them over boring cakes. To us, cake has to be delicious. How many times we heard people saying guests are not going to eat the cake anyway, so it’s just for decoration. Why pay so much then? 

At this stage, an idea came up in my mind, but I didn’t dare mentioned it to anyone.

I looked around the internet on how to decorate a cake. I already had decorating tools from Wilton, so I browsed through their website to see any tips on wedding cake decoration and I found it. J

I bought the tools, to make the fondant roses and made a few. After that, my confidence went up a few levels and I decided to make the cake.





Photo Flip Book (Alternative Guest Book)


At the beginning of our wedding planning, we went searching on the internet for wedding to do list. One of the items in this list is to purchase a wedding guest book. I had a hard time accepting this, tried to find a justification for buying this so called ‘book’. What is the importance of it and how many times (if ever) I will go back and skim it through? It seems like a waste of space to store this ‘book’ and I just don’t want to end up storing it in a box in our garage.

While thinking about all this, I looked to my right and I saw my funny quotations flip thing (the thing that looks like flip calendar).

I would make a photo book in form of flip calendar. Light bulb! I drew the design and listed all possible materials that I need.

Fabric has to be something blue. I want elegant - not cute, something shiny (I like all things shiny), something that I don’t mind sitting on my TV cabinet forever and ever. I went to Lincraft and found this fabric that I like:

Then, it came time to decide on the stiff material for the base triangle. I thought, hmm, maybe I can use one of those postal boxes. I cut them into shape with craft knife, sprayed glue the fabric onto it. The result is a little flimsy.

I presented the prototype to my fiancé (now husband) and he liked it, but he’s not too sure about the material used as the base triangle. So he told me that he will come up with something. He’s so awesome! This is the final version of the photo flip book, way better than my prototype. I’m so proud of him.



And here it is, sitting on our living room, full of our friends’ photos and well wishes.



Monday, November 19, 2012

DIY Seating Name Cards (Bookmarks)


I wanted to do something special for the seating card and was inspired by framed seating cards. I had something in mind, but I really doubted if I can accomplish it. My initial design was a bookmark (with the guests’ first name) slid into a sort of frame made from card stock. I have this most wonderful book of sampler design:


After thinking about it for a few days, I made the first prototype and immediately liked it. Surprisingly, the material is quite stiff, and it’s capable of holding its shape. In the end, I didn’t have to use the cardstock frame.


Backing is simple felt in matching colour of red and blue.


I used DMC cross stitch yarn, 825 blue and 321 red (Christmas red - I love Christmas red!!)

I ordered customised ribbon from www.personalisedribbons.com.au in matching red and blue colour as well.


A little bit of the mess:


The end products:


DIY Wedding Invitations


I’m not sure how I came with the idea or when, but I decided to make our invitations. With the help of my fiancé (now husband), we started the design process and we made our invitation prototypes.



List of our materials:
Japanese Yuzen Paper from www.origami.com.au

Card stocks, pockets, and envelopes from www.makinginvitations.com.au

Invitation Paper from www.dizzidezine.com.au. This is the most challenging of all, who knows there are so many shades of white/off white on paper!

Diamond buckles from www.discountweddingpapers.com.au

Black Ribbons from www.makinginvitations.com.au

After completing all the invitations, we thought the pocket envelope looked a bit ‘empty’. The decision was to add something to it, to complete its look. A few designs came up, this is one of them:



The best one that we have is this:


 but we didn’t have enough yuzen paper left and the company had run out. So, we ended up buying another paper from www.amazingpaper.com.au in Newtown, and use yuzen for family invitations only.




Wedding Wishing Well


Hello everyone! It’s time now to reveal the reason behind my lack of blog posting this year. Now that the festivities are over, I can announce that I got married early this month! Yay!

I had a few days to settle down from all the excitement and I think it’s now time to post this blog.
A lot of my friends asked me earlier on what my dream wedding is. The answer is ‘I have none’. The reason behind this is I believe that I don’t like to be defined by wedding trends or how-it-should-be’s. I’m just the type of person who doesn’t necessarily go with the flow. In other words, I do what I want to do, when I want to do, in any way I want to do. So, I’m really grateful that I found my soul mate who understand and accept this about me.

Right after proposal, I recalled this cute pattern that I found a few years back from Berroco. It’s actually cover for plates. Inspired by it, I transformed it into wishing well cover instead. First of all, I bought three tiered cylindrical hat boxes.

Measured twice, cut once, and stick some Velcro on the inside flaps (so the whole thing is collapsible – easier to store and transport). Using craft knife, I cut a hole at the front of the top tier.




Put together:

Collapsed into one for easy transport:

Now, for the cover, I don’t particularly follow the pattern, because I know that the size is going to be different. So, what I did, I started the crochet top to bottom. To start with, I made 5 ch and chain in first ch. The rest is basically circular dc, with several increases accordingly (I kept on referring to the size of the hat box).



What I followed from the pattern is the ruffle at the edges of the wishing well cover.


The flower patterns are from this amazing book that I have:



I made one with blue and yellow flowers:





Another one with red and pink flowers: