All the pieces will also have accents of iridescent paint in places (the snow and details on the sled, the snowman’s scarf’s stripes) to add a bit of glamorous whimsy to each piece. Stay tuned for more pics!

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My good friend Rachel is living in Alaska at the moment and needed some ornaments to fit the setting So we decided on a moose and a bear to represent “The Last Frontier” and then some traditional ornaments as well: snowman, sled, and mitten.

They’re not completely finished yet but I decided to put up a preview of the stages each double sided ornament goes through. Finished pieces to come!

Contact me here for more info on custom ornaments!

Time for me to share some of my absolute favorite items to make- ornaments and all things holiday related. Ornaments can be custom crafted to your liking, from the ribbon to the color scheme. They make great small gifts or party favors. I have a couple of favorites that I’m used to doing, the snowman, for example, but I have a feeling I’ll be adding some newer designs into the mix this year

For now, I’d like to share some of the past ornaments I’ve created!

Small Ornaments (Gingerbread Man, Wreath, Snowflake, etc) $7

Large Ornaments (Santa, Tree, Snowman) $10

All ornaments are double sided and coated with a layer of veneer to keep them shiny. Here’s a little “behind the scenes” picture of the creation process:

Contact me here for more information or to order an ornament!

I’m going to write here about some of the things I made for the guest table, entrance table and main reception table for our wedding in October. I had already completed the invitations months earlier, so I did have a thematic framework set, though I didn’t want to just make repeats of what everyone had seen.

I did utilize the same combination of Paper Source paper (Super Fine Soft White, Night and Opal) as the invitations but I purchased varying widths in the same burgundy ribbon and then also in a burnt orange to play with. I did test several combinations of  layering with the translucent blue ribbon and the thick satin ribbon until I decided on how each card would be presented. Though the idea behind each card was the same, the final look for each was slightly varied.

Instead of making a bunch of programs that would invariably be lost or forgotten, I decided to make one large program that I put on an antique-inspired stand. Since this was a focal point, I used a beautiful floral patterned burgundy ribbon that I layered under navy satin. It was definitely different from the other plainer ribbons I had used, but coordinated perfectly.

One of the most difficult projects I had was making signs for the two different sized birdcages that acted as card box and “wishing well.” Designing the cards wasn’t so hard as figuring out how to affix them in a way that was both sturdy and unobtrusive to the eye. It ended up being a combination of tape, bows, and, if you can believe it, painted brass round head fasteners.

One last thing I want to talk about is something I didn’t make, but I’d like to give a shout out to the awesome Etsy crafter who made our fabulous pen: RubyDollCreations did a great job and one guest even commented it was the most “elite” pen he had ever used

Here is one DIY tip for a makeshift pen holder at your guest table- fill a small glass with pebbles, seeds, or (as in our case) potpourri so the pen has somewhere to stand and be placed.

Here are some final pics of how everything looked together:

Sorry my GbD blog has been slow as of late, I’m just getting everything in order after a fantastic wedding weekend and honeymoon! I’m so pleased that I can now share a bunch of the DIY crafts I made for the wedding, hopefully to inspire some other brides out there to grab some glue and ribbon and go for it!

One of my favorite things I made are flower adorned flip flops- an inexpensive, easy (enough), and fun gift for bridesmaids, and a cute accessory for any bride to wear while getting ready for the big day. So many bridesmaids want to kick off their heels and dance after all the formalities are over, so adding these to their gifts works out well for everyone!

I used three types of glue for the multi-day process: Flip Flop Glue, Gem-Tac, and Fabric Gluc (all available at Michaels Arts & Crafts)

Michael’s also sells a good selection of fabric flowers- there are the kind that are used for fake flower arrangements (more about using those further down in this post) and there are the kinds that are sold for scrapbook and specialty craft uses- I bought a glass jar of the latter and had enough for a two layer flower on five pairs of flip flops.

It is important to use at least two layers in the flowers to get a semi-realistic dimension going. The first thing I did with the bridesmaid’s flip flops was to build the flowers independently from the footwear. I glued the fabric flowers together and when that was dry, used the gem tac to glue the pearls on top. I will say that I cautiously waited hours (and sometimes days) to ensure that everything was dry enough before I went to the next step. I used clothespins as makeshift clamps to hold everything together.

And lastly, I glued them with the specialty flip-flop glue onto the rubber of the flip flop… this glue kind of leaked through a bit, and I realized the clothespins were being glued to the whole thing as well. Not exactly the look I was going for. I ended up putting tin-foil between the clothespins and the flowers and it worked out perfectly as a buffer.

As a final touch, I made name tags with paper and ribbon in our wedding colors, navy and orange, to keep the flip flops together:

For my own shoes, I went to the fake floral department at Michael’s and picked out the “flatest” looking white flowers I could find. I knew flowers like roses, for example, would be too hard to manipulate on the flip flop. The flowers were very easy to take apart and separate into the individual layers of petals. After settling on four layers for mine, I basically did the same process. I glued them straight on to the rubber, however, because I thought their size would take to that better.

Leah wanted a plaque in the same vein as Josh’s Baseball Plaque for her friend’s new son, Nicholas. Thankfully, his name has an “o” in it so I could put the baseball image in it again No two plaques that I make are exactly alike, so I decided to play around with the grass I developed for Luciano’s Golf Plaque to try and create a more textured piece. That, of course, meant I had to bring out my old friend, blue painter’s tape:

I put down a dark green paint, and then layered a lighter green over it with a large dry brush. Once it was dry, I could pull the tape up and start playing with all the pieces that were involved in the baseball theme.

I wanted to make the dirt as textured as the grass, so the blue tape went back on. Again, with a dry brush, I quickly tapped the darker brown on top of the taupe color that was the base.

I love the new look that emerged!

The main look of the plaque is similar to the one I had done before, but there are subtle differences apart from the grass/dirt technique. I decided to add “Home Plate” and give it a little dirt around the edges, just for fun.

And here’s the finished baseball plaque!

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