Fall Wreath Ideas

Today was a really good day. Mr. Gaunt and I went and bought a few things with some giftcards of things that we didn’t get off our registry. An extra set of silverware, short and tall glasses, and an awesome frame for future wedding photos. Then my friend Manda invited me to a card making party out in Everson. It was actually really fun! Although I usually don’t stamp, and I prefer to be more creative than follow a tutorial, they turned out super sweet. It was also kind of fun to hang out with a bunch of wives (and to be one!) and a few mom/mom’s to be. Mr. Gaunt and I joke that we are on the look out for some married couples to hang out with, maybe join a group…lol. Tonight we went and had soup at Honeymoon, then we watched our friend Greg play hockey (for Western) which was all fall cozy and fun, until my butt fell asleep on the bleachers and I decided we needed to go home.

So we came home and un-packed all the fall Halloween decorations and decorated the living room. I’ll take pics tomorrow in the day light. This week or next Manda and I have a date to make Fall Wreaths! Yay! I have an awesome black front door that is just SCREAMING for a fun fall wreath. So Manda (or anyone else who wants to join) here are all the fun fall wreathes I have found. Which should we do?

(click on any photo to be taken to the tutorial)

Medal Boutonnieres

There is a whole world of awesome non-flower Boutonnieres out there. Not that there is anything wrong with real flower Boutonnieres, they just seem kind of expensive, short-lived, and difficult to make. Not to mention they have to be made LAST MINUTE, and anything I can cross off my list before the week of the wedding is awesome in my book.

I scrolled around on Pinterest and Wedding Blogs to find what kind of non-floral Boutonniere worked best for us. In the end I stumbled upon this (oh Martha, how I love thee!) adorable little Brass Engraved Boutonniere! So precious, but at $20 a medal  + engraving costs (and 5, originally 6 Groomsmen) that would cost way too much, were on a budget here people! I also thought it seemed silly to spend that money on an engraved charm that I doubt any of his groomsmen would actually want to keep.

Next I found this Wooden Carved Medal Boutonniere on Etsy. Soooo Cool! But similar deal to the first one. It’s just too expensive for a bunch of boys who will likely leave them on the hotel nightstand the next day. But I really liked the striped ribbon look that the first one was lacking.

In the end I decided to try to make my own. Here are the supplies I used:

– 1 1/2″ Stainless Steel Disc with Hole

-1 1/2″ Grosgrain Yellow Ribbon

-Rooster Tail Feather Yellow

-Stainless Steal Jump Rings (I forget what size I did, on tiny, one a little bigger. Both purchased at Joanns)

-1″ Pin Back

-Smallest sheet of Balsa Wood I could buy (purchased at Joanns)

-Grey paint

-White Sharpie paint pen

-1/2″ Dark Grey Ribbon

-1 Full sheet of “sticker” (there is an office supply store in town that sells them individually for 10 cents)

Also:

-Craft Glue

-Iron

-Scissors

-printer

-Photoshop.

Alright, after listing it all out it seems like quite the project, but I swear it wasnt too hard. I also really do think it was the most economical way to get what we wanted. As for how I designed them, I winged it. The hardest part was folding the ribbon so it created that medal through the loop look. I used an iron to press the seems, and did a little cutting so that back of the ribbon tucked in nicely, then just glued it down. Same with the grey ribbon and feather at the top, just ironed and glued. The feather was actually a random last-minute add on that I really like, its quirky.

For the medal, they actually came with white plastic on them to protect their “shiny-ness” which was awesome with all the gluing and ironing around them. I finally got around to creating the little circle in Photoshop last week. I had originally thought I would have it printed on actual circle labels, but then I realized it would be soooo much easier to just print it on a sheet of label and cut the circles out. Voila!

As for the name “plaque” at the top. I tried to find a little metal square somewhere that I could just glue on and write on, but nothing fit. In the end I bought a strip of Balsa wood and had Mr. Gaunt cut it into little 1.5″ strips about 1/4″ tall and painted them grey to match the ribbon. Then I used a fine point paint pen in White to write their first initial and last name. They aren’t perfect, but very personal.

One of the things I like most about these, is how they look with the shirts I picked out. The Groomsmen outfits are the only “all matching” thing I really wanted in the wedding. Their shirts were something I put some thought into. I didn’t want just plain white boring shirts, I wanted a little bit of classy Pizzaz! So I picked these Kenneth Cole shirts that have just the faintest white-on-white stripe on them. I love how the stripes on my Boutonnieres match up with the stripes on the shirts. Eeek! They will be so cute!

DIY Save The Date Magnets

I almost completely forgot about these! They went out a few months ago, but I was waiting until everyone got theres before I blogged about it. So without further adieu…Our Save The Date Magnets.

I’m not sure where I originally saw the idea to do Magnets, but its a pretty common Save The Date idea. I looked online a bit. There are lots of websites where you can order Magnets, but none of them really worked for me. The ones that I could afford were too simple and didn’t let me customize them enough. In the end my friend Kayleah told me that she actually made her own, and that it wasnt to hard. So we did too!

I suppose the most difficult part of our magnet was designing it. I did the entire design in Photoshop. I kind of obsessed over it for a while. I want the perfect font that was unique and bridal, but not too girly (I ended up downloading one from here for free). The colors were also a pain to match (in the end I still wouldn’t say I was 100% happy with the colors). Mr. Gaunt and I came up with the idea to do the Silhouettes one evening and went with it. I don’t have any pictures on how to do a silhouette, but basically we took profile pics of ourselves against a blank background, and then in Photoshop I erased the background, made them solid black and did a little “clean up” of the edges (ok ok I shaved off my double chin…sue me!) I think they turned out really cute.

After the design was completed I made a file that had our image correctly sized over and over on a 10″ x 16″ template (room for cut off on a 11″ x 17″ paper) then we took it to Kinkos and had them print off 5 full color 11″ x 17″ sheets. Our magnets were 3″x3″ so we got 15 per sheet, 75 total magnets (which although our guest list is closer to 120, many of these are families who only got one magnet per household).

Then I bought self stick Magnet Sheet at Michaels using a 40% off coupon. They were around $11 a roll and I think I got 2 rolls, but only used 1.5. We printed off two coupons and went through two different lines so we got two rolls for like $13. The printing was around $2 a sheet I think.

After we had them printed I used my sweet Fiskars Paper Cutter (another good item to purchase with a Michael’s coupon) to cut my squares out. (NOTE: because I did not have a border on my magnet design, I made sure to have tiny corner lines marking where to cut) Then I laid them out touching side by side on the sticky side of the sheet magnet. The Sheet magnet was a bit large so there was some excess. Then I used scissors to hand cut out each one.

Done!

Of course they weren’t all perfect. Which is why I made a few extra, plus we wanted to keep a few for our memory box.

How to Update old Wall Sconses

BEFORE

This is just a little tutorial on how to turn an ugly grandma wall sconses into something kind cute. Originally I had planned on replacing the super grandma shades that were on the two wall sconses on each side of our medicine cabinet. When I went to the hardware store I couldn’t find any replacement globes that fit my fixtures. We even hit up the RE-Store to see if we could find some better looking older ones…no luck.

I searched around on the internet to see if I could find some way of revamping these ones. I was surprised to not really find anything, so I turned to a trusty old friend…Mod Podge.  Back in the day we were all big fans of Decoupaging (see a video tutorial here) and although I think its time has passed a little, I decided it was a last resort.

I hit up The Paper Zone to find some tissue paper and ended up getting a sheet of the hand-made rice paper stuff, with the pulp veins in it. I wanted purple, but didn’t want to be too girly, so I went with a very light mint tea green.

I shredded the paper into 1-2″ chunks.

I decoupaged the entire outside, with a 1/2″ overlap along the inside top rim.

I chatted with Mr. Gaunt and Hula as I crafted

Let dry

Ta Da! I still need to use some adhesive remover to get off whatever tape was wrapped around the base

And they glow so pretty! I love it! As soon as the bathroom is fully painted I’ll show off the rest of the room. This was such an easy project, and it may not be perfect, but its sooo much better.

In whole the project only cost me $3.50, for the paper and the paint brush. I borrowed the Mod Podge from my mom, and I obviously already had the ugly sconses. Pretty sweet!

Scrapbooking!

And the mess that I make!

No Rest For The Weary

Evil doings…lol…When did I get so busy?

Seriously, for a girl with little friends and a pretty sweet work schedule, I’m shocked by how little time I have these days.  The weekend was devoured before I even tasted it. And now I’m sitting here running through my huge list of to-do’s trying to decided what will be pushed till later, and when later might be.

Our painting business it really thriving! I’m so stinking happy about this. We sold our 4th custom order this morning and have one more ready to purchase either today or tomorrow. I’m loving it, doing art is so much more motivating when people actually want to buy it! Now I can only hope that things will keep putting along and that one day we can be making a portion of our income off it. For now the money will sit in our Paypal for moving and wedding costs.

We are doing our first craft fair on Saturday November 6th at Smoky Hill High School, and I’ve been making lots of mini paintings to sell as well as lots of examples of our custom work. Because it’s an indoor show we needed to build walls to display our canvas, so yesterday Mr. Gaunt and I went to Buds Warehouse which is a discount recycled building materials store. We bought 3 hollow core doors for $30! Now we have to paint them and hinge them together to make an accordion style wall for display. I also need to order some marketing materials from Moo Cards this week. So it’s all a little hectic. But good hectic.

In weight loss I joined weight watchers last week and then never went back…wow I’m lame. Ha! I’m having a hard to with this one, weight watchers is all about getting the most bang for your food points. Which means eating all diet foods. Meh…not the route I want to go. And the silly thing is that I KNEW that and that was why I quit in the first place! So I don’t know what I’m gonna do now. Working out is what I really need to do, I have just never discovered a workout plan that I liked. Im thinking of checking out the brand new 24 hours fitness they just built behind my house. Maybe if they have TV’s in the machines I might be interested in going. Before I found the gym to be so boring, and the tvs were always set to news and sports! But if I could ave my own tv then I could even schedule gym time around my favorite shows (we don’t have cable anymore so we don’t get to watch any new tv) and maybe that would motivate me. I do really like tv.

My current job is a test in my patients every day, and I am counting down the days until we move and I can quit it and find something new. I have already made the decision that I will NOT be transferring. We are still up in the air about where exactly we want to move. I plan on doing a post on this at a later date, not that the masses really care.

Anyways I have some food and other things to do individual posts about today, this is just to catch people up on whats going on!

Buds Warehouse. Much like the RE-Store for you Bham folks

Piles of stuff to dig through

Wearing High heels and dress pants. We had just left a wedding.

LOOK I FIXED IT!

3 Doors, a Bookcase and an easel. Maybe I shouldnt sell this car!