2 great ideas for vintage wood spools at your wedding

With just about 5 and a half weeks left until Baby C is born, my nights are filled with lots and lots and lots of sleeplessness. I've been obsessed with looking for cool ideas and projects on Etsy via PicClick, which if you don't know about it yet, need to stop reading right this second and click on over.

For those of us "in the know" PicClick offers a hyped up search engine for Etsy (and eBay and a host of other sites). I'm obsessed with it.

Anyhow, last night I feel like I stumbled upon something really unique, these Embroidered Spool Escort Cards by Etsy seller Lelise

I'm really into vintage spools right now - I bought a large lot a month or so back and used them to display my paper goods at the Wedding Crashers Show.

Figured to share a little DIY Tutorial on how to make these small beauties into card holders. They are perfect to use for place cards or even table number signs. Just remember that they can be top heavy so if you intend to use heavy paper stock, go for larger spools or just weigh them down.

Vintage Wooden Spool Card Holders

Materials:

• Assorted vintage spools
• Memo pins
• Hot glue gun + glue sticks
• Coins

Directions:

1. Assemble your materials: wooden spool lots can be found inexpensively on Etsy and eBay.
2. The memo pins come very tightly wound so if you are using heavy weight paper, you may need to loosen them up a little. I used an old credit card / gift card inserted into the top wire and it worked like a charm.
3. Prep your spools: clean up loose ends and use a small piece of masking tape on the bottom to stop the glue from oozing out
4. Pop a bit of glue into the top of the spool and insert the memo pin. They work best when they are left slightly above the spool. (I used golf pencils to hold the pins in place).
5. When glue is dry, turn each spool over and glue on a coin that fits to the bottom. No need to worry, you can easily remove the coins later. I found nickels and quarters worked best!
6. Enjoy!

DIY: Type Drawer Escort Card Display

I'm always spending time on Etsy searching for cool vintage accessories, whether searching for new ideas or items to decorate my home with and recently found seller Blue Bird Heaven who takes vintage letterpress type drawers and converts them into jewelry displays.

It got me thinking... what if you wanted to use these drawers as a cute vintage escort card display? Could be really cool for a rustic or loft style wedding!

This project is definitely for the DIY-inclined and may take a little more time than the average project, but the results could be well worth the effort.

Materials:

• Type drawers: the number of drawers you need will depend on your guest count. We recommend leaving a cubby hole for each couple / single guest on your list.
• Paper for background: various papers in a color palette of your choosing. You can use scrapbook papers, old gift-wrap or wallpaper.
• Pens
• X-acto knife (used with a self-healing cutting matte) or scissors if you're more comfortable cutting with these.
• Ruler
• Heavy-duty double stick tape

Directions:

1. To save yourself valuable time, be sure to pre-measure all the cubby holes in your type drawer. This is the most time-consuming part of the project and you don't want to leave it for the days before your wedding to be cutting out 150 rectangles of paper.
2. Once all your holes have been measured, give each hole a number and determine which pattern of paper you'd like for each hole. Measure out each hole size on your selected paper and cut out. Number the back of your cut piece for the hole it corresponds to.
3. After you have your seating chart finalized, you should begin writing guests names and table numbers on each pre-cut rectangle. To make it easy for your guests, be sure to place names in alphabetical order (by last name).
4. Place the coordinating piece of cut paper rectangle into the matching hole with double stick tape.
5. Admire your brilliant job and enjoy!

Drawers can be found on eBay for around $15 - $50 or try keeping an eye out for them at your local flea market.

DIY: Glue Gun Wax Seals

I used this technique a few months back to make a large amount of wax seals for a wedding invitation suite and thought it was a great time-saver worth sharing in a small DIY tutorial.

photos from Paper-Source

After purchasing my selected seal design, I just assembled simple tools (glue gun, wet paper towel and aluminum foil) and went to work. Glue Gun Wax is very easy to work with, is available in a large assortment of colors and can be used with any standard glue gun. You just want to make sure you carefully clean out the wax when completing your project so it doesn't colorize any glue gun projects you have in the future.

• Step 1: Insert your selected Glue Gun Wax into a warmed up glue gun
• Step 2: Push trigger on glue gun and pour about a dime size dollop of wax onto foil

• Step 3: Insert your seal into the center of the dollop. Press down and leave for approx. 30 seconds

• Step 4: Gently pickup your brass piece, seal will need some additional time to set so be careful not to touch it.
• Step 5: Clean off brass piece by gently wiping with moistened paper cloth.

• Step 6: Repeat steps 1-5 until you have enough seals completed for your project.
• To finish: We recommend using round seals on the backside of each waxed piece. It's sticky on two sides and will firmly affix your seal to the finished paper.

DIY Tutorial: Tissue Paper Garlands

It's been a busy week or so preparing for Marquina + Dan's wedding at the end of the month. Our décor plan is focused on color, geometric shapes and natural materials. Nothing too serious or over the top, but by bringing in pops of their wedding colors to compliment the natural raw loft space, we're making some great progress!

One project I just completed is garlands made from squares of tissue paper. You may remember this stuff from kindergarten craft-time. Back in the day, we would dip the squares in glue, scrunch them and use to color a simple shape - like this heart for Valentine's Day.

In all, I sewed 6 garlands - ranging in 25' - 40'. The squares are available in various prepackaged sets and it only takes a small amount to make a big impact. I used three colors, white, lavender and lime and ended up using only one package, which kept the project under $8 - talk about budget-savvy!

Materials:

• Tissue Paper Squares: Oriental Trading Company had the best selections I found. Their price for a set of 8 colors (625 squares of each color) is just $4.99.
• Thread: I used standard white sewing thread. Originally I purchased clear thread, but it kept breaking in the sewing machine. The white worked perfectly and I used less than 1 full spool (including the thread for the bobbin).
• Sewing Machine: I had to do some tests first with the tension since tissue paper is very brittle to sew. A chain stitch worked perfectly to hold the pieces just right.

Here's a little step-by-step recreation:

1. I started by separating the squares of tissue paper and organizing them by color. This took a little more time then expected, but it makes sewing a breeze.
2. My sewing machine was threaded with white thread and with some gentle pressure on my foot petal, I kept a slow, constant pace, alternating the three colors.
3. Close-up detail of the spacing used for the squares. Some were layered on top of each other and others we're spaced out a little wider, as in this example.
4. Detail of the finished garland

Prudent Baby has a a cute modified version of this project using petal shaped tissue paper. This Martha Stewart Weddings feature was the original inspiration behind this project!

Crafty Mirror

Spotted on Craftzine.com today. Check out the tutorial on how to make this fun fixture for your creative space.