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!

vintage goodies

Whenever I'm in midtown, I always try to make a little detour to 37th Street for a stop at my favorite vintage ribbon and trim shop, Tinsel Trading.

Last week I hit the lottery with these cool typographic tiered boxes by Wendy Addison and old fruit can labels. It's the most inspiring place I've ever been, with lots of treasures around every corner.

This butterfly brand label shown (below, left) is amazing in real life. The gold ink is raised and metallic. Looks like engraving!

I even picked up a book by the husband and wife team over at Paper + Cup. It's full of simple-to-follow and crafty DIY paper projects. Such an amazing find!

I snagged their last copy, but not to worry, you can purchase it on Amazon.

Inspired Reading: Store Front

I spied this book awhile ago on a stroll down 7th Avenue and have it on my Amazon Wish List. It's a wonderful collection of forgotten and quickly fading examples of vintage store signage and facades of yesteryear.

Oh so inspiring...

Plant Stand Envy

Confession: I am in love with this plant stand.  It's silly, I know to spend nearly $200 on such a simple thing, but I have my heart set of finally for the first time ever having something beautiful to hold my collection of equally beautiful ceramic planters. The worst part is that this is actually a reproduction - the original Victorian stands sell for about 3-4x's the price of this baby.

What's a girl to do when she can't afford the real thing? Ebay to the rescue. Here's a few pieces I've found along the same lines...now all I need is some red spray paint.

From left to right:a mini version in red / Cast Iron with moveable arms / rusty chair / ivory corner unit

the great carnival

Created as a graduation project, The Great Carnival is a series of illustrations depecting an imaginary carnival by illustrator Eric van Den Boom.

The work is not only beautifully drawn, but its message contains so much fitting commentory on the fast pace we live our lives - taking on too many projects, being in more than one place at a time and wearing yourself thin. In addition to the artwork, he spent a lot of time thinking of ways to share his work - with the distribution and displaying of posters throughout town, designing tickets and making flyers - all in an effort to spread the word and share his ideas.

I adore the vintage style of old carnival posters and thought the social commentary of these were worth sharing.

For more information on this project and to see Eric's work, please visit his website.