Everyday I'm Rufflin': Part 2

Before we started the wedding planning process, I introduced Julie to the greatness that is The Inspiration Board. I spent hours pulling images from the internet to create inspo boards and color schemes for every event for Julie so she could see what I envisioned all these years for her entire wedding weekend.  Luckily, she trusted me.  She knows I am all about the details.  And, luckily, she loved everything.  When we started out, Julie didn't know what an inspo board was.  At the end of it all, she has recommended it to all her friends that are planning their own weddings. Me so proud.  

When I think of Spain, I think ruffles, lace and wrought iron.  I wanted to keep to a literal translation of Spain because it was an Indian event.  I figured if I didn't go all in-your-face Espana, then the whole Spanish theme that Julie wanted would have gotten lost in the sea of salwars and punjabs.  I also wanted a touch of a rustic look since that was the on-going theme of Julie's entire weekend.

The details for the mehndi were pretty fab if I do say so myself. I, once again, convinced my dear friend Mandy to do some dirty work. I really don't know what I'd do without Mandy. Between Julie, myself and Mandy, we knocked this party of out the ballpark.

The location was a spot I'd been to for a friend's sangeet/mehndi night over 6 years ago. It is an old city hall and fire station in a cute part of town.  I saved it in my mental Julie file specifically for her mehdni.  But, I had forgotten about it until Julie started asking me for ideas for spots because she needed a place close to all her events.  Luckily her questions jogged my memory because it was kind of perfect.  Very charming.

After we sent out the invitations, the first order of business was the backdrop, which you've seen already.

I worked on the backdrop when I wasn't working on other things with Julie and Mandy.

The second order of business was the centerpieces.  I fell in love with this photo shoot back in 2010 when Merci featured a tablescape by Rock Paper Scissors.  I'd tucked the idea away for an event, so I selfishly pressured Julie into letting me do this for the mehndi.  Imagine how thrilled I was when I discovered Rock Paper Scissors posted a tutorial on them.  Best.Day.Ever.  Julie wasn't totally convinced because she knew it was going to be very labor intensive, but since cost was a big factor, I talked her into it.  I also was thrilled because even though I'd loved the idea from the get-go, it was a huge coincidence that their photo shoot decor was for a Spanish modern event.  It was meant to be.  Love when that happens.  

I caught a sale at Hobby Lobby and bought all the paper in different shades of oranges, yellows, and red.  I also pulled from my own stash of cardstock leftover from my wedding.  Mandy was our designated tracer.  I had planned for only 50 of them, but Mandy squeezed in an additional 18.  68 in total.  And since I am all about 'more is more', I was ecstatic.

I know Julie felt that her time was best spent on other things than cutting paper, so I only made her cut about a third of them so she could see them at the event and know it was all worth it.

Between Mandy and I, we assembled them all.

Julie and Mr. Bean kept telling me that even though I kept the costs down, I have to look at what our time was worth.  But the impact was pretty amazing.  It was worth it to me.  And I think Mandy agrees.

I had them placed everywhere I could in the space. Every where there was a table, I made sure there were flowers.

The third order of business was the food table.

Since the night was supposed to be an informal event, I didn't spend a lot of time on the banners, but the crafter in me definitely wanted to include a big welcome for everyone that came into the space.  Unfortunately, there was not a good place to hang it, so I had it hung on the food table.  I was hesitant to keep all the banners in Spanish since it was an Indian function, but Julie said to keep it authentic and even came up with the idea of saying "Bienvenidos" instead of just "Welcome".  Too cute.

I stitched rolls of yellow and red crepe paper on my sewing machine to resemble ruffles to use as decor anywhere I could on the food and dessert table.

All the wrought iron decor was literally taken off my sister's walls and off her shelves at home. I literally walked around her house one weekend and took pics of her inventory.  Lucky for me, she could see my vision for everything.  I kept it simple for the most part and excluded any glass so nothing was broken.  She and my BIL were kind enough to drive it down 5 hours for the event.  There is nothing like free decor.  If she hadn't been so sweet as to let me borrow it for this event, some of it might not have made it back.....just sayin'.

I had the paper flowers placed all over the food table and included my new favorite decor item.  A roll of burlap ribbon.  I'm kind of obsessed with burlap anything, so it had to make the table.   

I have a wine crate obsession.  I begged, borrowed, and stole 5 wine crates for this event.  I am not proud of myself.  OK, maybe I am.  

The food table was really festive looking.  I wish I could have decorated it with everything I wanted to, but ultimately, I kept it simple and nothing of my sister's was broken so I can't complain.

Last, but definitely not least, was the last order of business: the dessert table.  I envisioned this dessert table when I was raiding my sister's house.  I am proud to say it looked even cuter than I imagined.

Priti wowed everyone again with her cake-abilities and made some dulce de leche flavored cake pops in red, yellow, and orange for the event.  She's great at creating some insane flavors and colors to coordinate with your event.  These were amazing.  As usual.   If you are in the Dallas/Frisco area, hit me up.  I can  put you in touch with her.  She'll be glad to work on your event with you.  You can see more of her work here and here.  

I used wine crates to give the cake pops some height so they could really show off their cuteness.  I just think food tastes better when it is presented well.  Not that I had anything to do with how good these cake pops were.  :)  

I definitely wanted to include the ruffled crepe paper on the cake pop display.  That was actually why I spent the time to ruffle crepe paper.  The bins for the utensils and the front of the food table was just bonus.

For the banners, I cut the tops of some red heart paper doilies and attached them to jute twine.  Instead of food labels, I made miniature banners to match the other banners and attached them to twine as well.

I don't have a better close up of it, but I draped some rope around the wrought iron.  You can see it here.  It is actually old sari fabric that was made into a rope.  I bought these at the Quilt Festival last year specifically for Julie's mehndi.  I had the color scheme already in my head even then.  

I included some flowers where I could.  You can see the food label banners here as well.  

Again, here was another banner and the sari rope.  Postres in Spanish means desserts.

We included some mango and pineapple empanadas from a local bakery on the dessert table as well as churros.  If you've been to Spain, you know churros y chocolate are a must.

I kept the actual food labels simple with some cardstock left over from the invitations and used the scraps left over from the red paper heart doilies to embellish it.

Unfortunately, I never got a shot of the favors at the event, but I will include a post on all the gift wrapping for the wedding shortly.

All in all, I was extremely proud of this event.  I am usually second guessing myself on every detail and I have to bug my friends and my Seester about everything I am unsure about - which is everything.  I constantly berate myself and constantly worry what people will think.  If it will look cheesy.  Or cheap.  But this time I think I was too busy with all the other details of the wedding to bother myself with second guessing.  So I am proud that I just did it.  It wasn't until the night before the mehndi as I was packing it all up that I thought to myself, "Oh, sh*t.  What am I doing?  Is it enough?"  It was probably the largest event I've styled on the smallest budget.  And besides the money talk, I put a lot of work into making this an event people would be talking about.  And they did.  The biggest compliment I heard was from a friend of the groom that said, "This is not a typical mehndi party.  Nothing about this is typical." That's exactly what I wanted to give Julie.

If you are still with me after this long post, here is the thank you portion of my post.....I can't get by without thanking everyone that helped me.

Thank you, Sarah, for taking pics of all the details you know I wanted.  You're awesome.

Thank you, Julie, for trusting me to pull off an event like this. Your mehndi.  For your wedding.  Crazy.    Also, thanks for sticking it out and cutting those petals.  I purposely didn't give you a ton to do because I was afraid you'd call the whole idea off :) but glad you didn't.  I hope you see it was all worth it.

Thank you, Bhavik, for all your work. Not just that night but all week.  I know it sucks to be a brother when your sister is getting married because you get stuck with so much of the grunt work, but you are awesome for putting up with all of us.  Thank you for always having kind words for me.  I'm sorry I always cry, but you and your family mean the world to me.  Thanks for letting me be a part of it all.  Love you.

Thank you, Seester, for helping me set up and keep sane.  I know we were under a time crunch - which I don't always handle well - but you kept me focused and kept me from losing it.  You are always the best at making me laugh at myself.  And thank you for letting me raid your house for your decor.  You really should just let me keep it all....for my next event.  :)

Thank you, Priti.  You are crazier than I am. :)  Thanks for helping me set up while I was frantic. Thanks for trusting me to display your work. Your cake pops were amazing.  As usual.  We make a good team, me and you. :)

Thank you, Mandy.   I secretly call you for help to get a chance to see you.  I know you stretch yourself thin with all your activities, but you always manage to squeeze in time for some hard core craft labor when I ask it of you.  And you always stay enthusiastic about it - which even I have a hard time doing sometimes.  I really don't know what I'd do without you. 

Back to the Hotel

Hello, there!  I wanted to show you one last detail of Julie's wedding invitations that we are quite proud of and then I promise to move on.  This was definitely a product of a brainstorming session between Julie and I. The problem?  How to include the hotel information with the invitations without it looking ugly/ghetto/cheap.  The solution? Make something awesome.  What else did you expect??

Julie's mind is a spreadsheet. That's how she thinks.  That is how she works. That is how she stays organized. She asked me if including a spreadsheet of all the hotel info would look ugly. I bluntly told her yes. So she challenged me to come up with a better way to present the information.  I accepted the challenge. Only, when I saw the information, the best way to present it was with a spreadsheet.  Boo for it having to be functional.  So, I kept thinking about it and then came up with this idea. Kelly and I did something similar for her wedding programs, so I just adapted it to Julie's spreadsheet and voila! Pure genius. OK, maybe I'm going overboard with the genius stuff, but I think it is pretty clever.  Yay for it being able to be functional and pretty!

We entered the spreadsheet onto an 8 1/2 x 11 paper so we'd get two to a page.

We then used a score board and scored the paper.

Cut it in half and patted ourselves on the back that it actually worked.  I was pretty particular that all the folds coincided with the beginning of a column so there was no folds over text.  Functional? Check.

Then it came down to the making it pretty part.  I bought cardstock that matched the outer and inner envelopes.

I then used my Silhouette to write "Hotel Information"on them in the same font we used on the invites.

Now, I realize the Silhouette has it's own sketch pens. And now they have come out with metallic sketch pens, but I didn't want to pay the price of those sketch pens and to have to wait for them to be shipped to me.  Especially because I didn't know how far the ink on one sketch pen will go, so I didn't want to get into the guessing game of how many sketch pens I needed.  I am also OCD and didn't know if the gold sketch pen would match the gold in the invitations, so I bought gold pens that best matched the invites, and used my own pens.

I also realize that the Silhouette has a pen holder. But, for the price, again, I didn't want to have to pay for it and then have to wait for it to be shipped to me.  So. This is what I did...

If you see a sketch pen, it looks like a short, fat pen. That is because the carrier that holds it only holds things that are about 1/2" wide. So, I basically took some thick cardstock and rolled it around my pen until it fit the carrier snugly.  Then I taped it pretty well together.

When I put it inside the carrier, I taped it to the carrier as well. I've used a sketch pen before, and the cap of the pen always pops off or loosens a bit as the Silhouette is working, which makes Pintobean very angry. So I've become accustomed to taping pens to the carrier just to prevent it from messing up whatever it is I am working on.

The only trick is to get the pressure of the pen right since you are not using a pen holder. This is probably where it is smart to have the pen holder, but I'm not really known for taking short cuts.  Yes, I can admit that, Anita. ;)  However, the pen pressure isn't an issue unless you find that the pen is not actually touching the page -- in that case just tap the pen down before you tape it to the carrier -- or unless you are working with really thick cardstock because it has some give to it when the pen hits the paper -- you will know you have it too low when you see the ink blotching.

The time sucking aspect of this is....the Silhouette is not designed to "print" fonts.  It "outlines".  Meaning, it simply just traces the outline of the letters you are working on.  So, basically when you are using the Silhouette to write or "sketch" words/letters, it traces the outline of the font.  Translation:  You get empty gaps between the lines that you will need to fill in - unless you like that look.

I enlarged the lettering on the previous pic so you could see what I am talking about.

So, once they were all printed, I cut them down and used the same gold pen to fill in the gaps.  Then let them sit overnight to dry.

Then I cut just solid cardstock the same size. So, essentially I had the front and back of what would be little hotel info booklets. I then pasted the cards to the spreadsheets.

For some added cuteness, Julie was trying to figure out where we could use these paper clips she found.

I made sure we found a place to use them.

And that, my friends, is the story of how the cutest hotel info booklets ever were made.  Oh, and do I need to mention that I rounded all the corners?  Because that's kind of my thing.  Rounded corners.

Are you not entertained?!?  That quote is a family fave.  Had to use it.

I have another really fun post in the making.  Just be patient with me.  I'm going to really lay this one on thick...  

The invitations. Pardon me while I ramble.

{Invitation shop in Navsari, Gujarat}

Julie's wedding invitations are out!  Such.A.Relief.  I feel like all the big items are done.  Now it's just the details.  Or is it more appropriate to say, all the huge items are done and now all that is left is the big items?  Either way, I felt like I had just finished my last final when we finished the last invite. 

So, before I left for India, Julie basically gave me free reign on the invitations since we were short on time.  Since I am such a paper person, I took this job pretty seriously and went to India armed with my own fonts.  I sort of hate the fonts that always seem to be used on Indian invitations.  Here you have these beautiful invitations on amazing paper and then they go and slap some Times New Roman in italics on them. So, I narrowed my font choices down to my top 10 faves for Julie to approve and took her favorite with me to India. 

Invitation shopping wasn't exactly the awe inspiring event I thought it would be.  I've seen some beautiful wedding invitations in my time so this was secretly the one task I was dying to get to, but the three places I was able to visit didn't have anything that left me speechless like I'd hoped to blog about. I had dreams of custom made invitations, but those dreams were shattered pretty quickly when Julie's parents saw how expensive it would be. :")

I wanted something elegant, but something a little different. I also wanted something colorful, but the one invitation I fell in love with was the one invitation that lacked color. But I figured we'll make up for it with the wedding. :)  So, while I didn't come back waving a flag of valor, I am pretty proud of them. They look kind of awesome.

Forgive the bad photos. I've tried to take pics in all kinds of light and the shimmer on the invites just do not allow good pics.

The inner envelope caught my eye out of the stacks and stacks of invitations I went thru because of this gold embellishment. It looked really modern next to the traditional invitations I was seeing. After visiting three vendors, the invitations were all looking the same or too typical, so at the end of the day, these stood out to me. I sent a snap of them to Julie and she loved them.    

We had a girls night one night and knocked out the bulk of the invitations. So I took advantage of the extra hands and had Mandy and Melanie round all the corners. Yes, details are important to me.   

The inside cards for all the events are all staggered like most invitations are. I originally wanted different colored cards for the different events, but the options this vendor had were not what I had in mind. And at the end of the day, the colored cards would not have looked right with the invite.  So, I left it alone.

We went with gold ink as opposed to the brown ink it originally came with because I felt the gold ink would give it a bit more glam.  And it does.

We took some time to address the outer envelopes. I rigged up my Silhouette with my own metallic pen, some cardstock, and some crazy taping skillz and got it to address a few of them for us.  I'll explain this a bit more in the next  post as I've already received a few questions about it.

I was on a roll until the third night of invitation assembly, so at the end of the day we had to settle for hand addressing the bulk of them. But, Julie lucked out there. As Kelly put it, Julie is really lucky to have friends that basically practice their handwriting as a hobby. So between Kelly and myself, we finished addressing the invitations that were left.

Before I left, I also had Julie send me images of a ganesh that she liked just in case I saw anything I wanted to have custom made with it. Came in handy because this invite did not come with a ganesh on it already and I didn't want the job of deciding which ganesh to go with. So I had them add the ganesh on the corner of the invite.

I am very pleased with the quality of the invitations. It makes me giddy to see them. When Julie brought them over for the first time, I got a little misty eyed. I love the invites, but I also love seeing her name on a wedding invitation. *Sigh*

Huge props to a preggars Kelly, Mandy, and Melanie for being apart of the invitation committee.  We couldn't have finished in 2012 without you guys. 

Everyday I'm Stenciling

Hello!  I thought I'd put up a quick post to show what I just recently made.  Remember the basket I made for this chandlo?  Well, my friend's brother is now having his chai pani (engagement) next month.  My friend's family has somewhat adpoted Mr. Bean and I, so I do what I can and in turn reap the benefits of awesome homemade Gujarati food.  It's a win for the Beans for sure.

My friend's mom shares my same affection for jute bags.  She received a small gift sized jute bag as part of a favor at a wedding and loves it.  It had a pretty red jacquard ribbon on it and an ohm painted on it.  Really, really cute.  She asked me to find some like it for her for the chai pani but with a Ganesh on them.  I just knew it'd be easy to find, but after about 4 days of many internet searches and a million different combinations of keywords, the only thing I came up with were vendors that sold with a minimum of 1000 pieces.  We couldn't really justify buying 1000 since we only needed 11 of them.  I did find some mini jute bags that were blank, so I made a promise I wasn't sure I could keep.  I told her I'd put the Ganesh on them myself. When I hung up the phone, I asked myself out loud, "Now, why'd you go and say a thing like that??" 

My friend sent me an image of the Ganesh she wanted and I pretended I knew what I was doing.  Since the image was so small and somewhat intricate (for it's size), I didn't want to hand cut it.  Instead, I used the Silhouette's trace feature to trace the outline of the image.  I say this very nonchalantly, but the trace feature was a discovery I made at about 1:00 am when I was desperate for a solution to the problem I volunteered myself for.  It is probably the most awesome discovery known to man.  Or at least to me.  I should go down in some crafty wall of fame somewhere.  Seriously.  It's that awesome.  I even woke up Mr. Bean to tell him. He didn't find it quite as awesome at the time, but once I finished everything, he was sure to pat himself on the back for getting me the Silhouette. 

I stole borrowed some transparencies from work, closed my eyes, and hit "cut" on the Silhouette.  And it worked.

I placed cardboard inside the bags and placed my stencil on top.  I taped the stencil down with painter's tape and just used a cheap sponge brush to dab the paint over the stencil.

We wanted to keep the bags simple, but you know my obsession with rhinestones by now, so it won't surprise you that I decided the bags needed some bling.

So, I added a rhinestone as the bindi.  Just stayin' classy, my friends.  

And here they are!  My friend's mom will see them tomorrow.  I hope she likes them.  I'm kind of hoping she doesn't because I kind of want to keep them.... A girl can never have enough small jute bags with a Ganesh painted on them, can she? 

Pop Goes the World

Remember that song?  I'm sure some of you are going to say no because you were born the year it came out, but it was my jam back in the day. And I've been singing it for the last couple of weeks while working on this next project. 

You may remember Priti.  She created the amazing dessert table at the shower I co-hosted.  She's co-hosting a baby shower for her sister and she will be putting her mad skillz to work again to create another amazing menu.  She asked me for help with the invitations since she couldn't really find anything she liked, so I came up with a concept and crossed my fingers that it worked.  And luckily it did. 

The colors?  Mint green, light blue, and brown. The theme?  She's About to Pop!  Love this theme.  I'd filed a few ideas away for friends already so I had a few directions I knew I could go.  For this project, I stuck with bubbles because, well, bubbles are cute and they pop and they remind me of polka dots - which I kind of have a thing for. 

{image via Iman Sadhegi}

I love when bubbles look like they are glued together in multiples and look like they are attached to each other, so I used that as my inspiration. 

I designed the invite in my Silhouette to fit an A7 envelope and used the print and cut feature. Once they were printed, I cut 6 different sized circles.

I had to make 60 invitations, so I cut 360 circles in total.  Don't they look cute all stacked together like that?  Then, I invited my friend Mandy over for a night of hard labor crafts and we glued them together by layering them.

Essentially, each bubble contains information on the shower. And, while you can't exactly tell in the pictures, the invite is just the bubbles themselves.  The brown background is just cardstock so you don't see my ugly craft table. :) Cute, huh?

I couldn't resist using a pop up dot to make the word "POP" pop off the invitation.  Not sure how many people will catch that, but I thought it was a pretty darn cute idea myself. 

But, I didn't want the envelopes to feel lonely.  I love a hand addressed envelope, but I have to admit I am a sucker for labels.  When making invitations, I am always torn between hand addressing the envelopes or using some cute labels.  When there are a lot of invitations to send, I think labels are an awesome option so that one isn't stuck hand writing 60 invitations.   

So, I printed out labels in the same fonts I used on the invite.  Not pictured is the return address label on the back.  I made it green.  The labels were a splurge, but I imagined that when guests received their invites, they'd see the envelopes and know something really cute was inside.  :)  Because there is. 

I'm not going to lie.  These invites took me a long time to make.  Without Mandy's help, I would probably still be putting them together.  But once they were finished I was literally about to pop with pride.  Love them. 

Party Like a Princess

Recently, I had the opportunity to use my powers for good rather than evil.  My Seester's coworker, Brenda, asked me to make some invitations for her daughter's 1st birthday.  All I had to hear was "princess party" and I was all over it.

Since Brenda had a clear vision of what she wanted, the only thing I had to worry about was ruining this little girl's first birthday party with horribly constructed invites.  No pressure. 

This is what Brenda fell in love with.

{image via Paper Chick}

Obviously, Paper Chick is in a whole other league from me, but I told Brenda I would see what I could do. So I got to work and tried to figure out how to produce something that would end up being the same concept Brenda wanted minus the skills Paper Chick has. This is what I came up with.  

Naturally, I consulted my Precious my Silhouette.  Side note...The more I work with my Silhouette, the more I feel like I become invisible and am consumed by crafty thoughts.  Love that machine.  Anyway, the Silhouette offers a couple dress options, but nothing that would work as is, so I chose this shape and modified it slightly to fit what I envisioned.  I made sure that the invite would fit in a standard A7 envelope and that there would be enough room on the skirt to fit the text Brenda wanted.

I recently saw The Count of Monte Cristo and was a bit enamored with the invites he sent for the extravagant ball he threw for himself.  The font was basically consistent throughout the invite and I felt like it looked really regal that way.  So I kept the font consistent despite my inclination to use one or two more.  I think it made this particular invite look really girly. And what's more girly than a princess party?? 

For the details, I chose pink tulle and pink ribbon. You can't really tell the tulle is pink, but it has a sparkle to it that the white tulle didn't have so I basically had to use it.  I have a reputation to uphold after all.  And just because I think pink and pearls go together like tulle and ribbon, I added a pearl at the neckline. 

I couldn't get a good shot of the tulle - the light wasn't working with me this morning - so here it is from another angle. 

And just because I thought they looked so cute all together, I had to share a snap of them all packed up. 

With as much love as Brenda has poured into making her daughter's 1st birthday a true celebration, I can't help but be honored to have had a small part in it.  Thanks, Brenda.