My Big Fat Wedding Blog Hop

Welcome to My Big Fat Wedding Blog Hop. We are a group of a talented ladies who love paper crafting (well most of us) and will be show casing Our Amazing Creations along they way.  If you are visiting from Tammy  http://anonymouscricuter.blogspot.ca then you are

in the right place, If not, please go and start from the beginning at Vanessa

http://wwwpaperkraftsunlimiteddesings.blogspot.com

Blog Hop Giveaway is............ $10.00 Gift Card fom Ginger Snaps Scraps

Here is what I came up with:

Nautical Wedding Invitation

     Now that I have been to the wedding shower and know everyone has received their invitations I can finally share the process!Becca wanted a nautical theme, not a beach theme so we looked for ships, anchors, and ship's wheels. Thankfully Provo Craft has Life's A Beach and I was able to find all that I needed along with Imagine More.
     I presented her with the idea of a pocket type card to hold the reply card, reception and direction cards as well as the main invitation. I found the perfect kit by Wilton called the "String Of Pearls".

     This was a perfect selection for the outside since it had a wonderful crisp white with a nice satin sheen to it.

     This layout was just perfect for what we were looking for. It was very neat and organized and had a nice bead border almost like roping. The nice thing about this is that the template allowed me to change the font color and style so I could really customize these. Her colors are like a navy and a nice fresh green color so they were a very refreshing color to work with.

     Ready for the finished product? Here ya go:

     I started by adding a band of navy satin ribbon. ( My oldest daughter suggested it. Hey ya gotta give credit where it is due, right!).   I had found this roping at A.C. Moore in the yarn section. It has a nice satin sheen to it as well so it was just right for a classy wedding invitation. The image is from Imagine more and I changed the outer ring color to a more navy color but kept the inner ring and ship the same. This was cut @ 2" but I separated the layers but kept them at relative size so that everything was proportionate. I used a glue dot to secure the rope and image but made sure to bring the rope thru the ring.

     Here's the inside. Tada!!! First I used the Imagine More cart again. I chose the cut and print option and cut a 5"x7" with the same patterned paper as the inner ring of the life preserver. How cool is that? The outer layer is a blue card stock that also has a sheen. I bought that at Michael's from their recollections collection.In order to keep with the nautical theme I cut an anchor from Life's A Beach @ 1.25. Since I had to make 100 invitations I wanted to save some money on this project. There wasn't any silver card stock with the right color I wanted so I went to the canvas section @ M's and found this poster board for $4.00. I just cut it to 12x12 so I had 4+ sheets to work with. (Maybe there will be a lot of silver in my Christmas cards this year!)
     Once everything was printed it tucked neatly into the pocket. The only thing I would do different would be to add a silver compass on the directions card. BTW speaking of directions card. The front has directions to the church and the back has directions to the reception. Rather than buy more cards to use for the back, I cut some card stock the same size,printed the directions and used my ATG gun to glue them together.

   This is how the guests received their invitations. ( even though they were hand stamped, thank USPS for the wrinkled appearance, grrr). Bet you were wondering where the ships wheel I was talking about went to. Here is where it ended up! It is also from Life's A Beach and is also cut at 1.25". The circle behind it is from a circle punch with the leftover scraps from the blue background paper.

Becca had purchased these cute silver ships as part of the favors so everything just sort of fell into place. I had used the same RGB codes so all the font colors were the same from the invitation to the place cards.
I will leave you with one final picture. Of course it is of the wedding cake. Although I had nothing to do with this, I wanted to show you how wonderfully everything continued to carry out the theme.

As you can see the border includes small anchors.

Next you should head over to Jennifer and show her some love! Thank you so much for stopping by.

Hurricane Irene

     Well we survived but had been without power for 2 days. Unfortunately one of my daughters, her husband and their 3 children, just had their power restored this morning. Just a few pointers: make sure everything is turned off when the power goes out. They had been making pancakes when they lost power and left the pan on the burner to keep the last few pancakes warm while they finished eating. The last 5 days they have been in and out at our house or the in laws so never gave the stove a second thought.
     Well, you guessed it, the power came back on (my daughter was home at the time, Thank God) when she smelled something burning. It was the oily fry pan! Can you imagine what would have happened if she had not gone home? I shutter to think.
     I swear I must have ADD because I just can not sit without something to do, hurricane or not! We are so used to losing our power that I had planned ahead to do projects that did not require electricity. My husband was making sure the generator was working, My daughter is home from Hawaii for a three week visit, so she was catching up on some much needed sleep, so I pulled out some ribbon, scissors and pipe cleaners and made:

     There are 20 of them for a wedding we attending this week end. It's one of those projects that are time consuming but a great job to do when you have no place to go and nothing else to do, lol.
     We had a huge celebration the day before Irene paid a visit. It was Mia's 5th birthday and our last child Steve graduated from college so we also celebrated this milestone. Aside from the tropical downpours proceeding the hurricane, we had a great time. I'll show you pics of a MAJOR project I did as party favors for the 25 kids attending the party. Here's a hint: it involves sewing!!!

Wedding Flowers

     I have been super busy with projects at home as well as wedding consults at work. Thankfully all the brides I have been working with have been wonderful to work with. No bridezillas at all. ( Believe me that's amazing!!!)
     I had the honor of designing the wedding flowers for an amazing young woman I have known for years since she danced with my daughters. I thought I would share these since the colors were so vibrant and there were some touches that are kind of a signature of mine.

      The above picture is the brides bouquet. She wanted all white with roses but one of her bridesmaids reminded her that she had also mentioned callas. These white callas are just the greatest to work with. They are the perfect size and shape and this particular grower is outstanding. It has taken us literally years to find the right source for these. We are VERY picky about our wedding flowers. They may be just for the day but the pictures last a life time.

      The bridesmaids were wearing all black and the bride wanted hot pink and a nice mix. These roses were the perfect shade of hot pink and they had a wonderful fragrance. If you have noticed that the roses today are not quite as fragrant as in years past you are correct. Although they have come up with different colors and varieties (including a chocolate colored one, lol) they have sacrificed fragrance in the meantime. That is why I was so pleasantly surprised when I was putting these bouquets together at the wonderful aroma they had. The pale pink flower is alstromeria or "peruvian lily". It does not have a fragrance but is so long lasting. It last as long as a carnation.

      She decided to use real flowers on hair combs for the Maid of Honor as well as the bridesmaids. The small pink flowers are waxflower with a delicate scent of its own.

      I also added some waxflower to her bouquet for a little color. The signature I like to use in my wedding work is the heart made of bear grass. I use it in the brides bouquet, grooms boutonniere ( his was a single calla) and, in this case the Mother of the bride and the Mother of the groom. They carried a small bouquet of 3 white roses with a little greenery.

      This is the hair comb the bride will wear with white dendrobium orchids. I love to use these orchids for hair adornments because they are sturdy and long lasting and hold up so well in hot weather.

     Last but not least is the small white rose pin on corsage which all 4 of the garndmothers will receive at the wedding. It amazes me that it is rare to have grandfathers, sometimes even just one, still alive to see their grandchildren wed. We know they are there in spirit. Hope you enjoyed this look into this special wedding.
     Congrats Kim and Matt!

Nautical Wedding Invitation

     Now that I have been to the wedding shower and know everyone has received their invitations I can finally share the process!Becca wanted a nautical theme, not a beach theme so we looked for ships, anchors, and ship's wheels. Thankful Provo Craft has Life's A Beach and I was able to find all that I needed along with Imagine More.
     I presented her with the idea of a pocket type card to hold the reply card, reception and direction cards as well as the main invitation. I found the perfect kit by Wilton called the "String Of Pearls".

     This was a perfect selection for the outside since it had a wonderful crisp white with a nice satin sheen to it.

     This layout was just perfect for what we were looking for. It was very neat and organized and had a nice bead border almost like roping. The nice thing about this is that the template allowed me to change the font color and style so I could really customize these. Her colors are like a navy and a nice fresh green color so they were a very refreshing color to work with.

     Ready for the finished product? Here ya go:

     I started by adding a band of navy satin ribbon. ( My oldest daughter suggested it. Hey ya gotta give credit where it is due, right!).  had found this roping at A.C. Moore in the yarn section. It has a nice satin sheen to it as well so it was just right for a classy wedding invitation. The image is from Imagine more and I changed the outer ring color to a more navy color but kept the inner ring and ship the same. This was cut @ 2" but I separated the layers but kept them at relative size so that everything was proportionate. I used a glue dot to secure the rope and image but made sure to bring the rope thru the ring.

     Here's the inside. Tada!!! First I used the Imagine More cart again. I chose the cut and print option and cut a 5"x7" with the same patterned paper as the inner ring of the life preserver. How cool is that? The outer layer is a blue card stock that also has a sheen. I bought that at Michael's from their recollections collection.In order to keep with the nautical theme I cut an anchor from Life's A Beach @ 1.25. Since I had to make 100 invitations I wanted to save some money on this project. There wasn't any silver card stock with the right color I wanted so I went to the canvas section @ M's and found this poster board for $4.00. I just cut it to 12x12 so I had 4+ sheets to work with. (Maybe there will be a lot of silver in my Christmas cards this year!)
     Once everything was printed it tucked neatly into the pocket. The only thing I would do different would be to add a silver compass on the directions card. BTW speaking of directions card. The front has directions to the church and the back has directions to the reception. Rather than buy more cards to use for the back, I cut some card stock the same size,printed the directions and used my ATG gun to glue them together.

   This is how the guests received their invitations. ( even though they were hand stamped, thank USPS for the wrinkled appearance, grrr). Bet you were wondering where the ships wheel I was talking about went to. Here is where it ended up! It is also from Life's A Beach and is also cut at 1.25". The circle behind it is from a circle punch with the leftover scraps from the blue background paper. I'll be posting later where I assembled them, you'll never guess!

The Royal Wedding

      Please indulge me as I remember another "royal" wedding that happened 38 years ago. That's right, 38 years ago on April 28th, Fran and I tied the knot. (He told me this morning that he sent the Queen an email begging her to change the date of Will and Kate's wedding, however he did not receive a response. Hmmmm I wonder why, lol?)
     Let me back up a little. Yesterday, our official "Royal Wedding Anniversary," I returned from work to find this:

      Three dozen roses! (Almost one for every year we've been married!)

     It's a good thing I love working with flowers. I pulled out this beautiful vase we received as a gift from a Swedish foreign exchange student we hosted one year. It is reserved for special occasion flowers!

     Back to the  royal wedding. My dress was simple as well. It was a linen dress,  A lined and had lace on the sleeve caps but a very long train with lace inserts. I also had Stephanotis in my bouquet. It was a dreary morning but by the time we emerged from the church the sun was shining. The only problem we encountered were the May flies swarming around us.
     There are some similarities between the two weddings. First there were hats. Yup, I had a cap style hat with an extra long veil. All the bridesmaids had matching hats as well. Like the Queen, my mom also wore yellow. However mom had a long linen dress with a matching full length coat. It was so classy and she also looked like a million bucks!
     Lastly, Fran and I drove off in his car that said "Just Married' and we had balloons attached. I believe ever woman is a princess on their wedding day and, in their eyes it is a Royal Event. Best of luck to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge may your marriage last as long as ours has.