DIY #12~ Bouquets for $16.00!

One of the biggest items on my budget was my bouquets. 


Well I don't want anything extravagant, my only true requirement was pink daisies. :) 


When I went to Dollar Tree to pick up the flowers for my centerpieces I found that they had a ton of daisies that looked  as good as the ones at Hobby Lobby for a fraction of the price. $1 per bush! I bought 5 bushes~ 3 of them were all pink and the other two were white, pink, and red. (tossed the red)


I removed all the flowers from the "bushes" by cutting the wires at the bases. Next I  removed the leaves and had a fantastic pile of flowers. 


I bent the stems near the top to make the flowers arch over and then gathered them in my hand and arranged them that way. 


When I had them the way I liked them I wrapped rubber bands around them to keep them in place. 


Next I used some more floral tape and wrapped it all around the stems to keep them together. 


I finished them each off with some navy blue ribbon that I had laying around. And ta-da! Done!

Toss Bouquet

MOH Bouquet

Edit: I edited this! Had a change of heart about the bouquets last weekend and decided to redo them. I made both of these a little bigger and then redid my bouquet for another $6. 

Here's my new updated bouquet!

DIY #11~ Signature Mat Pens and vase

I'm going to use a signature mat in lieu of a guest book. I hate the idea of having a book that will just sit in a box or a drawer and never looked at again. 


I picked up a photo mat at Hobby Lobby during one of their sales for a little less than $2.00. (I'll get it all worked up and posted at some point in my life.)


I had to do something cute with the pens for the mat and this was a super easy craft!

I picked up some ink pens from Dollar General ($1 for 10), some floral tape at Hobby Lobby ($1.99) and used the left over flowers that I had from my card box.


I hot glued the pen to the flower just to hold it in place and wrapped the floral tape all around the pen and the flower stem. 

Easy as pie! 


Next, I thought... well I need to make a "vase" to put these in! I've been saving jars for the past couple of months, thinking I might have a use for them. Score! I used some more scrapbook paper and wrapped a jar with it. Then I hot glued some ribbon around the neck and TA-DA! 

DIY #10~ Tears of Joy Packets!

This is another cute one that I've seen all over TheKnot.com... yes it's a little corny, but I like it none the less. They are little packets to put tissues in for the ceremony. I don't have tissues in mine yet.. because they are going to be packed away until August, but it'll be easy to slip a couple of tissues in each packet when it's time. 

I got the instructions from this site:  http://www.projectwedding.com/wedding-ideas/diy-wedding-challenge-tears-of-joy-packets

It was really easy to do, and the more I did, the faster I was able to work. Great project during my downtime for sure. :)

I made 15 of them (very small guest list, and I doubt everyone will be a "crier".) 

It feels great to have so much done already!

Total cost: $2.59 (5 sheets of hot pink cardstock scrapbook paper!)

DIY #9 Wedding color books!

We are going to have a lot of kids at the wedding... and I want to make sure that they are entertained and can have a lot of fun too. 

I've seen a lot of posts on the knot about wedding coloring books on TheKnot.com and knew I just had to make some. 

I picked out the pictures that are listed below (google is my friend!), printed them off as 3 x 5 pictures. Then stacked them and hole punched the top and finished off with some curling ribbon! I edited the front page with a photo editing program to add our names and a title. 

Blocked out the names because... well, this IS the internet. 

I'm going to get some little boxes of crayons to add to the basket and put these on the kids table. :) 

http://www.supercoloring.com/image_print.php?img_src=http://www.supercoloring.com/wp-content/original/2009_07/Precious-moments-wedding-coloring-page.jpg

http://www.supercoloring.com/image_print.php?img_src=http://www.supercoloring.com/wp-content/original/2009_07/Precious-moemtns-girls-coloring-page.jpg

http://parenting.leehansen.com/downloads/coloring/wedding/wedding-cake.htm

http://www.fantasyjr.com/love-coloring-pages/

http://www.clipartandcrafts.com/coloring/parties/pages/wedding-ido.htm

http://parenting.leehansen.com/downloads/coloring/wedding/just-married-car1.htm

DIY #5- # 8! Bride Necklace, MOH Necklace, flower girl necklaces, flower for my hair

This weekends project was fairly easy and super duper cheap. Whoot whoot! First, I made 4 necklaces for $11. I bought a $9 package of glass pearls from Wal-Mart and a $2 roll of "fishing wire". I don't know what it's actually called, but it's the transparent beading wire. For my MOH necklace I used some glass pearls I already had. Strung them on the string and voila! Done in no time. (Like 10 minutes, but I like to bead in my spare time anyway.) I added an extender that I had laying around in my jewelry box so she can adjust the length, but I'm sure you can pick those up at craft stores too. 

The flower girl necklaces are pink and blue glass pearls from the package that I picked up. I figured why not? They match the wedding colors and it saved me from buying more pearls. I had the girls try them on tonight and they look great! The girls are soooo excited to get to wear them in the wedding. 

My necklace was a little harder. I used ALL of the white pearls that were in the wal-mart package, as well as a few (maybe 15?) small pearls I had in my craft box. I tied three strings to a jump hook on one end and just starting adding beads. The bottom string is about 7 inches long, the second is 6 inches long and the third is 5.5 inches long. For the bottom I used the largest beads, for the second I used large beads on the outsides (10 on each side) and then used the next size down, and on the third I used 1 large pearl, 7 medium sized on each side and then the tiny ones. I'm really happy with the end it turned out. It took me ALL day to make it the way I wanted it, but I'm pleased. I also added an extender to that one so I can adjust the length. 

When I went to David's Bridal and found THE PERFECT DRESS the lovely sales lady had me also put on a veil. I pushed back, I don't need a veil, I'm not wearing one... "But it's your wedding day and it's the only day you'll get to wear one and you'll feel like a bride and blah blah blah". So, I gave in. She brought me a really pretty simple, ribbon edged one layer veil and this pretty flower for my hair. She put them on me and I feel in love instantly. I knew I had to have them at that point. 


So, that night I came home and looked online... well the veil was $150 and the flower was $90! $90 #?*!ing dollars for a FLOWER. No way, no how, not gonna happen. 


Well, I hit up Hobby Lobby last week and picked up a simple veil for $9.99 (plus it was half off because of their sale so I spent $5!) It is ribbon edged, but two layers, So I sat down with my scissors and very carefully cut off the top layer. I love the simplicity of it now. 

Now for the flower, I had every intention to make a flower. I figured I would spend about $5 on it, no biggie right? 


Well, I was walking around Family Dollar Friday night picking up a few things and I saw these flower barrettes in the corner. Sure enough, they had a white one, it was huge and on a pony tail holder but it was also on clearance for 75 cents! So I brought that bad boy home, cut off the two bottom layers, hot glued it to an alligator hair clip and Ta- Da! My 75 cent hair flower. 

So far, I've spent a grand total of $165.75 on this wedding and I have my veil, hair flower, jewelry, flower girl baskets, card box, serving set, garters, aisle runner, photo mat, and cake topper... and my $100 deposit on my venue. Let's see what I can come up with next weekend shall we?

(kinda) DIY #3 and #4: Serving Set and Flower Girl Buckets!

Hobby Lobby had a fanstastic 50% off Bridal Blowout Sale last week, and they are continuing it this week too! But, don't worry if you miss out, just keep an eye on their ad's or use one of their 40% coupons for the things you need! 

I took full advantage of it and picked up a few things for real real cheap. Included in that was my cake serving set! $5! 

I used some more of my ribbons from my garters and made a pile of bows and had some run with my glue gun attaching them to the serving set and the buckets below. :) 

 The buckets were also picked up on my Hobby Lobby shopping trip! These are considered stationary, so look in the card area, mine were on a display in the middle of an aisle at my store.  $1.49 a piece. Oh yeah! :) They are just little metal buckets and I added some bows to the sides in Navy Blue and Hot Pink. Still using that garter ribbon I bought! 

 They will be just perfect for my little flower girls. 

I also went dress shopping last weekend with my maid of honor and the "paparazzi" as I called one of my other best friends. We were at David's Bridal for a grand total of 30 minutes. I tried on two dresses and fell in love with the second. My MOH did the same, we tried two and the second was perfect!  I'm not going to post pics of the dress I picked because I don't want to take a chance of my G.I. seeing it before then, but here's the one we found her:

In Navy Blue of course. :-D. It's still early so we didn't go with any intention of buying yet, just basically to see what we like and to figure out dress sizes. So, I'll be stalking ebay for quite a while to see if I can find some deals. (I just can't really justify $500 worth of dresses for the two of us.)


Ok, that's all for now! More DIY'ing coming along this weekend. Going to try to make my MOH and Flower Girl necklaces. 

DIY #2 Store Bought Embellished Wedding Garters

Garters were one of my first DIY ideas and I spent a lot of time searching online for information on how to make them. I was set until I hit the craft store. While walking around looking for cheap fabric, lace, elastic, and decorations I had at least $20 worth of stuff in my cart and I didn't know how they would turn out!


I put everything away and walked away from the whole idea, thinking I would just be better off doing store bought. 


Later on, I was roaming around Dollar Tree and found plain white garters. They had kind of goofy looking white bows on them, which I figured would be easy to remove (they were just hot glued on!) and gave me a good foundation to work with. ($2 total!)


I headed down to good ole Wal-Mart and picked up two rolls of satin ribbon ($1.97 each!) in hot pink and navy blue and went back to Hobby Lobby to get some charms to add. The charms were 50% off so I ended up spending $2.24 total on those. 


I sat down today and made four little bows with my ribbon, sewed each set together and then added the charms to the front. When they were complete I hot glued them onto my cheapy garters and VIOLA! Personalized fun garters for $8.18! Plus I have left over ribbon to use on future projects. 


The picture may be a little hard to see, but the charm on the toss garter says LOVE and the one on the keep garter says I DO. I'm so happy with the way they turned out. Can't wait to start on my next project! My card box! Stay tuned. :)