Diecut Machines FTW

I mentioned earlier that Grace has a Cricut machine, right? Well she also has a Sizzix. I think if I had known about these tool earlier my brain would have exploded from all the DIY ideas. So in a way it was a blessing I didn’t find out until later this summer.

Fortunately now I’m knee-deep in school work and I don’t have time to think about all the cute flowers, borders and embossing I can do. (Sigh.) One cool thing I did get around to was using up the odd scraps of wrapping paper I’ve kept since the third grade. I tore up a really dog-eared Webster pocket dictionary and a trashy romance novel and cut flowers out of them. I attached the flowers to branches I’ve been collecting basically ever since Tamon proposed to me.

And I made these really cute bridesmaid and parents-of-the-bride responsibility cards. I actually took some diecuts of an orchid and painted them to look like wedding dresses (I’ve always wanted to be a fashion designer). And I attached sheets of vellum printed with the responsibilities with cute little gold star studs.

I can’t guarantee Tamon’s going to make them so nice for his groomsmen. 😉

We Made a Tree

So one night, I was thinking about the wedding (this was shortly after I finished the nest egg box) and I thought, What if we had a place card tree? I mean a tree with all the place cards (shaped like hearts) pinned on there? And when guests arrive they just look for their names and pluck their card off the tree?

It would look so cute with our little house box.

I figured I would have a really hard time justifying this to Tamon. So I just did it. It wasn’t easy. First of all, I had to design a tree I could actually make and that could actually hold a lot of place cards pinned to it. Okay, so I went with a round topiary type tree in a pot. I figured I just needed: a round Styrofoam, moss, a branch (for the trunk) and a ceramic pot.

FYI Styrofoam balls are ridiculously expensive. Plus they didn’t come in the large size I needed (I figured I needed at least a 2-foot diameter ball). I think I could get like a half sphere for around $60 if I special ordered it. Okay so I nixed the idea of Styrofoam.

Then I came up with the idea to paper maiche. Looked at balloons. Round ones are 36 inches. Too big. So I bought a beach ball. Yes, a beach ball.

The moss was actually the most expensive part of this project. I recommend shopping around. I bought moss sheets off of Amazon. I think they would have been cheaper at Joanns after using a coupon. Also you can always buy brown moss and paint it the shade you want. You can get a huge bag of Spanish moss at a garden and hardware store for around $10 I think and then paint it. Hehe, I guess since this project was really whimsical I wished I hadn’t spent so much money on it.

I looked up some instructions online on how to paper maiche a beach ball. There was a good one for building a Yoshi head. It recommended that you cover the ball in plastic so the paper maiche doesn’t stick to the ball. I concocted a brew of paper maiche glue (out of flour and water) and recruited my childhood friend Grace to help me.

Four hours later we birthed a ball!

We got a chuckle out of Tamon when he came across it drying next to the front door. It is super bulbous and cute.

This project was the most structurally challenging one thus far (although I haven’t built the bridal bouquet yet or finished my bridal hairpiece). I had to engineer the pieces together. First I had to cut open the paper maiche coating to retrieve the beach ball (which wouldn’t deflate). Then since the paper maiche didn’t make for very strong shape plus it was heavy I couldn’t really use a branch anymore. The branch would make it too top heavy to stay upright. Instead I purchased a poster mailing tube from the FedEx store. I cut the pieces down to size and duck-taped the crap out of it. The base of the tube didn’t fit in the ceramic pot so I had sacrifice one of my mesh trash cans. Then I glued and glued the moss all over the paper maiche. I had to fill in the gaps with Spanish moss. The end result didn’t look too shabby. The proportion of the tree and the house is definitely off though.

Now I found out Grace owns a Cricut machine. So I can cut out the place cards in the shape of flowers. How cute would that be?