40 short days from now I will be changing my last name to Ging and I could not be more excited. I don't know if I'm more excited to marry the love of my life, or if I'm more excited to show off my entire DIY Wedding..... I love you Weston..
Truly I am more excited to marry my fiance, but I have been having the BEST time creating all of these aspects of my wedding. Of course little girls dream about how they want their weddings to look, but I get the joy of actually creating mine.
Our invitations went out a couple weeks ago, and the RSVPs are rolling in.
Here's a look at how I pulled off our invitations
The first thing I did was design the actual invitation on Vistaprint. You can create invitations on hundreds of printing websites, but I like Vistaprint the best and I think they have the best pricing too.
Our wedding is going to be a very elegant garden themed wedding as best we can pull off in a ballroom. The invitations reflect that chic look with a touch of greenery, nothing too overbearing.
I then purchased a package of white cheese cloth and Rit fabric dye to create the wrap itself. I tried dying the cheese cloth two different ways.
1. I dyed the cheesecloth prior to cutting
2. I cut the cheese cloth into 4"x10" strips and then dyed them.
I prefer the second option but you can do either. Follow the directions on the Rit bottles to get the color you desire. After the cloth is done soaking, rinse with warm water until water runs clear. Hang to dry for at least an hour.
The video shows the next steps.
1. Have a bowl of ice and lay your stamper in it with a paper towel near by.
2. Lay your cheese cloth
3. Place your invitation on top
4. Place a small piece of wax paper in the center of the invitation
5. Take both ends of the cheese cloth to meet at the middle of the invitation. I slightly twist the ends to give them a nice tapering towards the center.
6. Place your leaf on top of the cheese cloth
7. Use your hot glue gun wax and place your desired amount on top of the leaf/cheese cloth. I found that one and a half 'squeezes' was perfect for me.
8. Take your stamper and place on the paper towel to remove excess water
9. Carefully stamp the center of the poured wax and push with desired pressure. The more pressure the more your layered materials will show through, the less pressure the less defined the edges of your stamp will show.
10. If your stamp is quite cold, you should only have to wait about 10 seconds before removing it from the seal. This should give you a perfect release with no residue left on the stamp.
11. Wait at least a minute before removing the wax paper.
Steps explained:
- The wax paper is to make sure there is a barrier between the wax and the invitation. Without the wax paper the seal would stick to the invitation and ruin it when people your guests go to remove the wrap.
- The icy cold seal works in that as soon as it touches the poured wax, it starts cooling it. When the seal is hot from absorbing multiple presses, the wax does not want to separate from it. This then causes the wax to get stuck in the seal crevices and you will never have a clean removal. (I got QUITE aggravated at this before I learned the ice trick)
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, I know I did!
(PS if you got an invitation, get your RSVP in!)