Sunday Funday

Next month, two of my very good friends are getting married. It is going to be a very small (just 20ish people) and rather casual ceremony at a lake in California's wine country. I am delighted that they've asked me to help take care of some of the details, like the decorations and the food -- two things I love to take care of!

As everyone is traveling to get there (bride and groom included), we're aiming to keep things simple. They've rented a bungalow and the idea is to gather loved ones and to celebrate amidst the beauty of the natural surroundings. I'm told that the bungalow itself is such a lovely place, that we really won't need to do much to make it feel beautiful and festive.

The three of us (bride, groom, and myself) set up a Pinterest board so that we could share ideas and inspirations. Pinterest has always seemed a bit intimidating and overwhelming to me, but for this purpose, it's been fantastic! We shared some ideas for decorations, and came up with one that we liked -- simple flowers that we could make together whilst sitting by the lake. The idea came from here -- but rather than paper, we're going to use fabric. That way, they can be taken home by the guests as favors, and they might hold up to weather and travel better than paper would. I'm thinking it'd be fun, too, to attach some smaller ones to barrettes or bobby pins for any ladies who might want to decorate themselves as well.

Once we nailed that down, we needed to figure out the colors. We'd spoken about them, and I had a pretty good idea of what they had in mind, but I kind of wanted to see swatches. I was envisioning Pantone chips, or paint sample cards, but didn't know how to do that online. Silly me, I soon learned that pinning regular old images that utilize the desired colors is a much more dynamic way of getting the whole picture. I asked for color pins and this is what I got:



Fantastically helpful, right? I also loved that I could view all of this on my phone as I was shopping, and this is what I came home with:



Add to that some fabrics that I already had in my stash, as well as some hoarded vintage trim, and buttons:



For the process, I pretty much followed the how-to, but had to make some adjustments for the fabric.
I decided it would be better if the fabric were stiffer -- thus holding shape a little more. Luckily, I had fabric stiffener; I'd gotten it YEEEEEEARS ago for some project and it had been taking up space ever since - woohoo for using up supplies!

I made some petal templates and then used embroidery hoops as templates for some simple round circles. (Embroidery hoops make GREAT templates for tracing and cutting circles -- I've used this trick so many times!)



Cut out the shapes and painted them with the fabric stiffener. Allowed petals to dry flat (lifting them off the cookie-sheet work surface a few times during drying so they wouldn't stick) and put circles on top of inverted bowls to give them a little bit of shape.



And then put the flowers together with wire and floral tape.



Et voila:



I'm happy with these! I think we'll add some colors and shapes and textures, but this is how I wanted to start -- getting a feel for the project and knowing that I have the right supplies and technique before getting out there.



The flowers can be as simple or as fancy as one wants, so it'll be a good project for a few friends and family members sitting around a table whiling away some lazy hours by the lake in the days before the ceremony, right?

See the original inspiration/project here, on the blog Oh Happy Day (pretty sure I found this via Decor8) and if you'd like to try these and have any questions about the process I used, feel free to get in touch!