Fluffy Letters Tutorial!

Well, I've survived Christmas, and I'm only slightly traumatized. If I ever start blogging about my family, you all would understand. I suppose I just have to mention "family" and many of you are already nodding your heads...or banging them against the wall. Just me? Ok, then.

So, I'm back to wedding crafting and I still think it's about the best thing I can do with my time. Surprised? Me neither.

I love monograms. I see them all over weddings nowadays. Like these from Martha:


And, of course, I love these fabric poms:


I wanted to combine these two loves into ruffley monograms. I managed to do so, although I'm not sure that I'm madly in love with the results. I wanted to be madly in love with the results, but these things happen.


These ruffled letters are certainly cute enough to make their way onto a dessert table or a guest book table, where they will happily show off their ruffleosity and announce that this is, indeed, Chris and Kerissa's wedding.

For this project you will need:
* Wooden letters (I purchased mine at Michael's. They were painted white, which helped because I knew I would be covering them in a cream colored fabric, so they would blend well. They are approx. six inches tall.)
* Fabric (I used inexpensive cotton)
* Hot glue/gun
* Circle Cutter (Optional)
* Scissors

Here are the letters pre-fluffiness:


I knew that the fabric ruffles had to be short enough that you would still be able to tell that it was a "K" at the end of the project. So, I took my circle cutter and cut out a one-inch circle out of paper to use as my template. You could certainly freehand this as the circles do not have to be perfect.


Then, I cut some inexpensive cotton into a zillion teensy circles.


Next, I put a dot of hot glue in the center of the circle like so (but hopefully with a hand that was more steady than mine when I took this blurry photo):


and stuck it to the letter.

Repeat 50-hundred times. :)

To give it the ruffled look, I stuck each circle up tight to the one before so that it would fold the edges of the other circle up in random spots.




Sometimes the cat helps. But she looks irritated when you explain to her that she cannot nestle in that fabric. See the look?


Here are my tips, also known as "what I would do differently next time":

(1) I ruffled the whole letter. This probably isn't necessary but I thought perhaps I would hang them, so I wanted ruffles all around. However, I think I liked the less cluttered look of the letter when only the front was ruffled, like this:


The fabric was able to hang over the side and look gently ruffled. But, then I ruffled the sides and it looked like this, which I wasn't as thrilled with:


(2) So, if you do want to ruffle the whole thing, I learned that it is best to start with the back and sides first. I ended up flipping the "C" over and using the back as the front (thank goodness it was a symmetrical letter!) and making the ruffles a tad less crowded on that side. As you can see, I had perfected my ability to use a little less fabric and make it a little less ruffly by the time I got to the "K."


(3) I also trimmed the edges of the ruffles in the center of the letter to make sure that the edges were still defined and the "K" was identifiable, instead of a ruffled blob. :)

I do love me some ruffles!

These are the smallest letters I've purchased, so some ginormous monograms are certain to follow.

OCD, anyone?

Ok, so I might be a little crazy. Hey, I said "might!" Last week (yes, 10.5 months before my wedding) I met with the venue to discuss tablecloth colors. Yes, I did. Angie at the Alexis Hotel is so so great, and she totally tolerates my insanity. I brought all my fabric flowers to lay on top of the samples and find the best linen color. (Of course I did.) I've decided on creamy-nude-ish (I need a crayola thesaurus) colored tablecloths with white napkins. The ribbon used for the napkin rings is the same color as the tablecloth, so that should tie everything in together. Angie has graciously offered to put on all of the napkins rings a couple of days in advance! I've started covering the buttons with scraps of fabric from all my other projects. Cute!


The polyester silk fabrics don't cover the buttons as nicely as some of the others, but don't tell anyone and I'm certain they won't notice! I'll have a mix of all the different fabrics I'm using, which will be extra cute - and free since they are scraps I would be throwing away anyway.

I also have quite a few more fabric poms now. And the prettiest piece of milk glass you've ever seen, which my aunt found hidden at a Good Will for $7! Drool. I think I saw that one for $30 on ebay (and I almost bought it for that ridiculous price)!


I had another craft night, so I had lots of help with these! My friends are so great and so genuinely excited to help me accomplish all my wedding crafts. I have a confession, however. I wish I could say I was one of those 'go with the flow' types, but, well, I'm just not. No, really - not at all. So, I did spend quite some time tinkering with the projects after my friends left to make them just so. I'm admitting that I'm super picky and it might be a problem (that's the first step, right?).

I need to take some more photos as I have over 150 yo-yos made from dupioni silk and about 15 silk flowers done as well. I'm getting a little concerned, however, as I really really need to spend some more time focusing on finishing these crafts up so that I can move onto designing logos and having letterpress plates made. My awesome designer friend Agnes played with my L Letterpress tool at craft night. Here are some of the cards she made.


I'll need to work on making sure that the edges don't show up in the image, but Boxcar Press has some excellent suggestions for this. I will be using Boxcar Press for my custom made plates, and if it weren't for their post on how to make the L Letterpress work well, I'd be very discouraged right now, but they've done such a comprehensive review of the product and how to improve it, I'm really excited to go to town and letterpress the logo on everything!

Because I can't focus on and finish anything I've started (ah, ADD), I've also started a project using these:


But I will reserve a post on that for the future, and if it turns out well, it may be the subject of a guest blog post! No, I swear I'm not making that up! I'm so so so so excited that our photographer, Abbey Hepner, has asked me to guest blog on the new segment of her blog that she is starting called CREATE. She talks about it here. Have I mentioned that I'm excited about this!? And that I love Abbey!? (Just checking.) And how cute is my fiance - when I told him (in my ridiculously giddy "GUESS WHAT!" voice) about the guest blog, he replied: "Wow! That's great!," followed (in a slightly less excited tone) with: "What does that mean?" I love that even though he had no idea what I was talking about, he was still genuinely excited for me. :)

Kerissa Likes Crafting

I adore my friends and family! Last night, 8 of us gathered to eat pizza, drink fizzy white wine from Trader Joe's (so good!), and make wedding crafts! Between us all, we managed to make 3 fabric ruffly delicious pom poms. (Doesn't sound like much work, but it took at least 3 yards of fabric, which had to be cut into 4 inch circles and then individually glued onto tiny chinese lanterns! I never could have done anything close to that amount of work in one night by myself!) I'm not exactly sure what I'm going to do with the poms at the wedding just yet, but I love them so much! Maybe as chair markers for Chris and me, or perhaps as hanging backdrop behind the dessert table. Here's a photo - they still need their ribbon, but that part's easy!



And for fun - one more:



I definitely could not have done it without my aunt, who picked up and baked the pizzas before I even got home for work, and had everything all set up. She also made me this ridiculously adorable champagne cake for dessert!



There was champagne in the cake itself, and also a champagne/powdered sugar glaze. It was worth all the lactose intolerant pain I may endure as a result of eating it, but so far, so good! :) (You can also see my "slight" addiction to wedding magazines in the background of that photo.)

We also made a number of fabric silky flowers, although I need to sew them together before I take a photo. Oh, and so far, I've made 50 fabric yo-yos from dupioni silk. It's moving right along - now I just have to keep up the pace!

What a productive evening! I love to see the crafts all coming together with still more than a year until the wedding!

It's only the beginning...

And I already have a zillion ideas for our wedding, stemming from years of helping all my amazing friends plan their weddings (or at least that's my excuse for being in love with all things wedding). The fiance is, in his own words, a "big picture guy," which means I pretty much have free reign over the decor (as if there was any question about that). Here are some of the lovely, charming things I'm currently obsessing over (all pilfered from other amazing wedding blogs, of course).

Fabric pom-poms are so gorgeous. I just want to smother them to death. Weird, I know - we all have our issues, right? Ever since I saw them here (and by the way, as a lawyer lacking in creative outlets at my job, I want to BE her) I have been obsessed. Imagine the squealing noise I made when I found this tutorial on Once Wed. There are tiny Chinese lanterns under all those fabric ruffles. Um, brilliant! I never would have come up with that. But, now that I know the trick, I can whip these up in a snap, and I can't wait to start! (Granted, I'm guaranteed to burn my fingers with the hot glue gun - I've done it so many times, I'm pretty sure that's just an inevitable part of the process.) I see a trip to the fabric store in my near future. Also, a severe lack of sleep, but who needs sleep when they can peer through blurry eyes at pretty? Not me!

I also want to try my hand at making both of the following fabric flowers. Someone come over and check on me if you don't hear from me for a while...I may have been buried by a bolt of fabric! Hmm...or don't - I wouldn't mind being buried in fabric right about now.

Fabric Yo Yos can be found here on Style Me Pretty (project by Posh Paperie).



And another lovely flower project can be found here - thank you 100 Layer Cake!
I think I'm in heaven.