DIY: Studded Candles

You can easily customize your candles with the wonderful assortment of Scrapbooking Brads. Use the directions below or just design on your own. Add a personal touch to your table with decorated candles.

Materials:
Candles Making
Scrapbooking Brads
Single Hole Punch

Steps:
-First you will need to print out a spreadsheet with ½” size square boxes covering the entire page, or use graph paper, or free hand your design on plain paper.
-Cut the paper to size so it fits the same height as the candle and will wrap one time around.
-Use a Hole Punch to make 1/16” holes in the paper where the lines from the spreadsheet intersect, forming a pattern, or where the lines of your design should be.
- Wrap the paper around the candle and fasten with tape.
-Stick brads through the punched holes in the paper, inserting them ¾ of the way in.
-When you are finished placing all the brads, carefully tear away paper and push the brads the rest of the way in.

This would also look great for a DIY Unity Candle or just as decor or favors.
Found at the Save-On-Crafts Website

DIY: Paper Bag Luminarias

Creating Paper Bag Luminarias (Adapted From: Holiday Decorating For Dummies)

Traditionally, luminarias are made of votive candles set in paper bags weighted with sand and placed in rows along walkways, driveways, and even rooftops. You can use them in new ways, however, to light paths, a mantel, or a staircase. Because they're so simple to make, you can use them as projects for children. Light up your nights for the holidays by making some luminarias for your home and customizing them for a specific holiday.

You can decorate, punch, or cut designs from lunch-size paper bags to make holiday luminarias quickly and easily. Use bags in holiday colors (you can find them at party supply stores) to give your luminarias a holiday look. For instant decorating — no embellishments required — use the preprinted themed bags that are often used for holding goodies.

Place one to two inches of sand in the bottom of each paper bag. Nestle a tealight or votive candle into the center of the sand. When you're ready to use your luminaria, just light the wick of the tealight or candle.

Stamping, stenciling, or drawing designs
You can customize plain bags by stamping, stenciling, or drawing designs on them with craft paint or markers. Stencil stars for the Fourth of July, or stamp shamrocks for St. Patrick's Day. A simple drawing of a jack-o'-lantern for Halloween or a stenciled Star of David for a dusk celebration can provide a beautiful way to welcome guests and make any occasion special.

For a simple way to make a luminaria with a complex design, use a computer to print clip art in black ink on plain copy paper. Trim the copy to fit just inside one side of the plain brown bag, and then glue or tape it into place. When you light the luminaria, the black lines of the design show up on the outside of the bag. With this little trick, you can quickly make luminarias that look as if you spent lots of artistic energy on them.

Try to find designs that look like silhouettes or are completely black: They show up better when the luminaria is illuminated.

Perforating designs
When you perforate outlines of designs in your paper bag luminaria, bright pinpricks of light shine through the paper. Perforating outlines of designs in paper is easy. Just follow these steps:
1. Place several layers of folded newspaper on a cutting board.
2. Tape your paper bag, with the bottom flap unfolded, to the newspaper with pieces of masking tape or removable tape.
3. Take a thumbtack and prick evenly spaced holes along the outline of the design, making sure you prick through both layers of the bag.

Cutting out designs
Cutting small designs out of the paper bag will allow a little more light to shine through your luminaria. But remember, when you cut more paper from the bag, you also allow more wind in, making the candle flame more likely to go out.
When cutting out designs, use shapes that are 1 to 1-1/2 inches in size. Anything larger will weaken the structure of the bag, making it more likely to sag.

1. Place several layers of folded newspaper on a cutting board. Tape your paper bag, with the bottom flap unfolded, to the newspaper with masking tape or removable tape.
2. Draw or trace the outline of the design on the bag.
3. Cut out shapes with a craft knife.

If you want to use cookie cutters for patterns or larger motifs, you can use two bags (with one serving as a liner) to give the cut bag strength. This layered effect is very pretty when you use a contrasting colored bag for the inner liner.

Found at the Save-On-Crafts Website

DIY: Custom Aisle Runner

I love the look of these monogrammed aisle runners. Unfortunately, I don't like the prices I find online. But I did find some nice pictures and some ideas from fellow DIYers for making your own.

Custom Aisle Runners

Materials:
- Pre made Aisle Runner. Buy it, or make it yourself too.
- Fabric Paints. Available at almost all craft stores, Walmarts, Kmarts, Target, etc.
- Pre Designed Monogram. Make it yourself or enlist someone to do it for you.
- Printer to print out poster sized monogram, either one large sheet or many 8.5 x 11s.
- Paint Brushes.
- Pencil.
- Paper Towels.
- And from what I hear... Lots of Patience and Time. 2 things I rarely have enough of lol.



Directions:
- Create your monogram using Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, MS Word, PowerPoint, whatever.
- Blow the monogram up to 3 x3 sheets of 8.5 x 11 paper (or whatever size you are using).
- Tape your 9 pages together and tape them to a large flat surface.
- Position your runner over the pages and secure (tape) down.
- Trace the outline with your pencil.
- After the outline is complete, Lay paper towel under the runner before painting to try to ensure the paint doesn't seep through onto your surface.
- Fill in the outline with fabric paint. You may need to use different sized brushes to get the best results.
- After you finish painting, allow to dry, roll back up and get ready for everyone to love it on your big day.

Notes:
For Quotes and Inspiration please visit:
Aisles with Style. They will custom make your runner for anyone who is not into DIY projects, but I found some great inspiration from their site.
Personalized Aisle. She originally posted a DIY Instruction for this, but she has since began taking orders from other brides. Visit her, the top 3 pictures are from her site and she does gorgeous work.
Don't limit yourself to only monograms or names, use quotes, put a quote at one end of the runner with your monogram (if desired) in the middle.
I am thinking of putting our monogram and a quote on ours. I think I'll put the quote in the middle, and our monogram at the top, just a few feet in front of where we will stand.

Other Examples:
These are ones that can be ordered, but may provide some inspiration. The ones above are homemade DIY projects posted by other brides.


My Mood: Surprised

Programs or Fans: Both

These are the programs I was first looking into. Something simple, but can easily be made to fit with our wedding style.



For our time of the year and the possibility of extremely warm weather, we both have decided that we like the idea of making our wedding programs into fans. Which style, I don't yet know, but here are our front runners:

Eyelet Spreading Fans:

I think these are pretty and certainly wouldn't take up much space when not opened. They seem rather formal looking to me, but I suppose that could be turned down a bit. Aylee Bits has a great tutorial and free template download for this style.

Fans on Sticks:

I saw this style first and I still think it is my favorite, might fit our pretty casual wedding more than the last set. I've seen these in all sorts of shapes, sizes, colors, etc., etc. I think I prefer the rectangular, but with rounded corners rather than the sharp squared.

I've found the craft sticks almost everywhere. Although the most common are pretty well just popsicle sticks, I have found many wider ones meant to be fan handles.

My Mood: Energetic

My Marble Magnets

I was bored tonight, so I ran down to our local dollar store and picked up the things I needed for marble magnets and decided to give them a try. It was stupidly easy and cheap. It took more time for me to decide what pictures I wanted to use than it did to put them together.

I bought:

- 4 Packs of 12 magnets at $1.50 each

- I bag of flat bottom marbles at $1.50

- I tube of "Amazing Goop" at $5.50

I made 12 magnets tonight, so it probably cost me at MOST $2.00 for those 12. I still have TONS of glue and flat marbles left. To figure it out, The bag I bought will make 24 sets of 4 magnets, with a couple left over marbles. So that $0.0625 per 4 marbles. The magnets I will try to find cheaper in super bulk for the favors, but using these ones they are $0.50 per 4. And say I use one tube of "Goop" per bag of marbles (although I think by tonight's findings it'll be much more than that) the goop works out to $0.23 per set. So totalled up it would cost me time and $0.7925 per set of favors. But if I find cheaper magnets, that could drop significantly.

Here are the pics of my bored night creations: (Sorry for bad light reflections)

My Mood: Artistic

DIY: Poetry by Any Other Magnetic Word

I have always loved magnetic poetry. I don't own a lot of it unfortunately, but I love it a lot. I was thinking about this while going along my idea of using magnets for our wedding favors. Can be easily personalized for our wedding and also practical. Come on, who ever has enough fridge magnets? But to buy the suckers it is friggen expensive! So I've searched online for DIY instructions, and really only came up with the same ideas I already had. So here it goes:

Materials Needed:
This is really broad.
- Words. Yes, Did I mention broad? Anyway. I suppose you could do anything, cut them out of magazines, print them on plain or sticker paper off your computer, write them on, the possibilities are endless here.
- Magnet Sheet. I've seen instructions where people glue or stick the words onto old fridge magnets that they don't want anymore, others will pick up magnet sheets or magnet strips.
- Glue - that is, if you aren't using sticker paper.

Instructions:
Step 1:
Collect your words.
Step 2:
Stick or Glue them to your magnet. Let Dry.
Step 3:
Cut the magnets to separate your words.
Step 4:
Enjoy. Stick on your fridge (or anything else magnetic), Give as gifts, Whatever.

Simple as that. I found the picture of the fridge in Google Image Search, if it's yours, let me know. I found the close up from DIY Maven on Curbly.com.

My Mood: Mellow

DIY: Bubble Magnets (Marble Magnets)

I have seen these in the stores before, and I never gave them all that much thought until now. I think they are adorable, and thanks to so many great blogs (see list below), I have realized that they are incredibly easy to make, although seemingly time consuming. But I have some crafty friends, a very talented mother, and a mother in law and grandmother in law to be that want to help any way they can. I imagine I could even get Dan to help with the assembly. This seems like it would be fairly inexpensive, even when making sets for guests. I think for very special guests, ie: my parents, his parents, bridal party, and attendants, I will make up different sets that are more tailored to them. I think it would be cute for his parents to get some of his pictures from when he was younger and then some with the two of us for their set. And likewise with myself for my parents. We'll see what happens. I can tend to get right into these kind of crafts. They pass time well and it seems to be something that one could do mindlessly while watching tv or something.

Bubble Magnets:

Materials:
- Flat glass (or plastic if you'd like) accent marbles with one flat side, or cabochons as per Not Martha
The accent marbles I've seen almost everywhere, although I think I'm going to visit my nearest Michael's to get them, since I have a few other items I need from Michael's and a 25% off my total wedding purchase coupon. The cabochons are available at Tap Plastics as per Not Martha.
- Powerful round magnets (also available at Michael's) Size will depend on the size of your marbles or cabochons
- Clear craft glue OR Silicone Sealer (such as made by Crazy Glue Company): Some instruction sites say glue, some say silicone sealer, I'll see what I can find around my area.
- Scissors OR Round Craft Punch in the size of your marbles. I'm going to find the punch because I have so many to make.
- Some people say that they could see the magnet under their picture and it ruined their magnet. If this happens they say to glue down a layer of white cardstock between your picture and magnet. I'll run a test first with my glue and magnets and see what happens. If they don't turn out, I'll use the cardstock and stick the test runs on my own fridge.

Instructions:

Step One: Gather Pictures.
Punch/Cut pics out of magazines or whatever. You may want to use on of your marbles as a guideline to check the picture size first. I plan to print them off in pages off my computer since I need so many of the same.

Step Two: Glue Picture to Marble
Drop a bit of glue/sealer (about the size of a pea) to your picture and squish it to your marble. Squeeze out any excess glue or air bubbles.

Step Three: Glue Picture Marble to Magnet.
Drop a bit of glue/sealer (about the size of a pea) to your magnet and squish it to your marble.

Step Four: Let Dry.
Read the instructions on your glue I suppose, but most sites say an hour, some say overnight. Viola! Finito!



Sites I researched for this project:
Roxy Craft: Patterns that Don't Suck
Not Martha
Little Cabbage
Mormon Chic
Curious Girl
Moon Arts
Jesser.org
Save On Crafts
My Mood: Artistic