Category Archives: crafts

Màiri Rose’s Floral Crown- a tutorial

(that one above is one of my all-time favorite pictures)

I loved the idea of Màiri wearing flowers in her hair. My preference would have been for fresh flowers, but since we were doing our own flowers, I didn’t want to add in another last minute project. I was kind of inspired by the shapes of ’50′s style half hats (also sometimes called half bonnets and probably other terms I don’t know). But I didn’t want to go too-too far with it and have it be overwhelming. So I kind of blended that look with a traditional flower girl halo. As it was, I finished it and smiled because it was exactly what I had envisioned. Then I placed it on her head and was shocked at how visually over-whelming it was on a little 4 year old head! But I got used to it and over-all, I think it turned out pretty sweet.

I considered using a Juliet Cap frame or something of that sort, but couldn’t find any locally and eventually decided it was cheaper and easier to make the frame myself.

My apologies for the picture quality. They get progressively worse as the project goes on! Something about hot-gooey glue and trying to juggle a camera.

How to Make a Floral Crown:

You will need…

2 lengths of 18 gauge cloth covered wire

fine gauge floral wire

floral tape

scissors

a hot glue gun

felt (preferably wool)

fake flowers, berries and leaves of your choice

ribbon (optional)

a comb (around 3″-clear or in a color to match the recipient’s hair)

hand sewing needle

thread to match the felt

Determine where you want the frame to sit. Take 2 lengths of 18 gauge cloth covered wire and twist the ends together at the appropriate place. Make the wire in the back slightly shorter so that it conforms to the head. Try it on to make sure that everything lands where you want it to.
Weave thin gauge floral wire back and forth through the frame. Wrap any extra around the end. Trim the ends of the frame.

Optional: You don’t have to have ribbon ties, but I wanted them and I think it’s nice to have the extra element to secure it. If you want ties, pass the ribbon through the ends of the frame and double knot securely now.

Wrap the ends well, ribbon, wire and all, with floral tape.
Cut a length of felt (wool works best) approximately the length of the frame and slightly wider then the widest point. Wrap around and glue using a hot glue gun, trimming excess as you go. It will not wrap all the way around in the middle, that’s ok.
Cut the stems off of the flowers and berries, leaving a flat base. Begin gluing them to your frame- I started with some leaves on the ends, that I knew I would want to layer flowers over and around. Then start in the middle and glue in flower buds as clumps or three or four, nice and close together so that none of the frame shows through.

Optional, but recommended: cut another strip of felt to cover anything that was left exposed on the inside of the frame.

Hand sew a comb to the underside of the frame.

ta-da! All done. The only thing I would have done differently is to set the comb further back on the frame. It bothered me that from certain angles it showed a bit.
As you can see, she got a little wild and crazy at the reception! But the headband had amazing staying power and didn’t even shift.

Many of the photos above (the good ones!) are by the lovely and talented Dawn Joseph.

By Melody

July 25, 2013

celebrations and festivals, crafts, Kids, tutorials, wedding

3 Replies

doily table runner and other pretty things

There were candles everywhere. I emptied out my cabinets and the pantry of jars in every shape and size and filled them all with ivory candles. Jam jars, honey jars, canning jars, vases, whatever I could get my hands on.

The candle holders on the table were made in the style of faux mercury glass, only in gold instead of silver. Steve sprayed the insides a bit with plain water, then a coat of metallic gold spray paint and left them upside down to dry. It gives a neat, uneven crackly sort of effect. With a candle lit inside it creates such a wonderful warm glow. He also spray painted all of the cream colored vases that show up in various pictures. All of the spray painted items were five to twenty cent yard sale finds.

I wish I had more photos of the table runner. I guess I could actually go and takes some, but that seems like an awful lot of trouble. The contrast of the shades of white, cream and ecru over the dark cherry finish of my sewing table was just lovely. I started from the middle and worked my way out because I had a particular piece that I wanted to be the center. I pinned on a few at a time, overlapping them a bit and sewing them on the machine with a straight stitch and matching thread. Normally when you sew lace you used a zig-zag stitch because it blends better, but for whatever reason the straight stitch worked much better for this. For stability I tried to make sure that each doily was connected at least two points. It was a very quick, fun, free-form sort of project.

All the photos above are by the lovely and talented Dawn Joseph.

By Melody

July 1, 2013

celebrations and festivals, crafts, pretty things, sewing, tutorials, wedding

3 Replies

ribbon wand tutorial

Supplies:

3/8″ dowels – a 3′ dowel will make 3 wands, a 4′ four wands, etc.

brass hooks- the kind that you can screw into things

a handsaw

pliers

sandpaper

ribbons: in a variety of widths, no greater then 5/8″ wide

optional:

ric rac, lace trim, pom pom trim

We made these wands for people to wave at the end of the ceremony. The ceremony was supposed to take place in the garden, but an unexpected rain storm drove us inside at the last minute. Instead we took shelter on the porch, which is rather small and didn’t leave much room for waving. But it mostly worked out. And Iain Irish Danced us back down the aisle with some in hand. The wands were a big hit with the kids and wildly popular with pretty much everyone on the dance floor. I think they would be a lot of fun for a kids party or just for dress ups and creative movement type play. We’re planning on breaking out our collection for people to borrow for May Day next year.

For ours I used three different ribbons, all satin; a 1/4″ light blue, 3/8″ darker blue and 5/8″ sage green. You can use any combination of colors, widths or textures and mix in other kinds of trims. I think they are much prettier and more interesting with a bit of variety, all of one kind of ribbon would be a little dull.

How to:

Cut your dowels into 12″ lengths. Sand well. We made all of the edges on ours curved. At this point we also polished ours with beeswax polish, but that’s entirely optional.

Carefully screw the hooks into one end.

Cut your ribbon to approximately 68″ lengths (somewhere around 5 1/2′)

Layer 4 or so ribbons on top of each other. Depending on the width of the ribbons used, you might want more or less. Fold them in half lengthwise. Poke the folded edge through the hook to create a loop. Pull all the ends of the ribbons up through the loop and tighten.

Using pliers, pinch the brass hook completely closed.

Dance around and enjoy!

By Melody

June 26, 2013

celebrations and festivals, crafts, tutorials, wedding

3 Replies

flower girl bag tutorial

I wasn’t going to bother with flowers for Màiri, but when she heard that all of the other girls were going to have some, she didn’t want to be left out!

While looking at other floral supplies, I came across these bags. I hadn’t really seen anything like that before and I thought they were kind of a cute idea. Rather then buy the $27 bag, I bought a plain, $3 one and embellished it myself.

I do not have pictures of the process, but it was fairly straight forward.

I used a bit of unbleached muslin that I had laying around for the skirt. First I measured from the top edge of the basket to the fold for the bottom. Then I measured around the edge of the basket. I multiplied the second number by 2.5.

1st measurement by 2nd measurement x 2.5 is the size you need to cut your fabric.

You can finish the edges if you like. The unfinished edges really appealed to me for whatever reason, so I just left them.

Fold the fabric in half, right sides together, lining up the short edges. Stitch the short edges together.

Run a gathering stitch along the top and gather evenly to fit the top edge of the basket. Pin it to the basket and stitch in place. I used a zig-zag stitch for this.

At this point you can do whatever else you like to decorate it. I used a strip of 3/4″ cotton lace, that I had leftover from Màiri’s blessing gown. I sewed it over the top edge of the skirt. Then a used a little scrap of Alençon lace from my gown as an applique to cover where the lace trim was joined. The whole thing took around 15 minutes.

To fill it, I found that a milk carton was the perfect size, so I cut the bottom off an old one and cleaned it (obviously). Then I cut a chunk of floral foam to fit neatly inside. Once the foam had been soaked, I simply stuck spray roses into somewhat randomly. I really only wanted to use the peach roses, but we had so many of the other ones with short stems, leftover from bouquet making, that it just made sense to use both.

It was a little heavy because of the water saturated foam, but the Wee Miss thought it was great. And now she uses the bag to hold all of her hair ties and things.

All photographs by the lovely and talented Dawn Joseph.

By Melody

June 14, 2013

celebrations and festivals, crafts, Kids, sewing, tutorials, wedding

2 Replies

the flowers

THE pictures are here. I’ve decided to kind of unveil the details slowly, craft project by craft project, in the same sort of the way that the day itself came together…

Flowers! Lovely, lovely flowers. From the very beginning I really wanted lush floral arrangements (you can find some of my floral inspiration here). I had planned on making them mostly with flowers from our own garden, but between needing to go with an earlier date to accommodate various schedules and very late and cold spring, I knew there wouldn’t be enough options. Besides, with the ceremony and pictures happening outside I didn’t want to strip the gardens bare.

After a good deal of research, I decided to order from Potomac Floral Wholesale Inc because as far as on-line wholesalers go, they had a very large selection and small minimum orders, which meant I could get a little of several things, instead of having to devote our entire budget to a lot of one variety of flower.

To make up my bouquet, three small bouquets for my mother and sisters, an arrangement for Màiri and two large arrangements for the tables, I purchased;

12 stems of ‘Romantic Antike’ Garden Roses

20 stems of Girlie Folies Peach Spray Roses

20 stems of Ilse Spray Roses

10 stems of White Lilac

4 stems of White Hydrangea

and

10 stems of Hypericum Berries- I had wanted peach, but they were out of stock and I believe they substituted pink.

We supplemented this with bleeding heart, herbs and maple leaves from our garden. Galen filled jars and vases with dandelions, which were placed randomly around the house (his idea) and seemed very “us” so we went with it.

My sister and I put everything together two days before and keep them cool on the porch and under the house, since the fridge was overflowing with food and cake (more on that later!). We made everything except for the floral crown (4th pic down).

Some helpful resources for DIY wedding/vow renewal/really any special occasion flowers:

How to Do Your Own Wedding Flowers

How to Make a Wedding Bouquet

DIY: Spray Rose Bouquet

How to Make a Wild Flower Mart Wedding Bouquet

All photographs, with the exception of the top two are by the lovely and talented Dawn Joseph.

By Melody

June 12, 2013

celebrations and festivals, crafts, Gardens, wedding

3 Replies

tea party for a four year old…

Writing about The Wee Girl’s birthday sweater made me think of the birthday party I never posted about. She wanted a tea party and gingerbread and to invite “lots of people”. When specifically asked, “lots of people” amounted to Steve, Iain, Elijah, Galen, Pop-pop, Me-Mom, Aunt Tina, Aunt Rachel and myself. We managed to round up eight out of nine, which was more then enough to keep her happy.

The dress she’s wearing is this one. Which just barely fit her then and doesn’t at all fit her now. I can’t believe how much older she looks a mere 5 months later.

For her crown a made three little roses from this pattern and sewed them all to a strip of green fold over elastic.

The hanging decoration was a day-of, off-the-cuff invention. I stripped all of the greenery from the grapevine wreath base I had twisted together for our advent wreath and replace it with long bits of ribbon and lace and suspended it from the ceiling. It’s hanging in their playroom now where it always makes me think of May Poles and springtime.

By Melody

June 4, 2013

celebrations and festivals, crafts, Kids, sewing

success!

By Melody

April 14, 2013

crafts, Food, wedding

4 Replies

practice cake, take 2

Yes, I practiced decorating a mug. The kids each got their own hunk of marzipan to fool around with. Can you see Galen in the background in that last picture? You can almost hear him thinking, “come on Women! Enough with the pictures, bring on the cake!”

This time (for a good laugh and a peek at last time click here) things went much, much better. I decided that the wisest course would be to abandon the fondant entirely and go a different way. I’m really quite pleased with how it turned out.

Only one little problem…after about 20 minutes or so the icing started slowly slipping off the cake. I think the chocolate coating underneath may be too slick? I did forget to brush it with something sticky first to help it adhere. Any fabulous cake decorating gurus out there with ideas on how to prevent this from happening in the future?

By Melody

April 4, 2013

crafts, Food, wedding

4 Replies

Perhaps

you would like an explanation for the craziness of my last post? There is a reasonable one, I swear. Did anyone figure it out?

First a little story. Steve and I have been planning to have a wedding since, well since we got married, but didn’t actually have a wedding…I remember us being in jeans and stopping in somewhere to sign some papers, on our way to somewhere else and not much more. Two years ago we picked a time frame (this May). Last year an actual date. I started making myself a gown. Then when I got ill this past autumn into winter, everything got put on hold. When I started getting better we decided to go on with our plans, with a couple of alterations. For example, I decided to be easy on myself and order a gown rather then making one. I finally decided on and ordered one back in February. And it was just last week, with less then two months to go, that I found out that my custom dress was not actually coming. I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement, and so, I’m back to making my own…in a much more stressful situation then it would have been if I had just decided to stick with that plan all along. Such is life.

For something like this you really need to get the fit just so. The catch being that it’s very difficult to fit something to yourself.