Cherish Paperie » diy wedding

What To DIY For Weddings – And What Not To

Danielle — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:25:46 +0000

We have a lot of brides tell us after they've ordered their invitations and wedding stationery and assembled them themselves that they would have much rather paid a little extra to have us assemble their stationery for them. Not only was it time consuming, but many enlisted the help of family and friends who didn't quite have the same vision of perfection like our brides. With this information we thought we'd compile a list of what we thought were great for what to DIY for weddings and what we should leave to the professionals!

What To DIY For Weddings - And What Not To

What to DIY - Wedding Planning/Coordination What NOT to DIY - Day of Wedding Coordination

Why? Planning your big day can be a huge task but if you don't have the budget for a wedding planner I highly suggest investing in a day-of planner. This will not only save you and your family unnecessary stress, it'll also cost you a fraction of what a full wedding planner costs. Plus what bride doesn't want full control of all of the details up until the last minute. Then you can give complete control to your day-of planner so you can relish in the fabulousness that is your day!

What to DIY - Cake Topper What NOT to DIY - Cake

Why? While you might be the best baker in your family or circle of friends, baking your own cake is a huge undertaking. Stick to the simpler construction of some cute DIY cake toppers! You can keep the personalized touch and tie the cake in to the theme of your wedding. Better yet, opt for cupcakes if you're looking to cut corners on the budget!

What to DIY - Cupcake Stand(s) What NOT to DIY - Cupcakes

Why? Just like the cake, please know that having you or a family member/friend baking the day before or days before the big day will not save anyone time or money and will lead to more frustration! Show your creative flair by creating a one of a kind cupcake stand to wow the guests and make your cupcakes shine.

What to DIY - Seating Charts and Guest Books What NOT to DIY - Invitations and Wedding Stationery

Why? Printing, assembling, and addressing invitations and creating your own wedding stationery can sometimes end up costing you more than you expected. Specialty cardstock can be pricey as can envelopes and if you don't have the right printer or cutting tools you can be left with a pile of smudged, misshapen paper. By investing in a stationery designer and printer and having everything assembled you can reduce the stress and enjoy gorgeous invitations for everyone to cherish. Still want to DIY some stationery? Put your time and effort into an awesome seating chart! There are so many amazing ideas out there and you're sure to have more time creating a great work of art if you don't have to take care of all of the stationery. And there are so many wonderful alternatives for guest books out there. Most are easily re-created by a DIY bride to fit their wedding.

What to DIY - Dance Lessons What NOT to DIY - DJ & Emcee

While I cherished my dance lessons with my husband, there are so many other ways to learn out there that'll save you a bit of money. YouTube video tutorials, friends, and family can help you out with that first dance. But one thing I couldn't skimp on or turn to an iPod or laptop for would be a DJ. Not only can the emcee make or break your wedding reception, a live person is really needed to feel the crowd and get your guests moving!

What did you DIY for your wedding?

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DIY Wedding Maps {My Rock, Paper, Scissors Tutorial}

Danielle — Wed, 02 May 2012 05:33:56 +0000

Have you seen those gorgeous maps on the wedding invites of your friends and family? Did you get a quote on what it'd cost to have one designed and just can't afford it? Why not make one yourself! That's what I did back when I got married and I loved the way it turned out. This tutorial from My Rock, Paper, Scissors is not only simple to use but it's exactly what I did in 2007 when I designed my own map. In 10 easy steps you will have designed a map that's perfect for any occasion.

DIY Wedding Maps Tutorial

1. Google Map the area around your event site(s). 2. Determine the scale and the level of details you want to include in your map. In my case, the wedding couple only wanted to show the ceremony and reception sites. So I zoomed close enough in the map to include just these 2 locations. 3. Once you are at the right scale, do a print screen. (There should be a PrtScn or PrtSc button on your keyboard. If you only want to capture the window with the map, but not the junk on your deskstop, click on the map to make it the current active window, then press Alt-PrtScn.) 4. Open up a blank presentation in Microsoft PowerPoint. 5. Paste (Ctrl-v) the screen capture on the blank presentation. 6. Crop and size the image to approximately how you want the final product to look. Don’t worry if some of the scaling is off. No one has to know. 7. You should now have an idea of how detailed you want the map to be. For a wedding map, you probably just want to highlight the major highways or main streets, plus a few finer details (e.g. parking) around the wedding sites. There are 2 ways to add highways and main streets:

If they’re straight, use a Line;
If they’re curvy, use Autoshape –> Lines –> Curve. To create curves that follow the turns on the roads, try click on the vertex on each turn. This will create a series of pivot points (Fig. 1) that will help curve the line as you trace the rest of the road. Double click to end the tracing.

8. After the highways/main streets are done, you can start to add more details (eg. street names, ceremony and reception location, etc.). If you have out of town guests, consider adding one or two landmarks close-by to help them navigate. But don’t clutter the map with information irrelevant to the occasion. They will distract guests from finding their way to your event (Fig. 2).

9. To make key event sites stand out, try to highlight them with interesting icons or clip arts. In case you’re wondering, PowerPoint actually does an adequate job on searching for suitable clip arts when provided with the right keyword (ie. birthday, wedding, party, parking, etc.)

If parking is separated from the event site, you may want to include it in the map too (Fig. 3)

10. To match the map to your party colors/theme, try formatting selected drawn objects on the slide. You can do so by right-clicking on the object and going to the Format menu.

11. Once you’re done detailing the map, remove the Google map backdrop. Group all drawings together (i.e. Select them all, right-click, Grouping –> Group) before saving the picture. Now you’re ready to insert a homemade map in your party invitation!

Don't have the time to do it yourself?

While Cherish Paperie is designing your invitations, we'd be more than happy to design a custom map for you as well! And remember these important tips when creating your map. Check out weddingmapper.com and have their software do it for you! Or create your map on mapfling.com and just publish the URL of your map on your invite for others to view on their own.

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Alternatives to the Traditional Guest Book {Ideas and Inspiration}

Danielle — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 22:01:00 +0000

A few decades back a guest book at a wedding was simply a place where guests signed their names documenting their attendance. Nowadays guest books are a lot more clever and a great way to create a memento from your special day. Here are a few great ideas for different guest books to make your memories stand out. From simple DIY to more intricate ideas, we've got four great ways to make your guest book a keepsake to remember. Photo Booth Allow your guests to get creative and have fun with a photo booth. Guests take pictures of themselves with, or without, props and some photo booths even allow guests to write messages to the happy couple. Ask guests to include a copy of their pictures and a note in a photo book you leave on the side of the photo booth. For inspiration check out this real wedding over on Martha Stewart Weddings.

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Thumb Prints Leave an ink pad and a tree on a large piece of paper and have your guests fill in the leaves with their finger prints. Have them sign on or under their print to have a personalized guest book you can frame and display in your home. You can find pre-made thumb print trees on Etsy if you don't want to create one yourself.

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Photo Book Turn your engagement photos into a photo book by using one of the many photo processing sites such as Shutterfly, Costco.com, Mpix, etc. Or find a local photo development company to do it for you. Leave room on each page for guests to leave their sentiments. Or get creative and have guests give specific advice about certain things on every few pages. And if you are receiving professional engagements photos from a photographer make sure to ask them if they have any great sources for photo books. Odds are they already work with a company for weddings!

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Mini Envelope We first saw this book over on Emmaline Bride and had to go over and check it out for ourselves. Elegantly Bound has a custom envelope guest book where each guest takes a notecard out of an attached envelope and writes their greeting. They then put it back in the envelope and are done! At the end of your wedding day you can go and look in each envelope to see what everyone has said! How creative is that?

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Whatever you decide, your guest book should be an item that you are able to treasure forever!

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QR Codes as RSVP Cards {Ideas and Inspiration}

Danielle — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 14:58:00 +0000

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Do you want to plan a more green and environmentally friendly wedding? Or are you looking for a way to pinch pennies and save money? Well we've got the thing for you! Instead of using post cards or envelopes and notes for your RSVP cards why not use a QR code? Just about everyone nowadays, including your grandmother, has a smartphone and by scanning the QR code your guests will be able to go to a form and fill out a simple yes or no questionere. Here's how!

1. Deciding where you want to send your guests to
You can send your guests to just about any website. If you already have a wedding website with an RSVP feature why not choose that page to send them to? Do you have a blog for your wedding with an RSVP page? Go there! Or create a simple RSVP survey on sites like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang. There's even a website dedicated to collecting your RSVPs for you and will even give you a QR code to use here.

2. Creating the QR code
The QR code can direct people to your wedding website website, blog or a survey page. To create your QR code you just use a QR code generator, like this one, and save the QR code picture to your desktop. You can also track the amount of "hits" you get from your QR code by following this tutorial.

3. Printing your invitations
When deciding on a design for your invitations you can easily incorporate your QR code in them. Simply place them on the back of the invitation if you are using a simple square invite. Or include them on the back of your map card with a cute note saying to turn it around. Just make sure to tell your invitation designer that you want to use a QR code and they can help you find the perfect spot for it.

Other ways of incorporating a QR code into your wedding:

Add it to your save the dates and have it link to your wedding website
Include it in baby shower invites as a link to your registry or website
Make sure your vendors know exactly when and where to be somewhere by adding it to your day-of timeline and create a spreadsheet for each vendor.
Place it in your wedding programs with a link to the songs or list of attendants
Put it on the back of your thank you cards with a link to your wedding photos

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Glow Jars {Intimate Weddings DIY Tutorial}

Danielle — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 14:51:00 +0000

Aren’t these glow jars sublime? We found the tutorial over on Intimate Weddings. They take about two minutes to make and cost only 20 cents a piece. How’s that for an enticing DIY project? These would look amazing at an evening outdoor wedding. Line walkways with them, or place them on tables. Or you could easily use them as decorations for Halloween. Line the pathway to your home for an eerily beautiful look.

You could also use glow-in-the-dark paints to make the glowing effect last a bit longer. Or different shaped glass jars to change things up. All in all this is a very simple DIY project that most any adult could do. And the results are fantastic! Sure to impress any guests and leave them wondering how you did it.

Make sure to check out Intimate Wedding's DIY Wedding section on their website. They have some great ideas on ways for you to add those personal touches to your special day.

DIY Glow Jars Tutorial

For each glow jar you will need:

a jar
two Glow Sticks (check out your local 99 cent store)
scissors
rubber gloves
safety glasses

Disclaimer: This is a project meant to be done by an adult – not a child!

Purchase Glow Sticks and dig a jar out of your cupboard.

Grab two glow sticks and cut at one end. Make sure they are inside the jar when you cut them. I used rubber gloves because I didn’t want to get the glowing liquid on my hands.

Shake each glow stick while holding inside jar until contents are empty. You will notice little pieces of what looks like plastic along with the liquid. One reader said this is actually glass, so be careful. You will dump these out later.

Head to your garbage and dump out the little pieces of plastic. Swirl liquid around the jar.

That’s it. You’re done! Go and find a dark place and enjoy the glow! (Note: These will glow for about an hour.)

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Fonts and Images {DIY Inspiration & Information}

Danielle — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 13:59:00 +0000

Customers always ask us where we get our graphics and fonts and if can they purchase them from us. Unfortunately, no, we do not own the license to resell them. But we did want to share a few of our favorite resources for font and graphics to use for your DIY projects. Below you will find links to blogs and websites where you can find free and inexpensive fonts and images. There are also a vast number of other blogs and websites out there who also provide free fonts so if you know of any comment here to let us know!

Where to find free and/or inexpensive fonts:
Scrap N Fonts (there's also a blog!)
DaFont.com
Fonts For Peas
Clipart.com

Where to find free and/or inexpensive images:
Microsoft
Vector Stock

Where to purchase fonts:
MyFonts
Veer

Where to purchase images:
Fotolia
Shutterstock
iStockphoto

Another great tip:
We often use fonts and font dingbats for some of the graphics shown on our most popular designs. For instance, our "Bodoni Swirls" design (see photo above) uses a dingbat (glyph) found in the font Bodoni Ornaments. And some of my favorite calligraphy swirls and space fillers are from the glyphs found in Bickham Script.

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Paper Scraps and Crafts {Party Ideas and Decoration Inspiration}

Danielle — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:44:00 +0000

We always have tons of paper and ribbon scraps leftover from all out jobs, so I have often tried to think of project for getting rid of them in an effort to stay green and recycle or upcycle... here are a few ideas I thought I could share with you!

These potted paper flowers we found at Hostess with the Mostess would make the perfect centerpiece for your next birthday party. I'm actually considering using a similar design for my daughter's baptism reception. They're so eye catching and beautiful. And you can really make the design match any theme or color combination you choose.

I love the idea of homemade wrapping paper. It's just so much more personalized than the stuff you buy at the store. So when I saw these adorable map bows on How About Orange I knew I could try my hand at them with the paper scraps we have laying around as well. Wouldn't this look amazing on top of that perfect gift?

And how gorgeous are these flowers we found at lushlee? They'd be great just laid out on a tablescape like confetti. Or used to accent a napkin ring at a table setting.

These cute hearts also found at lushlee could serve as Valentine's Day decorations or you could use them at another event celebrating love.

Paper garland is so simple and easy to make. And there are so many different variations (as shown on Oh Baby!'s blog). These would be great for a bridal or baby shower. You could even use them for a children or adult's birthday party. They'd work well for themed parties such as Cinco De Mayo festivities and St. Patrick's Day celebrations. You just match the colors to the theme and start stapling, taping or gluing away!

DIY ribbon pomanders are a fabulous idea we found at Project Wedding for the DIY bride. They're a great alternative to flower pomanders for your flower girls to carry down the aisle. They'd also make great aisle or pew decorations as well and you would be able to make them ahead of time.

We found inspiration in paper flowers from Pepper Design Blog. Paper flowers are always a great alternative to real flowers and bridal and baby showers. And they're great for more than one reason. You don't have to buy them within a certain time frame since they keep forever and you don't have to water them! You can find DIY instructions on how to make your own flowers here on the Martha Stewart website.

If you're interested in more paper flower ideas check out these whimsical paper flowers by Emmaline Bride. They are all so very cute and really inspire us to think outside the box the next time we see those bits of scraps left over from our next project. What are your favorite ways to reuse scraps?

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Fun DIY Fans {Ideas and Information}

Danielle — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 22:43:00 +0000

I get a lot of questions from customers about how they can "liven" up their DIY fans. Here are a few suggestions:

Adding a fun brad or eyelet
You can find these at your local scrapbook store and at places like Michaels and JoAnn craft stores. The eyelets we use for our custom fans are most similar to the fabric ones because we buy them in bulk, but any of the fun ones work great too!
I definitely recommend a Crop-o-dile as the easiest way of setting the eyelets - this is a great tool that punches the hole and crimps the eyelet and it can be found almost everywhere, Wal-mart or Amazon, to your local scrapbook store (hint: you barely need to press the handles to crimp the eyelet, to hold the fan together with this machine...too hard and the petals will not turn)

Playing with fonts and graphics
You can find some cool FREE fonts: http://www.dafont.com/ or you can purchase some nicer ones: http://www.veer.com/products/fonts/ or http://new.myfonts.com/
Find FREE graphics http://www.vectorstock.com/home/ or you can purchase graphics: http://www.fotolia.com/ or http://www.istockphoto.com

Adding embellishments
Adding rhinestones, charms or different color ribbon will give your program a different look and is the easiest way to match your program to the rest of your wedding. Ebay is a great place to find these embellishments and is quite inexpensive for bulk items.

By using these tools to transform your programs you will be able to personalize and create the perfect program. Your guests will appreciate seeing some of your personality in them as well. And remember to have fun!

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