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Adventures in Crafting crafting, DIY, flags, Joana, Seattle, Wedding

Hello Adventure Fans,

Thanks for having me back on this delightfully hot DIY day here in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. In honor of the recent passing of the most Patriotic of all holidays, I thought I might dedicate this post to all things FLAG.  Indubitably becoming a regular on the DIY wedding scene, flags are one of the easiest, least expensive and most varied ways to deck out any number of soirees. Check out these examples on one of my regular stops for wedding inspiration, the lovely Once Wed . And here are a few I’ve created for parties in the past.

This is a strand of simple felt triangles, all cut the same size, sewn together (either by machine or hand) until the desired length is reached. I love how simple, geometric and modern these are.  Felt is a wonder fabric- so easy to work  with and looks surprisingly great in any season.

Here is another very simple strand I made for my parents 40th anniversary party last summer. I know there a bit hard to see here, but I used a variety of scrap fabric in blues, greens and yellows. They are cut in various shapes and sizes- rectangles, triangles, squares and flowers- and then sewn with invisible thread in a random order.  The only trick with using most patterned cotton fabric is that you will need to cut two sides for each piece and lay them back-to-back so that the flags look colorful from every angle.

These mini flags are so simple to create and can be used in adorning nearly everything! I mean just look at how they make this simple jar look fabulous! I made these with thick gross grain ribbon (so they would not fray when cut), a glue stick and small dowels I stumbled across in the baking aisle at my local grocery store. I am envisioning these in cupcakes or sticking a few in a pot of blooming succulents. They would also make great drink stirrers (perhaps with a longer, thinner dowel) or even stuck in the lawn as aisle runners (again, a longer dowel and perhaps wider ribbon might work best).

So, what do you think? Are you a Flag Fan? While I haven’t yet figured out how to incorporate them into our wedding, there is no doubt that some sort of flag fantastic-ness (Yes, I know it’s not a word. But it should be!) will make an apperance.  Happy Flag Making!

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Adventures in Crafting Crafts, DIY, Joana, Seattle, Wedding

Well Hello Adventure Lovers,

What a lovely day for crafting, no? My name is Joana and I am thrilled to be joining the clever and talented roster of bloggers here at the Adventure School! I am a bride to be on a quest to create a homemade wedding. Every Friday I will be here sharing my triumphs and defeats (yep, all you fellow crafters out there know about those) to inspire and delight you.  So, without further ado…

Save the Dates 101. Yay!

My partner in all things non-criminal (aka the husband to be) and I wanted to use our Save the Dates to give our guests a little sneak peak into our wedding. Most notably, the unique location- a real live working Alpaca Ranch! But how and with what would we craft these silly little cards left me a bit stumped at first.  So what did I do? I turned to the world wide web for some instant inspiration.  Once I stumbled upon beauties like these , these and these, and took a visit to a local fabric store, we were set to begin. I won’t bore you with all the little steps (please comment if you’d like me to write up a “how to” and send it to you), but here are the results:

Stamping & Drinking- a VERY important component to DIY is to always include a favorite bevy.

We designed a stamp with all of our info & had it made by these guys. Then we carefully hand stamped mail tags and added a gold string (pictured below) for some added glitz.

The fiancé drew an alpaca, scanned the image and used our home printer to print onto  transfer paper. Next I  ironed the image onto canvas (aka the Mr. T of fabrics) and sewed each one to its own little burlap pocket.

The back of each pocket had a different vintage floral fabric.  Fun!

And that’s it.  What do you think? We like them and we didn’t receive any hate mail after sending them out, so I guess they were a hit (or at least okay). See you all next week! And Happy Crafting!