One of my favourite thing to do (and I have no idea why!) is to hand sew bunting! Metres and metres of the stuff! I love the Country Fete look when it is strewn all over the place. There is something really therapeutic about sitting in front of the telly with lots of squares or triangles and making them into lovely decorations to hang around the house or to decorate a wedding, christening or birthday party.
When I got married, we had a proper traditional English wedding in this church....
With this view....
So I decided that I wanted to have a real village fete style to my reception.
I wanted lovely wild flowers like lavender, rosemary, hydrangea, freesia, sweet peas, roses. Not in proper arrangements, just simply put in old glass jars and vases and scattered with no pattern all around the room. I did the same with candles in lots of different coloured glass containers. My local charity shop loved me - I absolutely cleaned them out of their glass ware!
I wanted butterflies - on everything! I hand punched butterfly confetti using an old book of love poems, I had little feather butterflies in my bouquet (which I designed myself), butterflies on the invitations (which Paul and I designed, printed and hand tied with pink ribbon ourselves!) in the church, in the flowers, on the buttoneires. I designed my own cake, complete with butterflies! I even got up early on the morning of the wedding to make little butterfly hair grips for my hair!
And to complete the look, I wanted handmade bunting to go around all of the tables. I spent months. Seriously. Months. Hand sewing 100 metres of bunting! But, it was so worth it! The end look was amazing. I was so pleased when I saw the finished hall with all of my hundreds of hours of designing, sewing, printing, punching, arranging.... the whole thing was beautiful. Because everything was handmade, our wedding hardly cost us anything but we got so many comments about how nice all the decorations were and a lot of people said it was the nicest wedding they'd been to!
More recently, I designed some personalised bunting for my gorgeous little Nephew Charlie for his christening which was on Valentines Day. I decided to go with a heart theme and appliqued a heart to the square on either end and then I did little hanging fabric hearts to hang on the ends. I appliqued his name and zig-zagged all around the edges in lovely red thread. I also bought some little red heart buttons for some extra detail but in the end I thought it looked better without. I got loads of comments on this one at the christening.
I've been thinking about my Etsy store a lot lately, I haven't put anything in it for a long time, I kind of gave up! But I'm thinking (as per the list) that I'll give it a second chance - this time selling stuff I really enjoy making - like my bunting and confetti. I think I will also add a shop page to my blog so people can buy straight from me if they want to. I really love doing the personalised bunting. My friend is getting married this summer (her new name is going to be Lavender - isn't that gorgeous?) so I think I'm going to do one for her in all different shades of lavender and hang some little hand tied lavender bouquets on either end.
So, to get myself back into practice, I was thinking I might do a little giveaway on here! Watch this space for details!
Oh, I love your blog. SO funny the 'littles" (that's the name I give to the children I watch) and I watched your cartoon today. It was so cute and made me think of you.
ReplyDeleteMy daughter loves butterflies. She got married in Estes Park, Colorado on the top of a mountain. We had to take big SUV's to even get there. I was sure we would all need chiropractors after the trip up and down. It was a very simple wedding. The chapel was tiny and the view was the Continental Divide. Anyway my daughter ordered butterflies to release at the wedding. They came a couple of days before the date. We had to keep them cool so the A/C was turned way down. After the wedding we all released our butterflies. A few took off but others just stayed put until they warmed up. The funniest thing happened, ONE butterfly attached himself to my daughters flowers. He stayed there all through the pictures and then some. As we were leaving the mountain top he suddenly attached himself to her neck. I just had to tell you this story since butterflies were such a big part of your wedding.
Your entire wedding was made so special by you and your Paul. How nice everything turned out with your attention to all details. I am looking forward to you adding to the Etsy shop.
ReplyDeleteYour wedding looked gorgeous :) How lovely! I love butterflies too, I think it's all the pretty colours, and the gentle flying about that we all love?
ReplyDeleteHave you ever tried listing your handmade items on DaWanda? I don't know if you've heard of it, but it's kind of the European equivalent of Etsy? I'm going to try and list there this week (I keep saying this but never get round to it!) I don't think they have so much competition as you do on Etsy, but there's still loads of customers. Oh, and it's FREE to list.... There is a slightly bigger end fee, but as it's free to list, it still works out cheaper..
Have a great weekend:)
oh, i so love your wedding and your cake and especially your bunting! It is beautiful and you are from England! Wow! I was there years ago and loved it.
ReplyDelete"We" are mother/daughter team from Minnesota (my Kat and me!). We are only a couple months old and would love to have you come and visit our new blog.
http://katsuijewelry.blogspot.com
We really aren't all about our jewelry, though we are busy with jewelry for a fair right now. Mostly about our life and loves!
Suz
I'm obsessed with bunting lately so this post is right up my alley :) Your wedding looks gorgeous!
ReplyDelete