an archived personal and craft blog from Elise Blaha Cripe.
Until very recently, I was a boxers and t-shirt sort of sleeper. And then I bought a Liberty of London night gown. And then I had my bachelorette party. And now the collection has sort of snowballed.
And I am totally addicted. They are all comfortable as can be and perfect for warm summer nights. And so are our new sheets.
(nightgowns from left to right : unknown, h&m, nordstorm, victoria secret, target & nordstrom.)
A few weeks ago, I shared my practice round of the boutonnieres I will be making for the groomsman & special men at the wedding. This tutorial shares the step-by-step process for making the same flower pins.
Supplies needed : a rose, a piece of ribbon, floral tape, floral wire, a straight pin, three leaves (mine are from a lemon tree, something similar to those shown would work) and some scissors. Mine are floral scissors because next week I will have a lot of stems to cut down. A note on the leaves – you want one decent sized one and two smaller ones. Mine were all a little too big and it made the finished product look a little wonky.
Clean up your rose. Pull of the extra big petals and the green pieces below the bud. Try to make a "perfect" bud shape without removing too many petals.
Poke a few inches of floral wire through the base of the stem. Wrap the wire down the stem to add support and strengthen the bud.
Pick your three leaves.
Secure the first leaf with a piece of floral tape. Wrap the tape around the leave and the base of the bud and work your way down the stem, pulling the tape tightly to get the most adhesive out of it.
Add your remaining two leaves so they are both pointing out – making a "V" in the front of the rosebud. It might help to wrap each one with its own piece of floral tape. This will give you more control over the position it stays in.
I trimmed the bottom of the front leaves to make them a bit narrower at the base. This helped relieve some of the bulk under the floral tape.
After each leaf was secured in place, I went down the stem again, this time going higher up on the bud and the leaves to help everything stay tucked in and in shape.
Wrap a piece of ribbon from the top down and secure with a straight pin. Be sure to push the pin up through the stem of the flower and not out the back side.
I am going to make 10 of these next Friday morning and store in a Ziplock bag in the fridge overnight. It's only going to work for me to do them because I am not worried about them being perfect. If I was, I would be going through a real florist for sure.
Nine days!
Sorry for the quiet time, I think I'm recovering from the weekend + the lack of sleep the past two weeks. I woke up with a terrible headache this morning that I am still trying to coax away.
I do have a bit more wedding goodness, including a boutonniere tutorial, to share. So I promise I'll be back in the next few days. And speaking of days … there are just 10 until the wedding.
I spent the weekend in Palm Desert with my girlfriends. They are insanely cool. Multiple times during the weekend I wanted to pinch myself. Other times I wanted to cry from laughing so hard. This was the first big meeting of some of my college friends and my high school friends. I am thrilled it went so well. I am glad they are all basically entertainers and could make each other laugh. They laughed like dolphins, you could say.
The first night, we went out to probably the only club in Palm Desert. I know this because there were at least three other bachelorette parties in attendance. Saturday we spent the morning at the saltwater pool playing the question game and then Saturday afternoon we practiced wedding hair. (Did anyone get wedding hair photos?)
Saturday we went to a chop chop place with a rad, but fast-moving, chef. And then we got back and talked and talked and talked (while obsessively playing words with friends … with each other.)
It's hard to put a finger on why friendships work. I never understand, but will be forever grateful, for the ability to just pick right back up where you left off. I am blessed with great friends. And I was so happy to spend the past weekend doing nothing but loving them.
Seven girlfriends and I are celebrating my bachelorette-hood in Palm Desert this weekend. I packed three swimsuits, five dresses, four pairs of shoes and one bottle of sunscreen.
(pink card from kate spade)
Thanks for your sweet comments on my "she & he" post yesterday. Those words were supposed to accompany the photos in this post. But horrible weather this past week (by horrible I mean fifties, rainy and windy) meant that we weren't able to get these shots until last night.
I want to take an interesting photo of us every month and pair it with a few "she & he" thoughts. I use interesting loosely. The definition here is : "any photo that I'm not just holding the camera and pointing it at a mirror or back at us." This project is inspired by Tara, who is taking a photo of her family of six monthly and blogging about what going on in each of their lives.
I want to pair up the photos and the thoughts into a simple book. Probably a square Kolo album like this. April seems like as good of time as any to start. We officially become a family this month.
The ampersand is from Anthropologie. The fence is from our backyard. The smile on P's face is from who knows where. He was such a good and patient sport as I balanced the camera on a watering can.
PS : I think the word family can be used loosely too. This project would be fun to do with self portraits. Or photos of friends.
She checks three weather forecasts each day. Lately, none tell her what she wants to hear.
He drives an hour each way to Travis so they can stay together (and rent free!) for the month.
She drives to the post office every other day. He's not sure where the post office is.
She's obsessed with "words with friends" for the iPhone. He beat her by a landslide in their first game.
She practices writing her new name on the wall of the shower. He would laugh if he knew.
They watch Lost, V, Fringe & Castle together. Because it's important to the other, they also keep up with South Park and Dancing with the Stars. (Yep, they know that's too much TV.)
Last week, they picked up a marriage license, finalized a menu and met with their pastor.
This week, they got his suit tailored, and came up with a seating chart.
Next week, there will be no more wedding projects to do. Oh, except the flowers. She keeps forgetting about the flowers.
And the week after that? They'll be married.
AND continuing the "no surprise left behind for the wedding guests week" – Our place cards!
I bought place cards last summer at Paper Source and figured eventually I'd come up with a way to decorate them. After reading a bunch of posts on Japanese washi tape here last month, I thought of a solution.
We are serving three different options of entrees : chicken, steak and veggie. I needed a quick way to delineate for the servers which guest gets what. Enter colored tape. One color for each dish. I wrapped a piece of tape around the front of 165 cards yesterday and am going to start writing the names on the front and numbers on the back today.
Like every other DIY project I've got in the air for this wedding, the goal for these is to "keep it simple" & "fit the color scheme."
I practiced a flower boutonniere the other night. It was surprisingly easy. Those leaves? They are lemon leaves picked from a tree at Paul's parents house. The ribbon is what will be wrapped around the bouquets & I think it adds just enough color. I'm making ten of these the day before for the groomsman, P, our dad's and my grandpa.
PS : I know it's becoming all wedding all the time around here. It's consuming my time and craft projects this month. Thanks for hanging in there with me. xo.
Summer mini book kits : now in the shop.
All of my ordered pieces arrived today and I put my own book together. I am breaking the summer into four months (I think summer starts in May) and will be adding photos and ephemera into the book rings. This year I promise to keep up with it and share the results here.
I backed the month pages with patterned paper and added a scrap of ribbon with a staple to serve as little tabs.
Right now, outside my window it's horribly gray, rainy and windy. But if I learned one thing from the East Coast Blizzard of 2010 it's that bad weather does come to an end. I can't wait for blue skies and bright colors.
enJOY it 