My Creative Space: Doily Bunting

When we goccoed CD sleeves on the weekend we also goccoed and stamped on some paper doilies. I am a big fan of the doily. And when I was thinking about decorating the venue for the wedding, I was thinking about it in the 'holy crap I only have two weeks left' way so making some buntings with old paper and doilies and lace (I am still obsessed with lace) seemed like a good idea.
I didn't plan on making anything pink but since the interior of the venue is quite wooden-y (they have nice light wooden panelling all around) I needed a bit of contrast. No muted earthy tones for me! Anyway I like these. And they are all made by me!*

*no husbands were harmed or emasculated during the goccoing of these paper doilies

Quick Tutorial for fans of the doily:


You need:
- paper (scrapbooking paper or old book pages or both)
- paper doilies
- stamps (optional) or gocco print
- bias tape
- lace ribbon 

* Using pinking scissors, cut scrapbook paper and/or vintage book pages to the shape of a bunting flag. The easiest way to do this is to fold the paper in half and cut diagonally across, so you end up with one pointed edge. You can either make all the bunting flags the same size or mix it up by creating different sized ones.
* Optional: Decorate your paper doilies using stamps - OR as we did you can also print or gocco an image onto the doily. We printed the same image used for our invitations, and used a stamp of the Eiffel tower (we got engaged in Paris - it was awkward, because my response was "aren't we already engaged". But that's another story)
* Fold about 10-20 centimetres of the top of each doily down towards the back of the doily, NOT the side you stamped on.  You will sew across the straight stretch of doily created by the fold.
* Set your sewing machine stitch length to 3-4
* Cut about 1,5 to 2 metres of bias tape AND your lace border or ribbon
* Fold the bias tape in half lengthwise, so the two folded edges are on the inside, and place the lace border on top. You can pin if you want to, I didn't (surprise)
* Start top stitching the bias tape and lace border, using a quilting foot if you have one, which gives you a 1/4 inch seam guide. If not, use your regular foot as a seam guide and make sure you sew towards the centre or left border of the bias tape.
* To make bunting, alternate doilies and paper bunting flags and place between the two layers of bias tape. Top stitch.
* Alternate paper bunting flag and doily and place about 20 centimetres apart.

More spaces hot off the press here

Wedding Invitations Gocco!

We had heaps of fun. We had heaps of accidents. Luckily we had heaps of spare cardstock!

I think Goccoing your invites is ace. Once you've got your screen, your colours and your cards, it really doesn't matter how many you print - printing is really the easiest part. The hardest part is getting the designs right, and waiting in between print sessions for the ink to dry.

 Some little bits of advice:

Colour

We wanted to print in black, pink and turquoise so we decided to take a chance and mix the Gocco inks to 

our taste. This worked totally fine - just make sure you use a plate and spatula to properly mix the ink, it is quite sticky.You can apply the mixed ink directly to the screen using the spatula.

Also, make sure you have lots of tissue paper or kitchen towel around. You need to make absolutely sure that you never, ever have any ink on your hands. It is hard to wash off and you will get ink all over your cards.

 Paper

We printed on recycled cardboard. But you can use any kind of cardboard or paper you like! I advise against using shiny-surface paper - the ink won't dry properly and it will look blotchy. Natural card is best as it absorbs the ink nicely.

 Text

The Gocco copes really well with printing all kinds of fonts, but be sure you don't go below 11PT on your design, or it may get a bit blurry.

Cleaning
I think it is impossible to clean Gocco screens. I store them in a zip lock bag in the freezer. If you want to reuse them, you just need to thaw them out a little and they work fine!

My Creative Space

Saturday night at our place - making more place cards! I wasn't ever going to get around to producing 20 mini-quilts... was I. So now I'm glueing lace, tieing lace,  stamping on lace. They all look different.

 Feeling somewhat tired and a bit jittery.

This weekend we are going to hide away at the beach and start goccoing the invitations - I need to get my groove back by then. We have to do 80 invitations (30 for the Aussie wedding, 50 for the German one), 80 CD covers and 80 envelopes. In two languages!

Going to peek at more spaces here

found it!

This is where we are having our wedding - just next to a vegetable patch and a chicken coop!

It's a small pavillion that we can easily fit 30 people into.

I love it.

The Dress

I love these dresses by English Department on Etsy. Not in my tiny price range and not a style I could possibly wear, but I think they're beautiful.

Edit: I also love to read the blog written by the designer, Elizabeth Dye. 

I ordered a dress on Ebay pretty soon after we got engaged - I'd fallen in love with the cut and the plainness of it and I could imagine me wearing it and dressing it up with some vintagey accessories (planning to stick a birdcage on my head etc). The dress did not deliver. It delivered on being pretty and nice and not pricey at all. But the colour was off and it just didn't look right, actually, it didn't make me feel right. I've since kind of revised my words of wisdom on wedding dresses - I am still not at all in favour of spending thousands of dollars on something that makes you look like a piece of cake. I am equally not in favour of spending a lot of money on a dress you'll only wear for 4 hours. But it's got to be the right one - and it's got to make you feel good - so if you're looking online or on Etsy, you need to budget for having the dress you order altered so that it fits perfectly. And you've got to be quite ruthless - if it doesn't work, resell it. 

And, even if you order online - no one should miss out on the fun of trying on cakey dresses (and maybe also getting your awesome and mildly mad sister in law (to be) taking pictures in the changing room).

We went to Brides of Melbourne and at one point I had to hold my nose and lean against the mirror I was laughing so hard. I found most of the dresses horrid and the fabrics all felt nasty and cheap. And of course these dresses are all "custom made" because they are sewn together and constructed in China or Thailand, where it's cheap. I don't like that at all. I found one pretty amazing and affordable dress in a little shop that may just be it - it's a lot more weddingy than I thought I was every going to go, but maybe that's a good thing?

Image credit

Sorry about this, but I have to hijack this space for sharing some of my delirious excitement about my wedding. I looked at some things online and it appears that people spend CRAZY lots of money on their nuptials. Pumpkin-style carriages, wedding coordinators, 5 layers of cake on the bride's head, lavender-coloured bridesmaid dresses - do you want a destination wedding or a home wedding? Have you remembered to hire a private jet for the grapes from France that will be flown to Melbourne and turned into wine that will spell out your groom's name when spilled? I say it works for some people and I would really love to attend a wedding like that, but for me.... no.

So we have come to the conclusion: we will have an outside wedding in the midst of winter in a garden somewhere in June featuring fairylights and handwarmers and champagne drunk out of picnic glasses. There won't be bridesmaids and there won't be 80 people. There will be 30 people we care about. So we can talk to them. Then there will be dinner. Because this bride is always hungry.

But that being said, if you know of any gigantic bridezilla wedding I could gatecrash, please let me know! I do love those kinds of parties.