Wedding Box for Helen

This is the photo Helen texted me last month:

"How do I paint it now... Tips pls," she said.

"OK. I'm coming over," I said.
Helen wanted to make a nice box to collect cards and gifts in for her upcoming wedding.

We bought some extra supplies.

Once I got back from London, I spent a night putting it together.

I lined the inside of the box with fancy glittery paper from The Paper Source.

It matched the color palette of Helen's wedding.

I get nervous at the thought of working with brides.

I understand planning a wedding is stressful.

So it was nice when Helen gave me her trust and let me simply work.

CONGRATS HELEN & ARNOLD!

 (Photographed by Albert Cheung Photography)

Harry Potter Ring Bearer Book for Helen

 Helen had requested a special gift from me for her bridal shower gift.

She needed a ring bearer pillow. In lieu of a pillow, I put together a

ring bearer book instead since she is a language arts teacher.

"What's Helen's favorite book?" I asked her fiance.

I expected something along the lines of "Pride and Prejudice" or "Wuthering Heights". 

"Helen really likes the Harry Potter series," he answered.

Dammit.

"Okay, which book?" I asked, not that it would make a difference.

"Her favorite is the first one," he said.

Michael's had storage boxes in the shapes of books on sale.

I resized, printed and laminated the cover onto the box. Then made

a satin pillow for the ring inside to rest upon.

Out of all the things I made for Helen's wedding, this was the clearly the crowd favorite. 

 (Photographed by Albert Cheung Photography)

(Photographed by Albert Cheung Photography)

Bridal garter for Angy.

My cousin, Angy, is getting married soon so I thought I'd make her a special bridal accessory for her bridal shower. I followed a simple tutorial from this blog and made a bridal garter out of some satin ribbon and lace. I also added some Swarovski crystal trim for some fancy bling. 

Jun & Eric's Wedding Cake Topper

Last month, I worked on my third commissioned wedding project. I was asked to create a wedding cake topper for a couple of lovely gentlemen. While I would have liked to have come up with some more interesting ideas, time was of the essence. I ended up designing a similar cake topper to my cousin Sonia's which the couple, having seen my previous wedding cake topper, were quite enthusiastic over:

The challenge here was to sew not one but two teeny suits on my clothespin men in a short period of time. Initially, I tried to use whatever I had laying around. The closest material to match the navy of their suits was felt. This made them look like they were wearing lounge smokers jackets a la Hugh Hefner. This wouldn't do. I managed to find some navy cotton which worked out perfectly.

The glasses on one of the grooms kept popping off. There was no time to drill holes on the side of his head to secure the wire spectacles so I had to add little ears for the glasses to rest onto. This turned out to be one of my favorite details.

How dapper!

sonia's wedding cake topper.

When my cousin Sonia got married in Hawaii last month, she had asked me to make a cake topper for her wedding cake! I was more than happy and excited to design one for her. To get an idea of what kind of cake topper she wanted, I directed her to a Pinterest search. I asked her to pick out any image that piqued her interest.

This is what she chose:

I dig Domokun but not on a wedding cake. This shouldn't look like a child's birthday cake after all! I focused on the little wooden clothespin dolls and drew up a design for Sonia to see:

After she OK-ed the design, I got crackin:

All the materials were bought from Michael's. I wrapped fabric covered wire (found in the floral section) with peach colored embroidery thread. I used white satin ribbon and hot glued a dress together. The top part of the dress was hot glued on using lace ribbon with beading already sewn in on it. Bride was a piece of cake.

After I painted the faces with acrylic paint and a fine brush, it was time to work on the groom. Now this was a pain in the ass to do. I bought a square of black fabric and hot glued the pants. That was easy enough. Unfortunately, hot glue wasn't gonna solve the problem of construction the suit jacket. I literally had to stitch a little blazer together with sleeves and a teeny hem.

I had bought some fancy lime green paper and silver glittery stickers to make the festive bunting. It's all glued together with a little bit of Elmer's glue.

I folded some origami paper cranes out of white iridescent paper and stuck them on bamboo skewers. Holes had to be drilled on the sides of the wooden base after I painted it a pearly lime green. I brought the cake topper with me to Hawaii and was surprised to find out I would be the one decorating the cake!

Here's how the end result looked:

Congratulations Sonia & Kevin!