Wedding prep!

The spare room is gradually filling with wedding shaped items!!! Squeee!!

Imagination!

Can you see the cat in the wood grain?

How about now?

Lovely BM thinks im a crazy person but i love my imagined cat!!

Bottle (or jar) label removal

As im DIYing a lot of the wedding and trying to keep costs down ive been hoarding glass bottles and jars to use in centerpieces and various other stuff. This has led to me having to remove a lot of labels from these bottle and jars. Theres a lot of tips and tricks on the interweb about the best way to do this but i thought i would share my best way of doing it. Although the pics are of a wine bottle the same works on jars etc too

This is the wine bottle im using as a demo, a very nice red valpolicello that lovely BM is partial to!

First off i score the label, some labels have a shiny coating and scoring it lets the water penetrate and makes it quicker to remove

Next get your scored label good and wet. Then you can scrape the top layer of the label off. I alternate between a finger nail and the abrasive side of a washing up sponge. Really youre only trying to get the top papery layer off the label. They will definitely be glue and some of the label left after this step.

Once the top layer is off its time to pull out the big guns! WD40 is one of my favourite things ever (it shines up stainless steel like nothing else!) and its great for getting glue and residue off stuff. Liberally apply it to the label remnants, allow it to soak in and then scrape off a much as you can. Again a finger nail or washing up sponge works well.

If youre lucky the glue will come off as well at this stage and you can just wash your bottle with soap and water. But often theres a residue left on the bottle from the glue.

To take this off i use acetone nail varnish remover. Put some on a cotton wool pad or some tissue and rub the glue residue until its all gone. For particularly stubborn residue you can lay acteone soaked cotton wool over the residue and then wrap it in clingfilm (stops the acetone evaporating) and leave the acetone to work its magic.

Then you can wash your bottle with some soap and water to remove any of the WD40 and acetone.

Hopefully after all these steps you'll have a lovely label and glue free wine bottle (or jar)!

Chocolate wedding cakes make

Wedding cake number 2 (chocolate) is made - eek!
Only six weeks to go now so my blogging might be a bit sporadic from now on!

Groom stubby holder

 

Little hand embroidered stubby holder for lovely BM for the big day! Im hoping he'll try and drink out of a nice glass but i like to plan for all alcohol consumption related situations!

Lace tip wedding shoes

 

 

My proper wedding shoes (the one for the photos, the ones ill be wearing once all that's done are here) are only inexpensive ones from a low cost shoe shop. But they arent exactly the right colour on the tip, theyre a bit too gold, i need them more silver. I though i might try spray painting them but just wasnt feeling it. So i thought id try and embellish them with some lace instead. I figured if i didnt like it i could still paint them. I just used pva glue and stuck the trimmed lace directly on the shoe leather (by leather i mean plastic!). I think theyve turned out pretty well :) i dont think theyd withstand much rain or even much use to be honest but theyll more than do for the big day! Im going to wear them around a bit and check it all stays in, if not i might paint them instead...

Waitressing apron

I help out on my family's lavender farm occasionally as waitress so i decided to make myself a little apron to wear whilst waitressing! Its just a simple one with two deep pockets at the front, very easy so if i make another one i might do a tutorial on it so watch this space!

 

Wedding Card Trunk

 

While Lovely BM is off on his stag do i cracked on with wedding stuff! I spotted my Dad's old boarding school tuck box (off of Enid Blyton!) a little while ago and knew i wanted to use it at the wedding. I was going to line all the sides with fabric but i quite liked some of the ink stains so i decided to leave them uncovered. 

I just cut a piece of thick mount board the same size as the bottom and covered it with some cute purple flower fabric i already had and popped it in the bottom.

Then i made a really simple card banner for the top. I just cut the letters out of grey card, glued them to peach and lilac rectangles and then pegged them to some string. I juts draped that over the top and fixed it with a bit of tape - so easy and so cute!