Best Wishes Canvas Sign

In my post last Monday I mentioned that I had made a sign for my sister’s shower. It says Best Wishes, the proper thing to say to a bride-to-be. Here it is hung up with some baby pictures:

It is almost impossible to tell, but there is also a sand dollar on the sign. As promised, I’m gonna show you how I made it!

The project was somewhat inspired by this post from the people over at Young House Love. I used much of the same techniques as they did. I bought some cute sea inspired fabrics at JoAnn’s, along with a white on white print for the sand dollar. I got a quarter yard of each, which ended up being much more than needed, but was good because I made a few mistakes cutting out the letters.

At first I was going to print out a bolded font and cut around each letter. I was somewhat daunted by that task, but couldn’t figure out a better way to do it! Then my dad reminded me that he has a die cut machine at his school! Yay… much less work for me! I suppose I could have figured out a way to cut out the letters with my cricut too. Here is his hand (no my hand is not that big) with the machine…

Once all the letters were cut we headed back home and I still had to cut out the sand dollar! For that, I printed out some sand dollar clip art and pinned it onto the white fabric. I had to look up some sand dollar fabric to see exactly where/how to cut. It was actually easier than I thought it would be and turned out pretty well I think!

Then I laid out all the letter and the sand dollar on the canvas (I already had this left over from some high school art days). I put them exactly where I wanted them, overlapped slightly, and used a pencil to mark out where they were. (I moved these slightly before I took the picture… this is not the layout!)

Once everything was marked, I took the letters and the canvas outside and lined the picnic table with newspaper. Then I used some tacky spray glue (4.99 at JoAnn’s) to spray the back of each letter (and sand dollar).

Laying the letters down was the sticky  tricky part. The sand dollar was pretty easy, but the s’s and W’s were really quite difficult! The sides kept sticking together and it was hard to lay it down correctly. When I got the letter in the right spot, I smoothed it out using my fingernail and moved onto the next one. Here it is halfway done…

And here is the final product!

I know that most people don’t have a bridal shower to plan (or maybe you do) but it could make a cute name sign for a nursery or little kids room. Next time I might paint the canvas a pretty color first (perhaps light gray).

What do you think?

-Carolyn

Becky’s Bridal Shower

My sister is getting married this summer and I am the maid of honor. I love being maid of honor and I am so excited, but boy it is a lot of work! Her shower was this past Saturday (June 4) at our family house. I have been putting little things together and planning the shower (with lots of help from the rest of the bridesmaids) for about a year now. Yes, I am a planner and a bit of a perfectionist. The shower was beautiful so I guess all that planning paid off.

There were lots of different things that I made for the shower, most of which I will post more about later on (so look out for those posts).

Becky’s shower started at two. The whole day (and week) before, the bridesmaids and I were setting up and getting things ready for the day. Back in November, I got some really cute shell garland from Christmas Tree Shops (only $3). I used the garland to jazz up the flower arrangements.

The garlands are around some really cute bud vases that I found for $1.89 each at a nearby home store back in February. They looked very pretty with the baby’s breath and matched the beachy, blue theme very well.

These lanterns were right above the blue bud vases…

The garlands are also around the white vases (from Ikea… my favorite store). The bridesmaids brought all the food. We did snacky stuff, which I absolutely love. I like to pick at all different stuff. The food was great!

Even more food (and shell garland) in the living room! This was the dip table, which had Mexican dip (Becky’s favorite), shrimp and black bean salsa (yum), and cream cheese and pepper jelly (one of my favorites- thanks Erin).

Thanks to the great weather the drinks were outside on the deck. I made Martha Stewart’s tissue paper pom poms in the beachy colors of blue, white, and green. I don’t have a picture of the drinks (hopefully I will find one), but we had sangria (red and white), champagne and pomegranate punch, soda, and water.

On the mantle I put all different pictures of Becky growing up, plus one engagement picture, and made a Best Wishes canvas to top it off (more on that in a later post). It ended up being a great centerpiece to everything.

When people came in we gave them each a clothespin to play the clothespin game. It was the only real competitive game that we played.

After a bit of eating and socializing it was time for “The Newlywed Game.” For a new twist on an old classic, I filmed Roger (Becky’s fiancee) answering 20 questions about their relationship. I edited the video using iMovie, adding in titles and some music. Becky had to try to answer the questions as Roger would. The game was hilarious. People were laughing so hard that I could barely hear Roger over the roars of laughter!

Roger on the big screen:

She got one right!

I told you it was hilarious!

Then it was time to open gifts. Here is the before shot:

I thought it would take her easily 2+ hours to open all these. But the bridesmaids had a plan and stuck to it. It took under an hour to open all the gifts (and Becks opened them all herself)! Woot!

One of the things that took the longest was unwrapping plates/cups/bowls/etc from Crate and Barrel. They must be really worried about breakage because each item is wrapped in what seems like 20 feet of paper! In fact, we cheered when Becky finally got this plate free:

Becky got a ton of great stuff. I think I may need to cook at her place from now on!

Dessert time:

Most of the desserts were made by the bridesmaids/guests, but I did make the lemon blueberry cupcakes with lemony cream cheese frosting. To die for. And I love the bride and groom toothpicks that my dad found a few months back.

Gorgeous

When everyone left, they got a bag of homemade shell-stamped cookies (look for a post on those later too)!

It was an amazing day for an amazing girl. Thanks to all the bridesmaids for their help… couldn’t have done it without you ladies!

My sister, mom, and I. My mom is recovering from surgery and still looks beautiful!

And a big thank you to Emily Goodwin (my favorite girl cousin on the Hale side) for the beautiful pictures!

Love you Becks and can’t wait for the wedding day. You’ll be the most beautiful bride!

-Carolyn