DIY Maid of Honor

Today, I'm blogging from my patio. It's 71º and sunny...how could I not be outside, especially after the seeming monsoon we've been stuck in as of late?! Aside from that, how could I deny my cat this bravery (he's behind the salvia--the purple flower)? 

So, as I mentioned before, the first of my projects as maid of honor was to take the card box from this...

My lack of foresight prevented me
from taking a "before" picture, but it
looked exactly like this, I assure you.

Terrible beaded
ribbon/lace combination.

...to something far more fabulous. This is what I came up with:

Pretty fantastic, right? I hot-glued two types of ribbon around the top of the box and then hot-glued beaded garland around the perimeter as well. There were two glue spots on either side of the card slot left from the ribbon before, so I covered them up with pink beaded flowers.

As for the unity candle, Amy had shown me a few styles that she liked. So, I created a logo using Pages and printed it on vellum paper. After I cut an inch off the top and bottom, I adhered it to a pillar candle using Glue Dots. Then, I cut lengths of chocolate brown ribbon, slid the buckle slides on each, and secured them to the candle with Glue Dots, as well, on the top and bottom edges of the vellum. I attached the ribbon around the base of each of the family taper candles with Glue Dots. I used gemstones I found in the scrapbooking aisle of Hobby Lobby (my new favorite store!) and placed them around the length of each of the tapers. The finished result:

I also decided to make my own hairpins for The Big Day. Everything I could find in my price range looked cheap and everything I actually liked was, of course, out of my budget. I could blow the bank several times over on Etsy, but what I ended up making was something inspired by hairpins I found there:

I've had so much fun crafting these projects for Amy's wedding. I wish there was more fun stuff to do!