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Thursday, September 5, 2013

Fall Wedding Series #1 - The Invitation

2:10 PM Emily No comments

It's been 313 days since I married the love of my life. To celebrate our upcoming one year anniversary, I decided to finally share all the projects I did for my wedding. Everything turned out amazing! Exactly how I pictured it. It required tons of work, but it was so much fun! So for the next eight weeks, I will be posting all of my projects to celebrate being married to the most amazing man ever! :)

Our wedding was on October 27, 2012. It was an outdoor wedding at Magnolia Mound Plantation. We had a rustic/autumn theme. My main color was a dark blue teal with accents of creams and golds. After I decided on the general theme and colors, I immediately started thinking about what my invitation would look like. I am a graphic designer, and invitations are my favorite to create! So making my invitation was a process.... a process that lasted months. I wanted something fall (but not "too" fall), something rustic, something DIFFERENT.

I think I achieved that!

The Invitation Design

A simple design with teal and gold colors printed on a shiny metallic champagne cardstock.

The Pocket Design

I used a gold metallic pocket to hold the invitation. Around the pocket, I used double-sided tape to secure teal ribbon. Then I wrapped some jute string around it, and secured it in place by hot gluing a wooden heart with our initials.

Those hearts.... oh those hearts.... I sent hours using a wood burning tool to make around 80 of them!

The Envelope Design

I used a metallic champagne envelope that matched the invitation paper. Made the labels using some brown kraft label paper and a heart shaped hole punch, along with lots of measuring and cutting.

And of course Kitti had to help! :)

Mailing my invitations! I was excited! :)

I bought my invitation cardstock, pockets, and envelopes from Paperandmore.com.

Check out my other Fall Wedding Series posts here: http://createsharerepeat.blogspot.com/search/label/Wedding

❤ Emily

Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones Heart Tree Cupcake Stand

10:07 AM Emily 4 comments

Ladies and gentlemen! I am proud to introduce to you an oh so very nerdy blog post!!!

My husband Will and I are very much into The Song of Ice and Fire book series and the Game of Thrones HBO show. For his birthday this year, I got him a horn mug like the ones they drink from in the show. Because of this, I decided that this year his birthday would be Game of Thrones themed. So what cake would I do? I daydreamed about it for some time before this crazy idea came into my head... and I couldn't get it out... I could make the heart tree!

A heart tree is the center of a Godswood. A heart tree is a weirwood tree that has a face carved into the wood of the trunk, with red sap giving the appearance of tears of blood. They are sacred in the religion of the Old Gods of the Forest.

So the wheels in my head were turning, and I decided to make a heart tree cupcake stand. I made a cupcake stand before using cake boards and salt containers, so I decided to use the same concept to make this stand. Here's the link to the previous stand: http://createsharerepeat.blogspot.com/2011/12/project-of-week-babys-1st-birthday.html

I am going to show y'all how I did this stand, but I do not recommend it... even though it did turn out pretty cool... You will see why :)

I started off with 3 cake boards in various sizes ( I think 2-12" and 1-16" .... the 16" for the middle layer), two salt containers, red ribbon and modeling clay.

First I wrapped red ribbon around the boards to cover the unfinished ends using double-sided tape. Then I hot glued the top cake board to the top of one of my salt containers.

I wanted to have arms on the middle board, so I cut that part out. Then I glued the rest all together.

Then came the fun part... The sculpting! I molded the clay onto the boards and salt containers to create my tree!

Then comes the reason I WOULDN'T recommend doing this. And I SHOULD have known better. Clay shrinks as it dries, and that's exactly what it did.... and cracked... and made me sad....

OOOOOH NOOOOOOOO!!

But guess what... it was all okay in the end. :) I just filled some cracks in and painted over it! problem solved! :D

To finish off my stand, I decided I needed some snow on the ground... especially since this is Winterfell's heart tree.... and.... WINTER IS COMING! ;) So I used some styrofoam balls I had laying around, cut it up and glued it down to make snow!

I baked the cupcakes in red wrappers and used white buttercream frosting. On cupcakes I placed two small red leaves made out of edible dough I found at the store.

I thought this was kind of fun to look at... my rough sketch of what I had in my head, and the finished result. You can see I also added the Stark sigil, the direwolf head, to the top of my cupcake stand.

Here are some pictures from my husband birthday party:

I made him a birthday banner too.

What inspired this theme... the drinking horn I got him for his birthday!

My husband and me

I would like to use this opportunity to show off what I did for my husband for Valentine's Day... which was also Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones themed. In the book, Daenerys Targaryen would refer to her husband, Khal Drogo, as "my sun and stars." He in return would call her "moon of my life." So that was my theme for Valentine's Day.

The bottom picture is of the Beef Wellington that I made him for dinner. It was probably the most delicious (and expensive) thing I have ever made! Here's the recipe! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/the-ultimate-beef-wellington-recipe2/index.html

That's it! I think I am done with Game of Thrones themed parties for awhile! :) They were a lot of fun. When I have kids I will have to do other fun book themes, like Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. :)

❤ Emily

Mom's Fishy Birthday Party

12:00 PM Emily 3 comments

So this past weekend, we threw my mom a small surprise birthday party. She is really into fishing so I took that theme and ran with it! Here are some of the projects I did.

Birthday Banner

I set up the outlines of the fish and letters on my computer in Illustrator. I bought kraft cardstock paper from Hobby Lobby, printed the fishies onto the cardstock, and cut all of them out. Then I put two whole punches at the top of the fish, threaded some jute string through, and hung up my banner! I added some bobbers and netting to finish the look.

Birthday Cake Table

I recycled table clothes and burlap runners from my wedding, and used them in the dining room for the cake table and outside on the food tables.

I dressed up my chandelier with some net, bobbers, kraft paper fishies and a big bobber.

To make the big bobbers, I bought some paper lanterns, covered part of it with painting tape, then spray painted the tops white.

Kitti helping decorate...

Mini Fishing Poles

I decided it would be fun to have some mini fishing poles to surprise my mom with. I tied little bells at the top of the "pole" with red and white baker's twine for everyone to ring when my mom came through the door. I cut out little fishies (2 per pole) and used double-sided sticky tape to attached it to the twine and the fishies back to back. I finished it off with a tiny bobber.

I think Kitti enjoyed the fishing poles the most....

Fish Cake

I made my mom's favorite chocolate cake for her birthday. But I decided to make in into the shape of a fish this time!

I wanted a basic fish shape, and it was really rather simple to do. I just baked the cake in a 9x13 pan, used a template I made to cut out a fish/oval shape, then used the extra piece to make the fins and tail. Then I covered with yummy frosting and ganache!

Outside Food Tables and Decor

While digging around for my mason jars, I found a few fun fishing items of my husbands: fishing poles, tackle box, a minnow bucket, etc. They helped complete the look!

Mason Jar Fishie Straws

I found some cute paper straws at the store, and decided I needed to put fishies on them! I printed out a bunch of fish, cut slits into them and slid them on to the straws.

Some of these items are on sale in my Etsy Store! Check them out here:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/CreateShareRepeat?section_id=14006941

We definitely surprised my mom and had a good time. I love themed parties and coming up with all the decorations and little details that make it special. I wish I could do it for a living, but I wouldn't know where to start!

Blowing out the candles!