So any crafting or art project i take part in, i generally make a mess,whether its with glue, paint or thread, it somehow always ends up all over me, I guess i just like to get very involved in my projects haha, but I mean i am messy by nature, my room, my car, my purse, you name it, its a mess, but don't judge, i like my mess, when i clean i can't find anything, and it doesnt mean that im unorganized,i think the only thing in life i like neat is when im working retail, I hate when a store is messy, its too hard to shop, want to be able to see all the future merchandise that will soon be thrown on my floor, but until then i want it neatly folded and displayed. I'm a pro at board folding and hanging, but in my own room you would never know. but anyways i digress, so this craft project was difficult because it involved a lot of glueing which is usually my downfall in the neatness category. Don't get me wrong, I've created masterpieces with glue but when it comes to tasks like this where its hard to hide mistakes especially glue mistakes, its not my strong suit.
It all started when my mother asked if I could make some fabric flowers to go with a wedding gift for a friend of mine thats getting married this weekend. Mostly because I have nothing to do during the day, I dove head first into this task. Also because I spent pretty much my whole winter break last year and most of the spring creating fabric flowers for my children's wear collection. Although its tedious, I kind of enjoy making them, if I have nothing better to do. So I googled some new ones that I hadn't made before, because the ones for this gift need to be a smaller scale than then ones i made for my collection. So then these flowers escalated into me making a vintage looking keepsake box to put them and the giftcard in. The fabric flowers and vintage box go with the theme of the wedding. So I went out and bought fabric that went with the colors of the wedding, and then found a wooden keepsake box at A.C. moore along with some papers and buttons. This was after I googled wedding keepsake boxes and kind of fused a few ideas together to hopefully make one that was a. wedding-esque b. vintage-esque c. matched the brides personality, classy and chic but not overly fancy. I had found a picture of a shabby chic keepsake box and wedding keepsake box that was elegant and a classic wedding style, so I tried to blend these ideas together. Also this box has to travel via plane to her wedding location, so it couldn't be too big. The inside of the box I kind of figured out myself, knowing i wanted to put the flowers, the card and the giftcard inside, I knew I wanted to line the bottom inside with fabric and have all the items nestle in the fabric. I found a pretty pewter crepe back satin fabric, that was perfect for this because the flowers are turquoise and eggplant colored so the pewter went well, and because I didnt know if she was going with silver or gold at the wedding.
So you'll see in the pictures that I started off by painting it white, I was going to leave it at that but then I decided to put down the printed paper on the top and put the checkered silver on top of that. Now my hardest task, neatly, glueing and placing the silver squares, i tried about 4 and got glue on them so, i used a tacky glue, which was neater than hot glue but didnt stick as well as i wanted and you could see where it dried on the metallic square so I put the rest off till the end and started in the inside. Another issue erupted when I tried to glue in the lining. The box wouldnt close, so I had to rip it out and then rip off all the glue, which didnt do nearly as much damage to the box as it did to my poor fingertips. they were already pretty sore from hand sewing and beading the flowers. I made the first turq. one, then when I attempted a different one in the purple, it came out HUGE, so yes I had some propportion issues with the flowers, but they still came out cute so I didnt mind, I might sew them to a throw pillow. 6 flowers later I had 3 large ones and 3 normal sized ones that would fit in the box. Also when I had googled keepsake boxes I found cute little ones on Martha Stewarts website, that came with cute little templates, that had love quotes on them, so I printed out one of the extra large ones, which perfectly had a line to write in a date, and glued it on the inside top of the box. So I was able to write in the date and time of their wedding, in which I tried to do in my neatest and prettiest cursive writing(haha) don't think I've written in cursive since 6th grade, The cursive "Congrats" I wrote on their card I made didn't come out as well. but I tried to make it work as best as I could. When I was putting off glueing those squares I decided to make a little card, just so I could use more of the cute ribbon and buttons I bought. It's a pretty intensely crafted card haha, but rather small so if they throw it out I won't feel too bad. Finally i took some scary super glue my dad had gotten me and attempted to use that on the silver squares only because it was potentially the most neatest but the threat of my glueing my fingers together trying to glue these squares down scared me, and I'm surprised I came out of it with all my fingers working properly. I still got some on the tops of the squares but i think if i had used the tacky or hot glue it would have been worse, in matters of messyness and not sticking to the box. So I was glad when that was over. I forgot to mention that the fabric on the top outside of the box I did 2 box pleats on then tied in with thread in the middle and then glued it down, then I sewed the button on.
So three days later I finished the box, flowers and card, I could have finished sooner, but I knew i didnt have to finish it till thurs so I took my time so I didnt rush it. I'm pretty happy with the outcome, the only thing that bugs me is the glue on the silver squares but nothing I can do with that, I'm not sure If I'll make another one of these but if I do I'll definitely try and work on a better game plan with the glueing.
I think My fingers will be happy to be done, they got pricked with hand sewing needles and burnt and blisted using the hot glue gun and picking off the hot glue, and there are some reminants of hot glue on them currently, and its kind of hurting me to type with several of them haha, but what can I say.
I hope I don't discourage anyone from making one of these I think it really is a cute gift even if it is just a gift box or decoration and there's a lot of room to make it your own and change it up
Hope you like the finished product, hope the bride does too :)
No comments:
Post a Comment