{Wedding Project} Tea-dyed, hand-stamped rose petals

I love fresh flowers (after all, I am a living, human female with a soul). More specifically, I love fresh roses. I intend to have them at each table of our wedding reception. What I don't love about fresh rose petals is the cost. On the other hand, I wasn't wild about the idea of vaguely unnatural artificial rose petals at each table either. My solution: REALLY unnatural rose petals!

Now, bear with me a minute. What I decided was that rather than have fake rose petals that masqueraded as real, I would use fake rose petals that didn't even try to look real, and instead looked like a handmade craft project. Because they are! I took inexpensive artificial rose petals, used the old tradition of tea-dying to give them a vintage flair and stamped them with whimsical wedding stamps.

Here's how I did it:

First, I boiled a large stockpot of water and about two dozen (yes, 24) tea bags. Plain old Lipton or any sort of black tea works great. I simmered this until the tea was really dark. I then dumped about two thousand (yes, thousand) rose petals into this liquid and stirred. I let them soak for a few minutes before spreading them out on paper towels. It's not an exact science, but you may want to test out a few petals to see if they are the shade you like; if they're not dark enough, just leave them in a little longer. This part is a little messy, so be careful not to get tea stained countertops. I let them dry at overnight until they were papery in texture.

I then started stamping. I found some cute stamps that said "happy wedding day!" and "Mr. & Mrs." but I also used a damask stamp and an "M" to add some variety and personal flair to the petals. I used an inexpensive brown ink pad from Michaels and stamped about 100 of each stamp and divided the petals up into small bags for each table, along with the unstamped dyed petals. When the reception setup begins, just simply scatter about 50-100 petals for table. Very cute and it really doesn't take as much time as you might think!

Happy crafting!

Megan

Materials List:

-Rose petals in Ivory from Efavormart

-About 24 black tea bags

-Lots of paper towels

-Rubber stamps of your choice (I chose five different stamps for some variety)

-Ink pad of your choice (I used chocolate brown to offset the light tea color of the petals)

{Wedding Project} Clink! Clink! Clink!

There are many variations on the "glass clinking" tradition for a wedding reception. You know the routine: someone starts clinking their flatware against their glass, and this quickly spreads to the rest of the room, growing louder and louder until the newlyweds stand and kiss. At Midwestern weddings, it's inevitable. My twist is borrowed from my cousin's wedding in the mid-1990's; I liked the idea so much I remembered it for about 15 years!

When the clinking reaches a critical mass, Marc and I will stand, draw a name from those of the couples attending and announce the name. That couple must kiss before we will oblige. Tradition AND revenge, all rolled into one. Delightful!

It's simple enough, but there's no rule saying it can't be pretty too. Several months ago, I purchased an inexpensive birdcage set (check out the shopping list below), with then intention of using the larger of the two for cards received. I later got the idea to use the smaller one for names of the couples. It will be a lovely addition to our head "harvest" table.

First, I spray painted them both an antique gold to coordinate with my "theme". I then hot-glued matching, wide grograin ribbon around the top. Next, I printed off the text (I chose to label the smaller cage "Loves") and added a few layers of leftover paper from my invitations to dress it up a bit. Finally, I snipped the stems off of some ivory, cream and blush silk roses, glued them to the sides---along with a few oversized glass pearls---and viola! A lovely vessel from which to draw the names.

But here's my favorite part: in order to just have the names of those attending, I simply put their returned RSVP card in the cage as soon as I've received it. That way, no one is chosen who isn't planning on attending and, well, I just love the look of our wedding stationary so it's a nice way to reuse it.

It's an easy crafty way to put a spin on an old tradition!

Happy Crafting!

Megan

Materials List:

-Birdcages from Save-on-crafts.com

-Grograin ribbon in 1.5" width in Antique Mauve from JKM Ribbon and Trim

-Antique Gold spray paint

-Artificial rose heads from Michaels, JoAnn and MaryNotMartha

-Wedding RSVP cards (ours are from MyGatsby)