Ring Bearer and Flower Girl Crafts

Holy smokes do I have wedding updates for you!

I was thinking that I was not going to blog about wedding things, so as not to annoy people...But to heck with it. They are just craft projects, right? I obviously cannot blog about certain things, namely gifts, but who is going to know how awesome my flower girl basket, garter or my unity candles are if I don't blog about them? So blog I shall...

I am making pretty much everything myself for the wedding. It is going to be my dream wedding that there is no way I could afford if I didn't do everything myself... :) So in the spirit of my love for crafts I will share what I have been up to.

This entry is going to be about my ring bearer pillow and flower girl basket. Entries to come may include my garter; unity candles; bouquets, bouts and corsages; general decor; and others.

My completed ring bearer pillow and flower girl basket:



First, I did the flower girl basket. Before Christmas I took a trip to the dollar tree (pretty sure 99% of the things for my wedding are from there) and found a lovely gold wicker basket. I am a bad beginning blogger and failed to take any before pictures.. I just get so excited to work on the craft that I hate taking breaks to take pictures... Anyway, I took that $1 basket and bought a yard of teal fabric and a yard of purple fabric (that is also used for the ring bearer pillow) and made myself a flower girl basket. Here is a picture of the basket complete:

As far as a tutorial, it is all done with hot glue. I scoured the house for something round to use as a template for the purple "lining" of the basket. I think it ended up being a plastic serving tray cover that did the trick. I cut out the circle with a rotary knife. I then hot glued the purple on making sure to keep the amount of pucker relatively even around the basket. You can see the lining below:

Next I started with the teal fabric. I folded the fabric over to get rid of frayed fabric ends and hot glued it just below where I stopped with the purple fabric. Once I got to the end mom had a good idea to pull extra fabric to a point, which you can see in the picture above with the pillow. I then made a flower from the same fabric and plopped it on top of the loose ends. To make the flower you just take a really long strip of fabric, roll it and hot glue it onto a felt pad going in a circle. A close picture of the flower is below: 

To make the bottom of the basket look complete I took teal fabric and hot glued it around a circular piece of cardboard that twas the same size as the bottom of my basket.  Once I had the cardboard bottom covered, I hot glued the cardboard onto the basket. You can see this in the pictures below: 

As for the contents of the basket... 

As I am doing my own just about everything for the wedding, I had lots of flowers laying around that I bought at one point but no longer need. Mom had the idea that instead of the flower girl throwing out flower petals, we could wrap each of the flowers I have laying around and she could hand them out to whoever she wanted down the isle. Less clean up for us and I didn't have to buy any new flowers/ petals! If they are given to no one, fine.. If they are given to all girls, fine... It doesn't matter. :) So below are two pictures. The first is of an individual flower and the second is of the basket with flowers in it. I think we ended up with about 12 flowers total. 

As far as what I did for the flowers, I took the individual flowers and wrapped the whole stem in ribbon that I had laying around. (At one point I was going to make my own invitations so I have many different kinds of ribbon) The dark blue you see in the picture isn't even a wedding color, I bought it before I knew my colors... Then I made a bow on the flowers to give them a little more pizzaz and awesomeness. In the end the basket with all of the flowers costed me maybe $10 total. But I already had the flowers and the ribbon laying around that were un-returnable so it worked out well!  

Then I moved onto the ring bearer pillow. I used the same yard of purple and teal fabric that I used for the basket. The pillow isn't what I had planned it to be because I didn't use any templates or anything, but it turned out well. To make it you essentially make it how you would any pillow but add in a band strap and the extra purple fabric on the front for decoration. Like I said, I didn't use a pattern. It was a bunch of cutting, re-cutting, pinning, guessing, ripping, and trying again. Where I went astray was making the purple fabric on the front too long. So I gathered up the extra fabric, loose stitched it together and it came out as a nice flower looking thing. I then plopped the metal piece top of the flower looking thing.  (I got the metal thing from Michaels and it was under $1, I knew I would use it somewhere). And there is a lovely ring bearer pillow. The pillow probably cost me about $2 total, using stuffing that was leftover from a quilt mom made recently, the tiny pieces of teal and purple fabric (that I bought 50% off), and the clearance broach.

Below is the front and back of the ring bearer pillow:

There they are. My flower girl basket and my ring bearer pillow. I think for now it is time for bed... Tomorrow I will update you on my unity candles, my garter, and maybe my decorations if you are lucky ;) 

Have a fantastic night.