Wedding Inspiration _ DIY decorations

 I made a few things for the wedding yesterday:
- Jars wrapped with burlap and lace
- A headband for the flower girl
- My garter
- Fabric flowers made of felt.

The first photos are of the jars. I used jars that had pasta sauce in them and are about 15cm high. The burlap covers the straight part of the jar and is 6cm wide. I bought a natural white burlap by the meter which is relatively cheap. I then cut it into strips that are 6cm high and the length which corresponds to the circumference of the jar.
The lace I have is a natural cotton lace that I bought at the 1 euro store. So it's 1 euro/m. I also put 2 buttons on each piece of lace. In this case I put 2 wooden buttons that I had at home. All the jars got different types of buttons though.










1. I simply sewed 2 buttons onto the lace. One at the edge of the lace and one in the middle.
The burlap is attached to the jar by glueing the outside of one end of the fabric, wrapping it around and then attaching the opposite end to the first end.
The lace is then also attached to the burlap with glue. I use UHU but I think most glues work just fine unless you are planing on washing the fabric, in that case you'll need proper fabric glue. Start by attaching the end of the lace that doesn't have a button. Place extra glue under the button as it slightly overlaps the first end, hiding it.
2. This is the result of the jars. One has a candle in it and the other has the fabric felt flowers.

I also made my own garter (is that what it's called?). Using the same natural cotton lace as before, some thin champagne coloured ribbon and an elastic.
1. Add a safety pin to the end of the ribbon and weave it into the lace. Make sure the ribbon is slightly longer than the lace.

This is the result of the lace with the ribbon weaved into it on both sides.

Cut a piece of elastic that is 1/3 shorter than your piece of lace. Mark the middle, 1/4, 3/4 marks on both the elastic and the lace. In order to make the elastic the same length as the lace, obviously you have to pull it. Put pins on these marks and then one inbetween each of the marks.

 Sew on the inside of the ribbon with a straight tight stitch. I went down twice. Make sure the ends of the elastic are firmly attached to the lace.

 Here it is. My unique vintage garter...

I also made this hair band for the flowergirl. I bought a simple headband and wrapped it with the cotton lace, gluing it at every second turn. The colour of the headband is light pink and you can see that colour through the holes of the lace.
I then also made a felt flower. Cut 2 circles in the size you wish your flower to be. Fold it into the amount of petals you wish to have (mine has 6). This means you're actually just folding it into 3 parts: Fold it in half, then fold one third and then the other third. Cut a arch shape into the folded fabric. Unfold and magic...you have a flower.
I stitched the two layers together and then added the cute button. So now our beautiful flower girl will match many of the other decorations made for the special day.

Wedding inspiration _ DIY flower girl ballerina tutu

 I found some lovely (and very easy) tutorials on how to make a ballerina tutu on-line. There are many on YouTube, etc.. This is the inspirational photo with the look that I would like to achieve. Sadly I don't remember where I found these photos as I would love to give them the credit.
It's an easily accomplished look as the tutu is really simple to make and you can just put the skirt over a normal singlet or body.

So how do you make this tutu?
As I said earlier, look for "new sew tutu" on-line and I'm sure you'll find much better tutorials!
I chose a high quality soft tulle which is slightly more expensive than normal tulle, but still very affordable. I wanted the material to be soft at touch and not too poofy. I think it creats a beautiful soft feel.
All in all it took me about 1,5 hours to make the skirt once I had the tulle strips prepared and another 1,5h for cutting. So a total of about 3 hours. I got much quicker after a while and I'm sure that if I was to make a second one it wouldn't take me more than 2h.

I used:
* 5m x 1,4m off white/natural tulle cut into 80cm x 15 cm strips. You can even buy rolls of tulle that already have the right width which makes the whole process even quicker and easier.
* an elastic band 1,5cm wide.
* thread
That's all folks!

Start by cutting the elastic band according to the kids waist size. Overlap the elastic band 3cm in order to insure that it will be tight enough and sew them together.

Cut the Tulle into 15cm wide strips. The length should be double the length that you want the skirt + 3cm for the knot. For me I ended up with about 50 strips.

Put the elastic onto something relatively sturdy, such as a bucket, a box, a roll of household tissues...

Fold the Tulle in half and place it in front of the elastic band, then pull the both ends through the loop. Make sure it's not too tight and doesn't crunch up the elastic band.

Repeat 40-50 times until you have a skirt that is as full as you want it.