June 2019 - CraftEaze

DIY Bride – Welcome Bags

June 25, 2019January 13, 2024 Jamie

Disclosure: CraftEaze is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com and affiliate sites.

Welcome bags are a nice treat for your out of town wedding guests. Since my husband and I got married in the city we currently live in, almost all of our guest were from out of town. Some of our friends that lived around here also stayed at the hotel that night so they could go out with us after the reception. Welcome bags are appreciated in both cases, especially if you add bottles of water and snacks!

My mom, sister, grandma, and I made the welcome bags during the week prior to the wedding. We even formed somewhat of a convary line to do it (my sister and I are both engineers). They were a lot of fun to put together.

I made a couple of insert for the welcome bag in Microsoft Publisher. Each insert had a different purpose. The first one had a “welcome note” with a timeline of events on the front and a direction/map from the hotel to the church on the back. The second insert was really more for the out of town guests. One side contained a few of our favorite places to eat and drink. The other side contained a list of things to do in the area.

Bottles of water and food are also great for welcome bags. Avery labels actually make a water bottle label. I used them to make personalized water bottles for welcome bags. They were super easy to use and Avery has many templates that you can use as a starting point. All you have to do is modify the template and it saves it as a PDF. I highly recommend these labels. You can also use them for fundraisers, family reunions, or even events at your child’s school.

Our water bottle label. Avery water bottle labels made it so easy!

We included several food items in the bags. We want to provide both sweet and salty items along with something related to the area. Other items are related to my husband and me. Below is a list of items we included

Welcome Bags for hotel — The bags are ready to go to the hotel!

Bag of Pretzels
Harry London Buckeye – Since we live in the Buckeye State and I love buckeye candies!
Twizzlers – My husband’s favorite road trip candy.
Slim Jim’s Snack Stick
Peppermint Lifesavers

We also included a fun tag on the bag. The tag had a cutout of the state of Ohio in the middle. This tag said, “Welcome – Canton, OH” along with our names and wedding date. My sister was excited because it was another chance to use the Cricut for a wedding project. The final addition to the bag was a custom door hanging. I created this door hanging in Microsoft Publisher. This was one of my favorite wedding projects. I received many compliments about how cool this door hanging was.

Welcome bags door hanging — Our “Do Not Disturb” door hanging

To complete the bags, we put all of the items in a small brown paper gift bag that had different designs in cream on them. We added the tag to the handle using a piece of purple or mint ribbon. We also fluffed some light purple and blue tissue paper on top to complete the bag. And just like that, the bags were ready to go to the front desk at the hotel.

If you liked this tutorial, be sure to check out some of our other wedding related tutorials.

Peace, Love, and Crafts ~ Jamie

La Vieille Ferme Rosé Wine Review

June 20, 2019October 28, 2020 Jamie

Some links posted below may be affiliate links which means I’ll earn a tiny commission if you purchase through them.

Rosé is a wine that is very drinkable in the summer. I think it is because it is great to drink chilled. It is the perfect wine to drink while laying by a pool. Can’t you imagine an extremely attractive man bringing you a glass of rose while reading the latest summer fiction bestseller laying by the pool? I sure can.

This rosé is no exception. I was drawn to this particular bottle tonight because of the chickens on the label. When a bottle has a fun label, I am always willing to try it. I purchased it at my local grocery store, but according to Google, you may be able to buy it at Target. So next time you are roaming around Target, check out the wine section to see if they have this wine! You can also purchase a bottle of this wine from wine.com.

I enjoyed this wine. It had a strawberry flavor and was very drinkable. It was a little on the dryer side, but I think it would pair well with chickens or a Caprese salad. When I think of a poolside cabana, this is the type of wine I imagine that I am drinking. However, tonight I drank a glass in my stemless wine glass while watching an old episode of Greek. There is no pool nearby, but I hear there is a lot of flooding going on since it won’t stop raining!

If you found this wine review helpful, you should check out our other wine reviews:

Crafts, Wine, and Happiness!

DIY Bride Takes on Wedding Place Cards

June 19, 2019January 13, 2024 Jamie

So life has been crazy for the last few months! But I really have a good excuse, I got married! So the few months leading up to the wedding I didn’t really have time to put towards CraftEaze. Also, I was working on some cool projects during this time period, but I didn’t really want to post on Facebook or Instagram so my friends and family would be surprised when they saw everything at the reception.

We are married! Let’s Party! I love my dress, the lace was so pretty.

However, the wedding is over and the thank you notes are in process. So that means I have time for CraftEaze again and also I can share the different projects I worked on for the wedding. We made a lot of decorations for the wedding/reception. My husband even designed a coozie that pretty much described the wedding planning process for us. Today, I am going to write about a project I enjoyed making and am excited to share with you all!

So for my wedding place cards, I knew I wanted to use wine corks. I had been saving corks for almost 2 years for a special project, and this seemed like the perfect project. But I didn’t really want them to look like every other wine cork escort card. After researching how to cut a cork, I became a little overwhelmed by how long it would take to cut all of the corks. So I came up with another way. The following instructions document the process that I came up with.

Materials Needed

Escort Card Materials — Materials needed for place cards.

Spray Paint In Accent Color Of Your Choice – I used light purple.
Poker Chips – I like these because they are on the thicker side and as a result a little more stable.
Wine Corks – You can either buy wine corks from Amazon or another craft supplier or you can save them. My husband is convinced the wedding was just an excuse for me to drink wine.
Floral Wire
Wire Cutters
Hot Glue Gun With Glue Sticks
Card Stock In Accent Color– I used teal.
Cream Card Stock – You will want this card stock to be a size that can fit in your printer.

Instructions

Step 1. Lay out the poker chips.

Lay out poker chips — I used an Amazon box I had laying around to layout the poker chips.

Step 2. Spray paint the poker chips.

Step 3. Let the poker chips dry. I spray painted my chips in the yard and then left them to dry under my covered front porch for a night.

Poker chips drying — Painted chips drying on the cardboard box.

Step 4. Using the hot glue gun, glue the cork to the painted poker chip. Since I had corks from a variety of different wineries, I tried to glue them so the name of the winery or design was easily displayed.

Put a dot of hot glue in the center of the poker chip.

Place the cork on the poker chip. I tried to make the winery name or design easy to see.

Step 5. While you are waiting on the hot glue to dry, you will form the wire loop which will hold the card. Cut the wire to be ~7″ in length. After cutting the wire, you will form a loop on one end. I found making 3 loops works the best.

Step 6. Using a needle poke a small hole in the cork. I found this made it easier to put the wire into the cork.

I used a large needle to put a small hole in the cork.

Step 7. After poking a small hole, insert the wire that you had made the loop with. You will put the straight end into the cork.

The wire should be placed in the cork like this.

Step 8. The holders are now complete, and it’s time to start making the actual cards. I made the name cards (which are printed on cream cardstock) in Microsoft Word. In Word, I made a table with 3 columns where each cell had a width of 2.5′ and a height of 0.6″. I typed the names each cell using Lucida Handwriting font 13. My husband also had a few young cousins attending, so I used Kristen ITC font 14 for their cards. I thought this font looked like something a little kid would write.

Step 9. Print the Microsoft Word document on the cream card stock. After printing, you will cut each name card out.

Step 10. Next, I used my Cricut to cut out the accent color portion of the place card. I made a table in Microsoft Word that I snipped and saved. If you are interested, I used the image below for this project. I imported this image to the Cricut Design Space. You will expand this so it will be approximately 12″ wide. You want it to fit on the 12×12 mat.

The table used to cut accent color portion of the place cards. Click the image for the actual size photo.

Step 11. Cut the card using the Cricut. After cutting, you will remove the accent color portion of the place card from the mat.

Step 12. Using a glue stick, glue the cream cardstock name plate to the accent card in the middle. You will want to try to place the cream cardstock in the exact middle of the accent cardstock.

Step 13. Once you have your table assignment complete, you will need to write a table number on the card. I used a purple Sharpie pin to write the table numbers, but you can use any marker of your choice.

Step 14. You can then place the name card on the poker chip wine cork holder using the loops. The image below shows an example.

The place cards are complete! I received many compliments on these place cards. Hope you can use this tutorial for your own wedding escort cards!

If you liked this tutorial, check out our other wedding decor tutorials:

Happy Crafting!