A Craft-Made Chirstmas Post 2: Our Cake Topper Ornament

Have you ever asked yourself, "What am I going to do with all this wedding stuff AFTER the wedding?" One such item is the cake topper. Remember our Pearl Wedding Cake Topper? (If you would like to see that post again, click HERE). Well it is now an ornament on our tree! Problem solved!

Just hot glue some ribbon to the back in a loopty-loop, and there ya go!

Modge Podge + Wedding Pictures= The Wedding Wall

Here is a little Pinterest project for your Saturday. I have been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks, but just got a little behind. Here is what we call "Our Wedding Wall." It is our collage of wedding pictures displayed on the long awkward wall in our bedroom. It has become such a big hit with our visitors and I hope you like it too!

I started off with blank canvases and mod podge

Place the picture down and mod podge all over the top. It will look milky but it will dry clear.

All the pictures on our wedding wall! We used 8x10s, 5x7s, and 11x14s

Our House Divided! My Auburn Garter and Gantt's Alabama Cake Topper

Something that everyone is Alabama knows is the phrase “A House Divided.” Well, Gantt and I are such a household. I am an Auburn Fan. Gantt is an Alabama Fan. And there is only one day of the year that we are unlikely to speak to one another. But instead of focusing on the controversy, I saw it as an opportunity to get creative and to show Gantt that I loved him even though he roots for the wrong team. 

About a month after we got engaged, I knew that I wanted to do a University of Alabama Themed Groom’s table. I decided that for the groom’s cake topper and as a wedding gift to Gantt I would order a mini National Championship Helmet and have it signed by Saban himself. In a surprisingly short amount of time, Coach Saban sent back the helmet with the writing “Congrats Gantt and Niki, Roll Tide, Nick Saban.” It was a perfect detail that I knew Gantt could later display in his office. The hard part about the process was keeping it a secret from him for almost 7 months! To finish off his Alabama table, my mother and I made a houndstooth table cloth which we had monogrammed with “Roll Tide,” and I made some picture frames with houndstooth bows to display pictures of Gantt and his love for the Tide. 

But of course, I had to have Auburn somewhere in the wedding! As another surprise for Gantt on our wedding day, I sported an Auburn garter set I made! I knew that when it came time for Gantt to find the garter, I wanted him to see two things: Aubie’s face and the 2010 National Championship. I handpainted a large Aubie face decorated with orange and blue rhinestones and large print that said “War Eagle.” I then sewed my Aubie masterpiece to an orange and blue satin garter I also made. The throw away garter was also orange and blue satin adorned with a 2010 National Championship pin. It was the perfect touch to start our house divided marriage. 

Here are some pictures of these details and the process of making my garter:

I hand sketched Aubie

I mixed up the right color orange and started painting with a very fine brush

All outlined!

Highighted the orange and blue

I decided to make it smaller and WAR EAGLE was added

Rhinestone paw print and I cut it out.

I added orange and blue sparkles to really make it stand out

I sewed the garter using orange and blue satin

Casing and elastic

It's finished!

 I then did a second garter for the throw away garter with a bow and the National Championship Pin! Take that Saban!

Gantt's Cake topper

Congrats Niki and Gantt!

The first time Gantt saw the cake topper! You can also see the picture frames I made for the table. Cake by Foster Street Bakery.

Look at the face seeing the garter! haha

Great Picture! Gantt's cousins battling it out for the garter.

With Gantt's cousin, Griffin, who caught the garter and MaryAnna who caught the bouquet!

boo...

Our Pearl Wedding Cake Topper

Gantt and I had the most beautiful wedding cake. Period.

Like I said earlier, Pearls and Rhinestones carried throughout the wedding and the cake was not an exception. The cake was a 3 layer strawberry cake with a french vanilla buttercream icing. It was covered in a diamond white pearlized fondants and covered in sugar pearls. A black satin ribbon with a rhinestone brooch. Gorgeous.

For the topper, I bought a black acrylic monogram "P" from Ebay. It was pretty, but I wanted to pearls to run from the top of the cake to the bottom. So, I had to take the topper into my on hands! I can't wait to get my pictures back from my photographer to show you the final masterpiece. I can't thank Tara Wilson from Foster Street Bakery for my cakes. She is not only wonderful to work with, but she makes the best cakes ever. In fact, there was absolutely NO ZERO NONE cake left! It was that good... Here are some pictures:

My Old, New, Borrowed, & Something Blue Wedding Shoes

Now that the wedding has come and gone, I am so happy I can finally share some of my little wedding projects with you! Almost everything at our wedding had some kind of personalized touch to it. After Gantt and I finished taking the bar, craft time was on! I had so much pinned up craftiness in me, I was about to explode!

One thing I knew I wanted to do was sparkle up some shoes! I'd looked around everywhere trying to find some shoes that were the right height, comfort level, and price for me to work with.  I found some great Nina shoes at Dillard's, but they were $90. I couldn't imagine paying that for something I was going to totally transform. So just like it was meant to be, I ended up finding the same pair of Nina shoes on Ebay: brand new, size 6 1/2, and I won them for $20! It doesn't get much better than that!

For our wedding, pearls and rhinestones were carried throughout, not in a gaudy "I'm a princess" theme way, but an this is an elegant special day way. I had found ivory glass pearls in multiple sizes and decided to use those on my shoes. My LaLa, my dad's mother, passed when I was young, but I wanted her to be there with me. My mom had one of my LaLa's old pocket purses with some of her buttons in there. My LaLa, being a flashy lady like myself, had tons of rhinestone and oyster buttons. These would be the perfect touches on my shoes. I also added a pearl and rhinestone brooch to the front of the shoes. When I put it all together, I had my Old, New, Borrowed, Blue Shoes!

Old: from the old buttons
New: the actual shoes were new
Borrowed: I borrowed the buttons from my mom
Blue: I used light blue trim and Lala's Blue oyster buttons

After lots of forming, sewing, glueing, and placing, here are my shoes! I wish I had better pictures of them. They truly are fabulous!

One of my bridals with my shoes, more to come soon