i'm married now!

Thank you for checking out my blog!  I started this in 2007 while planning for my own wedding.  Everything turned out wonderful and when I checked this blog for the first time in a year, I was shocked by how many people continue to use it as a resource, especially the DIY Escort Cards post. I was even featured on Real Simple’s Simply Stated blog! Needless to say, I was really happy and I hope you can take at least something away from this small little blog.

I have decided to start a new blog to showcase some of my new passions. I still plan to do tutorials for a lot of DIY’ing, including some recent invitations I did for a friend who is getting married in December. Please check back often at Urban Casita and don’t hesitate to conact me at urbancasita@gmail.com if you need help on any of the projects I have listed here or on Urban Casita. Thanks for reading!

pre-cut business card printer paper
computer
font you like (i chose porcelain)
stamp you like
ink
embossing powder (white in my case, used with orange ink– white almost always looks better than the colored powder when you use colored ink, which i think is better than using the clear embossing only ink)
embossing tool

Use the business card template advertised on the package of business card paper.  It should be available for a free download, or already in your MS Word Template list.
Center the names.
Print.
Stamp wherever you would like on the card with colored ink.
Shake the embossing powder over the ink>
Remove excess.
Place the embossing tool over the powder, far enough away that it does not burn your hands.
I liked to stamp a bunch at once and then emboss a bunch at once.  

It really is very easy– the sand part is  that I never used my cards because we had a hurricane and I had to get married a day early and none of the preparations went exactly as planned!  I’ll save that for another day as this is my first post in over a year… Hope this info helps!

you too can make your centerpieces for under $10 a table– with a flower!

check em out:

flower: pier 1
placecards: paper source
candles: ikea
flower petals: ikea
vase: ikea ($1.50!)

sorry the pics are so small, i’m having tech difficulties.

more soon!

Ok and I drove to Berkeley this morning to go to Paper Source because I brilliantly decided I wanted to do my own invitations at midnight last night, after poring over websites looking for a company who could do what I wanted on my shoestring budget (White Aisle and Wedding Paper Divas do beautiful and affordable work, just not what I wanted). I found none and thought I may as well give it a go myself.

We found a design we liked in the wedding catalog and to make it easier on ourselves, basically copied the whole thing. Our wedding invites should take me about a week and all of the supplies, including RSVP inserts with their owen envelopes cost us $83.00.

Rachel at Paper Source was a HUGE help. She knew I wanted to use stamps and hipped me to embossing machines. Basically you stamp your image onto your surface, pour some embossing powder on it, shake off the excess and wave your magic embosser wand over it. This is the cool machine I got:

It costs around $20 and is available here. I always wanted to learn to emboss but thought it was much more involved and messy than it actually is. I think I’m addicted already.

I will fill a tray with sand and use that to hold up the cards, like so:

I took this off a knottie’s page and should give credit. I’ll find out where I got it from soon.

This is the tray I am going to use:

And that is my exciting new for this evening.

Maybe something like this:

I WANT these:

Etsy has proven useful tonight for various wedding items:

These adorable tags by accessoryalamode are on the pricey side for just tags at $6.00 a pop, but are hand stamped antique brass and could be used as keychains for favors, thus eliminating the need for favor containers altogether. I think the design is universally appealing and would look good holding anyone’s keys. We could put our names and the date on it or even just the date, like so: 08172007.

If I was planning on the soap route, I would definitely look into soapylove’s petite soap flavors. They’re adorable and come in a variety of shapes, colors and patterns. At 75 cents each they’re a steal.

And that is my favor report for this evening.

Available at Pier 1.

I present to you, Centerpiece One of my new trials:

The green platter came from Ikea– I got 10 to be on the safe side. $2.99/each. The flower petals in the vase also from Ikea. $2.50 a pack and I used not even a quarter of the pack. Candles, Ikea also, though I cannot remember how much they cost. Votive holder, $1.29 for a pack of 4. I want to put two votive holders with candles in front of each place setting. Don’t mind my construction paper placemats, I just wanted to have the illusion of an orange tablecloth, which is the color I want. Also not to be minded is the paper towel napkins– again , this is for the illusion, people! The big center vase was $2.99 from Michael’s. I will grand total this up eveuntally, but I still think it is cheaper than whatever my wedding planner quoted me and it fits Ok and I more than anything she has offered so far.

What do you think?

The napkin rings:

The vases:

The beaded mason jar experiment:

Yay! I had a lot of fun doing these. I’ve made about 25 of the napkin rings so far and my hands hurt. I’ll post more photos as I continue, but I believe I have found my centerpieces!