Wedding Favors - Handmade Drawstring Bags with Wildflower Seeds

For our fall time wedding, Steve and I decided to give something that wasn't a one time use/eat/throw away present for our wedding guests. We thought flower seeds were the perfect way that our guests could be reminded of our wedding each year with the blooming of wildflowers.

Not only was it fun to give these little gifts, but we saved a lot of money making the presents ourselves.






Here are the materials and costs for our wedding gifts, makes about 100:

1. Natural Muslin, 2 yards (in case of mistakes, extra is better): $3.98/yard = $7.96
2. Baker's Twine, 40 yards total (I picked two colors, 20 yards each) = $5.99
3. Plastic Bags for seeds, 100 total (I couldn't buy less than 500 on Amazon.com) = $4.29
4. 2 lbs of Wildflower Fall seed mix from Flower Art & Soul (1.5lbs would do, but you have to buy in full pound amounts, so I bought 2 lbs): $48/lb = $72 (since I have a half of pound left over!)
5. 130 Kraft paper tags (bought from a seller no longer listed on Etsy) = $10.50
6. Paper, tea for dying the paper = pennies, negligible cost

Total cost to make: $100.74, about $1.00 per guest
(of course, you can always make this project cheaper.. find less than 500 plastic baggies [I felt strange buying so many little bags from the internet...], buy your muslin or baker's twine on sale [or with a coupon - I never go into ACMoore without a 50% off coupon for myself and Steve!], or find cheaper wildflower seeds).

I measured, cut, ironed and sewed about 105 muslin drawstring bags, half with yellow twine and half with red twine (since those were our wedding colors). I used about 12" of twine for each bag. Steve filled each plastic bag with about 1 generous tablespoon of the seeds and the insert.

For the insert, Steve downloaded a typewriter font and I printed on both sides of the paper for our wedding label, and instructions/contents on the back side. I printed 10 tags per page, so I only had to print 11 pages of text (one for mistakes!). I created a tea bath with a big pyrex dish, five tea bags and boiling water. I let the paper soak in the tea for ~15 minutes then hung them up to dry. Instead of having stark white paper contrasted with the natural muslin bags, I thought tea dying the paper would add an extra touch!


My mom was kind enough to calligraphy all the guests names onto the tags, and I went back through and labeled the table numbers after I finalized my lists.





It was a time consuming project, but so much fun to have something to do at the end of the day, and I even got Steve to participate which was definitely the best part! I am looking forward to seeing how the flowers bloom for our families and friends next fall :)

A finished gift bag for my nephew, with a handmade napkin my mom made!

In the making of my Etsy store

Like I said in my last post, I finally have a spot to permanently set up and photograph my Etsy items. Before, I'd have to set up the living room for when I set aside time to photograph items, but now I have I spot where I can keep everything organized and I don't have to set specific times to photograph!

Etsy photo area to the left, craft area to the right

And, I'm just too excited about my craft area and guest bedroom... It's really a beautiful room and fun place to spend my late afternoons.

Craft area and guest bedroom! Lots of green, aqua and mint.

Happy Valentines day, part 2

and for more happenings... here's the dessert I made for Steve this evening :)















I had so much fun making the hearts and the X's and O's. I made them out of two sheets of cardstock, watercolors, glitter and toothpicks. for the hearts, I used the same amount of cardstock and sewed fabric along the edges. Oh it was messy and fun!
And I made a cherry pie to hold the X's and O's! Yummy!!

Steve bought me flowers and chocolate covered strawberries from Isgro's. And he's making me dinner tonight (not that him making dinner for me is out the ordinary, but it's always appreciated!) Here are my flowers:















and finally, I've become obsessed with the colors ivory, red and light blue/teal. (see: http://www.etsy.com/treasury/MTMwMTc4NTZ8MjEwMzg2MTI5NQ/light-fresh-fabulous?index=0 and see: http://www.marthastewartweddings.com/228848/perfect-wedding-color-palette-red-and-aqua/@center/272434/plan-your-wedding-color). All the kitchen items in Martha Stewart's collection at Macy's are red and teal and I want EVERYTHING!! I thought today would be a great time to rock the red and teal colors! Using that new vintage Vera scarf, I coordinated everything else around it. I wore a simple ivory lace dress, black tights, black shoes, the Vera scarf, and red and blue nails. Alas, I needed a red belt and to my surprise, I didn't have one! So I made a belt really, really quick. We're talking 15 minutes here. Just a strip of fabric, a button, and a button hole. I can add more button holes later if I decide to wear it lower on my hips.




And for my nails, I painted them red with blue accents - hearts on my thumbs and a diagonal stripe on the side!












and finally, my outfit together, with my flowers!