DIY Crunch Time

With three weeks to go, let's just say I've been "pulling some all-nighters" on the crafting front. Actually, no need for the quotes. I've literally been staying up until 8am, marathoning Greek, and cranking out wedding craft after wedding craft.

First, I made favor tags for my test tube honey favors by borrowing Mrs. Bunny's idea of using leftover brown paper sacks in place of expensive kraft paper. I made a template using Excel (OK, the Dude made it for me), and then I cut out 100-something little brown tags. Next, I printed a message to our guests on each one using my Gocco. Unfortunately, the gold ink I wanted to use didn't stand out enough on the brown paper, so I ended up just going with black. They're not perfect, but I think they look pretty and homemade.

A couple nights later, I broke out the Gocco for one last hurrah to stamp all of my recycled kraft paper boxes. I ended up going with two pastel colors, a pinkish purple and a sea foam green. Not exactly in my color scheme, but I think they will blend nicely with the rest of the decor. I'm getting pretty liberal with the color scheme to be honest. It feels nice to let go!

My little boxes all lined up and waiting to get folded

This project was inspired by Mrs. Penguin's Goccoed favor boxes. I loved the combo of pastel Gocco ink on a kraft paper box.

In order to get this floral design, I started with some notecards from Michael's. I took the card with this pattern, and I simply colored in the parts I wanted to print with the Riso pen that comes with every Gocco. Then I burned the master copy by using the filled-in notecard. (See the Gocco wiki for more details on how to use a Gocco.) My hand started to cramp up a bit about halfway through the coloring, but it was totally worth it!


The more I printed, the better I got at lining up the boxes and getting the ink in the right place.

The finished product

Six hours later, and voila! One hundred and three finished boxes. Well, not quite finished. I still have to fill them up with something, yeah? More on that later.

After that intense of a project, I needed something quick and dirty to get back into the DIY swing of things. Enter my card box project.

I had been thinking about using the hatbox that I inherited from my grandmother when she died eight years ago. Right after I got the hatbox, I spray painted it gold in order to cover up all the cutesy cherubs and flowers that were covering it. I loved my grandma like crazy, but let's just say I never really had an appreciation for her decorating style. Anyway, I figured that since my 16-year-old self had already done my thang to the hatbox, what harm would there be in cutting a slit in it now?


All it took was a pencil, a straight edge, and an exacto knife. Oh, and a little elbow grease from the Dude.

Now I just hope I have enough crafting reserves to tackle the ceremony programs!