DIY project Archives - Page 3 of 6 - The Natural Wedding Company

Blog: DIY project

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma’s latest crafting projects and and worries about the small things on their wedding ‘to do’ list

Charlie

So we had a little break last week from our TNWC Real Brides series – the first of our real brides, Caroline, got married on May 18th in a beautiful farm wedding (you can see a gorgeous picture of Caroline and Gareth on their wedding day here on Facebook) and I can’t wait to hear all about it.

Today we have Emma back with us, and she only has 8 weeks to go until her big day in Cornwall. These weddings are all coming so quickly! She has a couple of gorgeous craft projects to share with you all today – a pretty decorated bottles for table flowers, a homemade blackboard seating plan, and the sweetest aisle liners I’ve seen.

Over to Emma to tell you what they’ve been up to…

All The Small Things (seem to bring the biggest headache)

Up until a week ago I was feeling calm, organised and under control with the planning going swimmingly. Then suddenly with less than 8 weeks to go (EXCITED!) I started to get a bit worrisome. All the big things have been well and truly ticked off the list but the little things seem like they have started breed!

I suspect this happens to every bride and the point at which where ‘bridezilla’ may start to rear her ugly head, I can feel it bubbling beneath the surface now… I think the main problem is worrying that we will forget something! Like having enough tables for the caterer to put food on, sorting out music for the ceremony and how we are going to play it outside in the amphitheatre.

I have been worrying about things that we had slightly overlooked; like what we can feed our vegan guests when we are having a hog roast and cream tea (slight fail). The only oven on site is an outdoor pizza oven…hmmm, still to be solved.

Charlie

DIY project: how to make handmade recycled seeded paper flowers

Charlie

The Natural Wedding Company is lucky enough to be blessed with some fantastic small and independent businesses, who aren’t only making and selling beautiful things, but they’re also showing you how to do it too.

I’m delighted to welcome back to the blog Sharon Langsdale from TNWC business Razzle Dazzle Rose – she’s going to be showing you how to make recycled seeded paper flowers that are ideal for decorating wedding favours or invitations, and even transforming into alternative buttonholes.

Razzle Dazzle Rose sells a number of fantastic eco-friendly craft materials, specifically in my favourite brown craft card. A new addition to her shop are these paper flower kits – you can choose from recycled brown kraft paper flowers, cream vintage fleck flowers, or seeded paper flowers.

Once you have your kit, here’s how to make the flowers – over to Sharon who is using the cream vintage fleck flower kit…

Handmade Recycled Seeded Paper Flowers

Step 1 – Unpack your paper flower kit and you’ll see you have a number of die cut pieces of paper, just like these…

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Nik tells us about their DIY wedding invitations and building a wedding website

Charlie

Welcome to our second TNWC Real Brides guest post of the week! Today we’ve got the lovely Nik to tell us all about her beautiful DIY wedding invitations and how they created their wedding website. I’m a little bit jealous because I love the style of Nik and Chris’ invitations and think they fit so well with their coastal farm wedding.

If you’ve not read Nik’s first few guest posts, you should first read about her plans for their relaxed coastal farm wedding, and her experience of choosing an ethical wedding dress.

One of the first jobs we tackled upon choosing our chosen wedding venue was our invitations. Our announcement of plans for a summer wedding was immediately met with panic from several relatives and friends about potential holiday clashes. Getting the invites out six months in advance gave everyone plenty of time to plan their hols around the wedding, and has meant that we’ve only had one clash resulting in absent friends on the day.

Our wedding celebrations will be split into two very different parts: a very small ceremony with 25 close family and friends on the farm where we live in Pembrokeshire; and a big all day reception two days later in our home county of West Yorkshire. This gives us the best of both worlds: a relaxed, intimate ceremony where we can focus on the day and what it means, but also the opportunity to celebrate our marriage with our wider network of friends, which is very important to us.

Ceremony Invites

We planned to DIY our invites from the word go: we wanted them to be very personal, I wanted them printed on ‘green’ paper and Chris is a graphic/web designer so it seemed silly not to take advantage of that! However, in the end, we decided to buy our ceremony invites ‘off the rack’ as we realised that we just couldn’t print them at home without compromising on the quality and appearance. Lela of doodlelove was fantastic and worked with us to create a complementary design to match our theme, even incorporating the little chicken illustration that has sort of become our invitation mascot!

Charlie

The perfect Easter decorated Simnel cake with crystallised edible flowers and mini chocolate eggs

Charlie

I must say I hadn’t really heard of Simnel cake until a few years ago, and I certainly haven’t ever tried one. But I do love traditions, and Simnel cake is often eaten over Easter. I particularly love the way this one, created by TNWC business Eat My Flowers, is decorated – both the colours (yellow and purple), the little pile of chocolate eggs, and those beautiful crystallised edible spring flowers.

Sarah who runs Eat My Flowers shared her recipe for this Simnel cake and I thought it would be a nice thing to share with you all. Many of us who life making things, often like making sweet treats, so I thought you wouldn’t mind a recipe. Even if you don’t fancy making a Simnel cake, you could always take inspiration from the way Eat My Flowers decorated it, and use this on an Easter cake of your choice.

According to Sarah from Eat My Flowers, “the cake is made with 11 balls of marzipan icing on top representing the 11 disciples. (Judas is not included.) Traditionally, sugar violets would also be added. Simnel cake is very easy to make and because of the extra layer of marzipan is very moist and keeps well.” Her recipe is from Mary Berry.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Myfanwy on brewing up homemade elderflower champagne and crafting origami flowers

Charlie

It’s that lovely time of the week when we get to hear from one of the TNWC Real Brides. Today, Myfanwy is sharing details of the homemade elderflower champagne that her and her Mr-to-be Tom have been brewing up for their wedding. She’s also done a great ‘how to’ guide for these pretty origami flowers she’s been making from old book pages.

If you’re new to the TNWC Real Brides feature, you can read Myfanwy’s first guest post here on her plans for a creative vintage-inspired wedding. I hope you enjoy Myfanwy’s latest update…

It’s been a busy few weeks finalising the bid decisions for the wedding, the catering, the dress, the DJ! These are things we wanted to get done over the winter before our shop re-opens at Easter.

So now the major details are pretty much done this leaves plenty of time for us to make and prepare the little handmade details that we feel are important to us. We’ve made a list (got to love a list!) of tasks to do each month.

Making elderflower champagne

February’s list included starting off the elderflower champagne and making origami paper flowers. We have decided to have a drinks reception when we arrive the tipi’s for people to help themselves. We thought of having some bottles of local beer, the inevitable Pimms and really wanted something else a little bit different. Our friends had made some elderflower champagne a couple of years ago and we’d rally enjoyed it. It’s lucky we looked into making it so early on, we hadn’t realised that once bottled it needs to stand for 3-4 months!

Equipment was really easy to get hold of in fact Dorset Homebrew sell and elderflower champagne making kit with a recipe and all the equipment you need to get started on you first brew. Or of course the River Cottage recipe is really easy to get hold of online – we plan on trying this one when elderflower is in bloom.

Charlie

TNWC Real Brides: Emma on the beginnings of their DIY wedding efforts

Charlie

I am so excited about my new TNWC Real Brides feature and I hope you are too! It’s been lovely finding out so much about other people’s weddings and being able to share all those details with you here. You can catch up on all the blog posts by clicking this link to the full TNWC Real Bride feature.

Today has her second blog post, and is going to tell us all about the start of their DIY elements to their wedding – starting with their invitations. She’s even done a how to guide on how she made some very cute cake flags! If you haven’t read Emma’s first blog post, you can find it here. Over to Emma…

This week we have reached the first of our planning milestones – we posted our invites! We both wanted personalised invitations and I love to draw so I thought I’d have a go myself. I drew the designs on watercolour paper, painted in a bit of colour and went over it in fine liner.

I photographed the paintings then added the text using Photoshop. We had them printed on recycled card at Monkey Puzzle Repro Art who are based at Mount Pleasant Eco Park. I couldn’t be more happy with the service, John was lovely and got our invites printed within 24 hours of me emailing him the artwork! The front of the invite features us in what I think I can pass off as ‘naïve cartoon style’, standing in front of the archway area we plan to have our ceremony in.

Charlie

A ‘how to’ guide to making frozen flower ice bowls with seasonal British blooms

Charlie

I don’t know about where you are, but it’s flipping freezing here! With these frosty days in mind, I wanted to share with you these beautiful ice bowl creations made by Anne-Marie at Forage For (she also grows flowers in her Suffolk garden for weddings so do check her out if you’re getting hitched in that part of the country).

Anne-Marie has been making these wonderful frozen ice bowls using her seasonal British flowers to decorate them. I love this idea and it’s so simple to create (just scroll down for the instructions) and could be made at any time through the year. Whether you made them for your wedding or for a party, I’m sure they would cause a bit of a stir!

Can’t you just imagine these as focal points on a dessert table filled with ice cream or a larger version could even keep your drinks cool. Anne-Marie filled this yellow chrysanthemum ice bowl with lemon sorbet to show you how they can be used.

Charlie

DIY project: wedding favour pouches made from recycled brown card

Charlie

Today I get to share a wonderful DIY project from TNWC business Razzle Dazzle Rose. Run by Sharon, Razzle Dazzle Rose stocks a fantastic selection of eco-friendly brown craft products, including various sizes sheets of card (including postcard size), favour boxes, envelopes, and place cards. If you love recycled brown card and are planning your wedding then you’re bound to love Razzle Dazzle Rose.

To help inspire you, Sharon is sharing with us a DIY project on how to make these very cute wedding favour pouches – I think they’d also make great gift boxes for Christmas. So without further ado, I’ll pass you over to Sharon from Razzle Dazzle Rose to show you how to make them…

Handmade Wedding Favour Pouches

Step 1 – Firstly, you need an A4 sheet of the 275gm Kraft card (available from Razzle Dazzle Rose). Please note, the 300gm kraft card available from Razzle Dazzle Rose is too thick and won’t crease as easily. Cut the A4 card to 8.5 x 11 inches.

Charlie

Vintage inspired postcard save the dates made by a TNWC couple

Charlie

It’s been a while since I shared some of your lovely wedding stationery designs, and I get some utterly lovely emails from you all with snaps of your designs attached. So I decided I’m going to get better at sharing them with you, and to start with I’ve got these lovely vintage inspired postcard save the dates from Matt and his fiancée Candice.

Matt and Candice are getting married in January 2014 in the Lake District, because Candice is Australian they’ve had to be super organised ahead of time to give her family plenty of time to plan for their wedding.

Charlie

New Wives Club #6: how to grow your own cut flowers – equipment and how to grow

Charlie

Last week on the New Wives Club we started this two part feature on how to grow cut flowers by looking at what to grow. If you missed the part one, make sure you catch up by reading ‘how to grow your own cut flowers – what to grow’ first.

Today I have the concluding part of this lovely feature by Chloe from BareBlooms, looking at the equipment you need and a step-by-step guide on how to grow your chosen flowers. You’ll also find some top tips from Chloe at the bottom of the post, along with a glossary like we included in part one. So without further ado I hand you over to Chloe…

Equipment

There is a lot of choice out there (seed trays, modules, pots etc) but as a lover of thrift I’m going to concentrate on the budget options. I like to sow larger seeds into Jiffy 7s – these are little dehydrated compost pellets – and the advantage of these is that you don’t need to buy bags of seed compost, which is handy if you’re short of space. For those who are environmentally-minded you can get peat-free ones made from coir.

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