Crafting - Bridal Shower Stuffs (explained)

It pays off to take pictures of your friends, particularly @ bars or at any other time of outlandish performance. And it reeeeally pays off to have friends pull mad faces & pose ridiculously. I'm v.proud to know they'd surely struggle to find equally ludicrous photos of yours truly.

Per Sarah's request, here are a few tutorials on how to accomplish some fun favor items! And to the few who have asked, I totally run a daytime job. Although, good call. I am a bit un-enamored with it at the moment - eep. Does it really look like this stuff took an extensive amount of time? Maybe my craftier friends have trained me into higher productivity, keeping me up all hours into the night to polish off Halloween invites (ahem, devon) or covering every inch of a 2000sqft home with all things sorority (ahem, jen). Mostly, I think I've known about dev's bridal shower needs since last year; leaving plenty of time to hunt for, make, and gather things!! :) ok, moving on...

1. Picture Frames
• pick up some cute, teeny frames. these had a 2"x2" window. places like target, costplus, lnt-ca have good deals, keep an eye out and stock up ahead of time. big box stores have superb return policies if you get extra, which you should totally do jic.
  
• trace the glass onto a patterned piece of paper. i stock up on scrapbook kits that go on sale for coordinating, fun papers. also, look @ the magazines or catalogs you have @ home. they have plenty of large enough sections of patterns that would look great in a frame.
• find a terribly funny picture of your friend, crop + shrink (i just use MicroWord), print in multiples, and cut out. don't get weirded out when your dog picks up your friend's head and starts chomping down. hudson just loves devon's face.
  
• print out a phrase + speaking bubble, also in MicroWord, onto vellum paper.
• glue the bubble + picture onto the patterned paper, wait to dry, put in frame!
• I like this glue or this one for most paper stuff:
2. Personalized Chocolate Bars
• pick up some yummy + diff chocolate bars.
• cut out + wrap the bars with some pretty patterned paper.
• copy + paste a pretty/pretty pic onto MicroWord, make b/w + transparent (in Format Picture - Color Lines - Fill), and definitely put the picture behind the text (in Format Picture - Layout - Wrapping Style).
  
• Find a fun font and type your phrase directly onto picture. i chose, "celebrate ME, bitches!" you can choose something, perhaps without a profanity?
  
• Print + cut out. Glue directly onto patterned paper!
3. Aw Nuts! Bags.
• get cellophane bags of any flat variety. i chose these from martha @ michaels (really cute site, btw). i thought they were pretty.
• download a landscape template from Avery + use their mailing labels to print a fun photo + statement.
  
• print + stick onto each bag.
• fill with items of choice: i did a mix of home-cinnamon-roasted-almonds, honey roasted peanuts, & wholefoods trailmix. dude, wholefoods rocks and i don't mind that they're taking over the world. they're all over cali, some in colorado (yay, liz!), and even one in freaking tulsa. woo-freaking-whoo!
• disclaimer: i made the almonds when jamie was out of town for a few days so that any trace of almond dust got out of the kitchen before he got back. can't have him get grossly asphixiated because of a rouge, tainted wooden spoon, after all. peanuts + cashews are cool, almonds + walnuts are the worst. he calls contaminated items "death-____"...as in "death cookies" & "death cakes" etc.
  
4. Tote Bags
• sketch your inspired image onto regular paper. i just doodled the first three images of LA that popped into my head. palm trees, check. sunshine, check. aeroplane, check.

• trace each image separately to prevent leakage and to enable overlap when painting.
• freezer paper paint onto tote bag in separate phases. i did the sunshine first bc it was the most gratifying; lots of mixing colors, adding gold paint to each of the orange/red/yellows for extra sheen! the palm trees were a bit tricky in that the freezer paper didn't want to create a perfect seal on the ridged tote bag, so if you want crisp lines, look for a smoother surface to work on. luckily, palm trees are rarely smooth, but rather ridged in nature so i convinced myself it was a-ok.
• heat set everything so if need be, the bag can be machine-washed!
  
• print out letters on t-shirt transfer paper + iron on last.
• tie on a name tag for each person & some sparkley wirestuffs just for added snazz.

And that's it! I think...did I miss anything?

ps. How many of ya'll are becoming obsessed with David Archuleta?? I feel like he really gets me.