a (mostly) handmade wedding present

a dear friend of ours is getting married tomorrow and we wanted to give him and his bride-to-be something meaningful and unique. and while i think registries serve a wonderfully practical purpose, sometimes it is fun to give something unexpected.

so i started with an embroidery hoop, some mustard fabric, and a few options of embroidery floss. i couldn't choose between brown and fuchsia so i decided to fuse them together using 3 strands of brown and 1 of fuchsia. they love the musician ray lamontagne so with some help, i figured out what their favorite song was and took a line from it to embroider. i posted a tutorial here about how to do this, only this time instead of using my own handwriting, i printed off a style that i liked and used it as a template. below is the result:

 being a girl who is all about themed gift situation, we bought them 2 LPs to go along with it. my darling husband remembered that the bride has her father's record player but the doesn't have many records so we felt like this was perfect.  (the song i used for the embroidery piece is from that top album 'trouble')

fabric flowers, kraft paper, and some twine to wrap them in--simple yet sweet. the flowers are in no way a genius idea of mine, but i have made them in the past...so if you're interested, here is how you make them:

start with some fabric and cut out a handful of 'petal' shapes in different sizes. its not really about perfection here and how many is entirely up to you and how big you would like them to be. also, cut out a more narrow piece (the one on the right).

then, take some tacky glue and apply it at the bottom of your narrow piece.

roll it up like so...

this is the center of your flower.

next, take a 'petal' and also apply glue at the bottom.

wrap the 'petal' around your center piece.

add the 'petals' one by one around the center overlapping them (i used smaller 'petals' inside and larger ones around the outside).

using some thread, tie a tight knot around the bottom.

wrap the gift, tie it with twine, and arrange the flowers to your liking. (to give them a little extra security, i glued them to the twine...i also propped them with something to allow them to dry in place)