An Abundance of Albums

A while ago, someone on the Boards mentioned her disappointment that some Bees seem to disappear for a bit after we're married. She wondered why it sometimes takes us a while to write about the wedding after it has happened. For some reason, her comments were stuck in my head for months.

I can't speak for every Bee, but guess what -- we can't write about the wedding unless we have pictures of it! And I have no digital pictures yet (except for a limited preview).

While we've had our proofs for several weeks, our photographer, like many others, doesn't send discs until the album is completed, which brings me to this post.

We chose our album photos this month! Out of nearly 900 photos, we had to choose 40. Yep. Forty.

The photographer in me believes that the story of any wedding can be told in ten images or less, but having to choose these images while I was still so emotionally connected to them had me wanting to eat my words (although I can definitely see narrowing these down to 10 memorable images in the coming years).

I tried to choose images that tell the story of the day, and are the most visually interesting. I had about 25 shots that are my absolute, most iconic favorites, and then I had another 25 or so that I kept rotating in and out.

Our album will be a handmade, matted album with one image on each page. It takes about two months to make and will end up looking similar to this (image from here):



When we chose our photography package, we had the option of a proof book or getting each photo printed as a 4x6. You might think we'd be overwhelmed with 879 little prints, but I loved it. I bought a cute, jumbo photo box (I'll get something more archival when all this is finished) and little dividers, and it was incredibly helpful. I got the chance to see each image up close and lay them all out to make my choices. I tried doing this on my little computer cart...



...before my husband took pity on me and cleared off the kitchen table (and put the leaves in!) so I could work.



At the end of this thing, I have the somewhat ambitious goal of making a few more albums. I hope to have them done before our one-year anniversary, and of course, I'll be sharing every step of the process with you.

1. An album with some prints from our engagement party and the rehearsal dinner photos from our photographer. I am really interested in the kolo series of scrapbook/albums. They look so nice, all of them there on the shelf!



2. A digital album with shots from our honeymoon (easy enough, since our photos are already online). I'm going to be using the adorama books, which Mrs. Cheeseburger had great results with.

3. Since our album is so small, I'm thinking of supplementing it with a simple scrapbook. I found this adorable wedding scrapbook that was reviewed a while ago by our very own Mrs. Bee! It looks easy enough to fill out, and it's nice to see an album/scrapbook that emphasizes that the wedding isn't just one day. This way I can put in things like my dress sketch, a flower or two, some notes from wedding planning, and a few of the more fun images that didn't make it into the album. Do you recognize the bride?

from Mrs. Bee's post

from here

I know lots of you are into scrapbooking, but if you hadn't guessed by my posts, I'm not too much into paper crafts (although I do like to work with my hands and sew occasionally). I do, however, love the idea of prints in an album that you can see and touch. Yes, I tend to be a bit nostalgic, and I imagine looking through these books with my kids and grandkids someday, like I used to with my mom.

Oh... and there's one more reason we don't have digital pictures yet. While we wait for the album, our photographers have decided to submit our wedding to a couple of publications, and we are waiting to see if they will publish us! I won't tell you which ones, because if it isn't accepted I'll be kind of sad and maybe embarrassed. Either way, I can't wait to show you our wedding. It was an incredible, wonderful day and our photographers captured it beautifully. Hopefully I can begin showing it to you pretty soon!

You can find me buzzing around on the boards, and I still have some other things to share with you, so I'll be here. In the meantime, I'll show you this box we got for our larger prints.



What a lovely box!

To rest our rings on

I've previously written about my attempt to make a beautiful, Martha Stewart ring pillow. At least, the flower part.

The flower still isn't finished, but I did finish the part of the project I totally understand: the pillow!

Sure, I could have just bought a pillow somewhere, but I was at Jo-Ann fabrics with Mr. Oyster, when he mentioned the remnants section. Despite my owning a sewing machine and actually knowing how to sew, Mr. Oyster is the one that visits Jo-Ann quite a bit, usually for his art projects or for his students. How could I not have remembered the remnants?! And so, this is the story of how I made a ring pillow for about $5.

I found a 23" scrap of some cheap muslin, bought a little bag of fiberfill, and scraps of some beautiful mauve pin-tucked satin. And did I mention... the remnants were half off that day!

The pillow itself was the easiest part. I used a piece of printer paper folded in a square as a "pattern," and sewed this sucker together, turned it inside out, stuffed it with fiberfill, and basted. Et voila! A pillow. Here it is with a pair of fabric scissors on it so you can see the size; it's an 8 1/2" square (because that is the width of printer paper).

Now, on to the pillowcase. I didn't use a pattern for this, either; I just turned the satin inside out, put the pillow on it, and drew with a pencil. I used two pieces of fabric for the back, because I wanted the pillowcase to have a pocket. Also, having a removable pillowcase will make it easier when I attach the Martha Stewart flower.

So, I put the pillow in the case, and there you go! I tried valiantly to match the pintucks; I failed miserably but guess what -- no one will know. I love my $5 remnant pillow! (Sorry for the different colors; it's irridescent and a trick of the lighting.)

I am proud of this pillow, mostly because (a) I didn't plan on making it, but it turned out to be so unexpectedly easy and (b) I love a good deal.

DIY and the Dead Fly

Despite my insistence that I'm not a DIY type of girl, I find myself doing a lot of things for this wedding myself. Among my projects is the Martha Stewart flower pillow.

I love this pillow, and from the moment I saw it I knew I wanted one for my wedding! I have a little sewing experience and this seemed like a project I could do.

For inspiration, I studied carefully the diagrams and tutorial over at Martha Stewart, which boasts this beautiful example:

Then I also read the more explicit tutorial of Mrs. Perfume, whose mother helped her with this beautiful one:

I picked up some remnant fabric at Joann's to practice with, and set to work with my little sewing kit. Here was some of my inspiration while I worked:

Didn't you know? Michael provides the perfect sewing music.

First, I cut out those ovals just as Martha described: ovals with straight sides. Mr. Oyster pointed out that they look a lot like my little mouse, so I put them side by side. Twins!

Then, I got my sewing kit and went to work, following all the directions. I cut my little ovals out, and instead of pinching them with wire, I stitched them through the middle.

Then I started sewing them together. But I noticed something odd. Where the directions said there should be no gaps, there were plenty. And this didn't look like a flower at all! It was a weird, floppy thing. I tossed it onto my keyboard and noticed that it looked.... like a dead fly!

Mr. Oyster came over to see, and when I described it to him he immediately began holding it through the air, buzzing around with it. Guys!

Anyway, I quickly saw what my problem was: the ovals were too straight and too long. They really need to be more like circles. Why doesn't Martha say this? Wait, who am I kidding?! It wouldn't be a Martha project without some frustration.

So I cut out some new ovals.

These were quite a bit smaller (and the flower tends to get smaller as you add petals to it), so it was harder to sew. Still, there was an instant improvement.

And for good measure, we checked -- it's cat-approved!

Anyone else need multiple attempts at your DIY projects before you were satisfied with them?

The invitations arrived [it's real now]

Our beautiful invitations have arrived! Having picked these out nearly a year ago, I am happy to present them (in slightly altered form, sorry):

They are beautiful to me now, but when I picked them up I was a little disappointed with the accent color, a neutral-ish shade of pink that was a little different from how it appeared in the store sample book. Also, it was a bit of a struggle to get these invitations designed in quite the right way (multiple proofs), and this probably added to the underwhelming-ness of seeing them for the first time.

But I got over it fast. The first thing that helped me get over my disappointment was seeing Mr. Oyster's reaction to the invitations. Earlier readers may remember that it was him who turned me on to these invitations in the first place -- he has excellent taste!

When he came home, I showed them to him without comment, to see what he'd say. He didn't say anything for a long time, but he just sort of stared at them, smiling. Finally he said, "We're getting married!" It was very sweet.

These invitations, of course, are not about shades of pink and cursive and script and fonts; they're the first announcement that my fiance and I intend to start a life together. Seeing him hold the invitations in his hands and really get that for the first time was priceless, and everything else I'd been worrying about suddenly mattered much less.

Another thing that helped was a little design tweak that was inexpensive and only took a few minutes! I decided to round the corners.

Smock can round the corners of your invitations for you, but we didn't select this when we ordered them. When they arrived, I knew it was the "something missing" that I needed to fix. I ventured into Hobby Lobby and found this sturdy-looking "Corner Chomper" and its cute matching case:

 

  

This is the perfect tool for this sort of thing; it cuts clean, perfectly curved corners, and holds up really well. It's perfect for the super thick card stock of our invitations. 

And now for the results! First, the before: 

 

This tool cuts two types of corners; a quarter inch (it appears that this is the shape the company uses if you have them round the corners)...

 

...and a half inch, which is the one we're going to use:

 

You can see the corners better in this shot:

 

I have to give major props to the Crop-a-dile. The corners it cuts are absolutely perfect... no flattening of the paper or extra weird notches. It's amazing how different the invitations look now. The softer edges really help our names to stand out, since they're now the only angled things on the invitation. I think the soft corners provide some much-needed balance and definition. Not only that, but with this hard cardstock, they're much easier to get in and out of the envelopes.

Oh, and another thing -- did you notice? Several of you mentioned wanting to see our invitation suite, and this is it. We went with our simple-is-best mantra with this wedding and decided to splurge on this one beautiful card (which we got on sale!) and eliminate the things that were less important to us. Even the language on the invitation is super-simplified.

So, no STDs, no response card, no postcard, no maps, no folding things, no menu, no programs. It's all on the website, including our rsvp! We'll see how that goes.

So for now, that's the story of our invites. Nothing left to do with them but send them out (but not until we finalize the guest list... oh, no!).

*Photos by me.