Have you ever been invited to a wedding and spent hours or days trying to figure out what to get the couple as a gift? I know that there is usually a registry where you can go and just buy something off their list, but that is just so boring!! Way too easy. You can always just run into Target and get a gift card as well, but that is just so lame, IMHO. Not that I don’t fall victim to the gift card gift at times…….it is after all very easy 🙂
Anyway, we’ve been invited to several weddings recently so I’ve been searching for creative gift ideas and decided I wanted to make a basket filled with cool things. Well, the basket actually morphed into a wooden tray after I saw this amazing herringbone tray this cool chick made out of balsa wood for the pattern. I found the tray at Old Time Pottery after searching several different local stores. They also had the kind with the legs that you could serve breakfast in bed on. I almost got that one instead. Anyway, next stop was Lowe’s or Home Depot to get the balsa wood. Nope, didn’t happen! They don’t carry balsa wood. WHAT??? Seriously?? It’s a hardware store, isn’t balsa wood a wood product, why in the world would they carry 2×4’s, 4×4’s, 2×12’s, plywood, wood beams etc but no balsa wood. The sales clerk said to check Hobby Lobby. Oh no, I had already driven into Huntsville once today. So, I moved on to Plan B. Plan B was stuck in my head in case I couldn’t get the herringbone pattern to work.
Plan B was to put a monogram on the wooden tray. Easy enough with Photoshop and my Cameo. I created the monogram in Photoshop and then went to print it out but, I forgot that my printer only prints 8.5×11 – duh! So, I had to re-size the monogram and do it over. I really wanted the monogram to cover a lot more of the tray – but until I’m ready to drop several hundred dollars on a wide-format printer [read: probably never] I’ll make do with regular sized printed pages.
I used a spray adhesive by 3M to adhere the monogram to the tray. It worked beautifully! Then I used a clear varnish spray to cover and protect the whole tray including the monogram. I didn’t want the sides of the tray covered in the clear spray so I covered them in blue painters tape before I started.
The next step was to find some cool things to go with the tray. I remembered seeing some coffee mugs painted with chalk board paint on Pinterest. I thought they would be cute to write the bride and groom’s names on with the wedding date. Of course they can write whatever they want on them once they get them home – love notes for each other etc 😉 What I didn’t realize was how hard it would be to find coffee mugs that were totally smooth with no patterns or pictures printed on them. I looked at several different stores and then remembered to check Old Time Pottery. I was just there two days ago, right? Why in the world I didn’t think to look at coffee mugs when I was there before I’ll never know! I found some that were perfect in a great shade of bluish green teal color. I used more blue painters tape to preserve a stripe of the teal color right at the edge of the coffee mugs. Then I turned them over to the Spray Paint Master – my hubby. He is the BEST at spray painting.
Burlap initial placemats were the next project to go with the gift. I bought two yards of burlap because I can never tell how much to buy – I’m terrible at estimating yardage needed! After cutting the placemats, I had about one yard left over. Cutting burlap is a pain in the butt, for real! It is really hard to cut a straight line, you have to ignore the individual strands which runs vertically or horizontally, depending on which way you look at it. If you cut according to those strands, you will end up with a lopsided placemat, trust me! I used the dimensions of 14″x18″ to cut mine. Then I just pulled at the a few of the strands on each side to make an edge. I added a stenciled K for the couple’s last name to the bottom right corner of each placemat with a black Stazon ink pad. Easy peasy, I swear the hardest part of it was cutting the burlap!!
Last thing for the gift “basket” was one of my favorite cake recipes all done up pretty in a jar. I layered the chocolate chips first, then the cake mix and last the pudding mix. It makes a delicious cake!! All they will have to do is add the wet ingredients and bake.
Here’s another picture of the finished product.
And here are a couple more close-ups of the chalk board coffee mugs. Oh! If you happen to be the recipient of this gift or the family of the lucky couple, I forgot to include a card with the gift, so now you know it was from us, lol!
For the first time I am going to try and link up to a couple of other blogs. Linky parties are always a good way for me to lose a couple of hours ogling other peoples crafty projects!
Great idea!
Awe, this is so cute! What a great gift idea. I am pinning this right now. 🙂 Thanks for linking up to Crafty Tuesday!
They LOVED it! And might I just add, they received a Kitchen Stand Mixer, some hefty gift cards and a full set of the china they registered for AND.THIS.WAS.THEIR.FAVORITE.GIFT! As for the missing gift card, no one but no one had any problem figuring out who this crafty gift had come from. 🙂