dandelions *tutorial*

I have been making these sweet little dandelions for several years, including making many, many of them for my wedding decorations. They are super easy and fun to make and here's how!

Grab yourself some yarn. White is the best for making little dandelion fuzzies, but yellow also works for billie balls.

Start by grasping the end of the string between your first two fingers and your thumb.

Begin to wrap the string around your fingers over and over.

Continue to wrap until you have about 1/2 thickness around your fingers.

Cut the end of the wrap and lay the wrapped string on top of a short piece of string, about 8 inches long.

Tie the two ends of the short string together over the top of the wrap.

Pull very, very tightly. Tie another knot to make sure everything's secure.

Trim the ends of the knotted string.

Use a scissors to cut around the wrapped string so that all the loops are separated.

It will probably be a little all over the place when you're done. That's why there's one more step!

Pinch the puff ball between your thumb and pointer finger...

...and use the scissors to trim all the way around the edges. This will even out everything and make your dandelion look pretty.

And there you go! A beautiful finished dandelion!

peace&love,

Jill

THE dress

You know what's crazy? It's already my 6 month anniversary! Where does the time go?

I realized a few weeks ago that I never really posted much about my wedding dress, but if there were one thing that was post worthy about my wedding, it would have to be the dress!

Right after I got engaged my darling aunt sent me a congrats note and offered to make my dress if I wanted her to. Now let's just establish something here. My aunt makes dresses for a living, and not just flimsy little cotton things either. She makes real life period costume dresses - think Queen Elizabeth in that one picture. So first of all, I was just so excited that she offered. 

I hadn't ever really fallen in love with a catalogue wedding dress, but I had fallen in love with this little beauty while roaming around Edinburgh, Scotland with my (then) boyfriend (now husband!) and my roommate.

Gorgeous, right?

Well, Gorgeous here happens to cost upwards of 4,000 pounds, which happens to be even more in dollars, so in my mind Gorgeous and I were over before we even had a chance to begin. 

Fast forward back to my aunt's offer. I hemmed and hawed a little, but finally I decided to ask her if she could do something like Gorgeous. If she couldn't, no big deal. I would find a dress that would be fine. 

But then the fateful email came - she could do it!

There were months of redesigning, fabric shopping, and straight up magic on my aunt's part and early in May a long awaited package came for me in the mail.

This beautiful dress.

There is so much personal significance in it. Some of the rosettes on the shoulder are made from scraps from my grandma and great grandmother's wedding dresses. The bottom layers are embroidered with a double J design for John & Jill. There are also some Celtic crosses embroidered around the bottom to signify my Celtic ancestry.

All in all it was the most perfect wedding dress of all time. I will treasure it my whole life. 

peace&love,

Jill

let's dance *wedding playlist*

Photo courtesy of Suzanne at Off the Square Portrait Studio

Let me just say our wedding dance was FUN and we danced our hineys off. One of the ways we decided to save money on our wedding was to skip the wedding band and DJ and opt to make a mix ourselves and play them via iPod over my little brother's speakers, and he graciously also agreed to "DJ" (which meant he pressed stop and go, but he was still invaluable to everything going smoothly!) If you know anyone with some tower speakers or you have a fairly small wedding venue, this is a great route to go! 

Here's the playlist that made the magic happen:

The Book Of Love - Peter Gabriel (our first dance)

Find Your Wings - Mark Harris (my dance with dad)

Love of My Life - Carly Simon (husband's dance with his mom)

Let's get the party started:

Forever  - Chris Brown

Stereo Hearts - Gym Class Heroes ft. Adam Levine

We've Got It Goin' On - Backstreet Boys

Kiss From A Rose – Seal

ABC - Jackson Five

Accidentally in Love - Counting Crows

I Want You to Want Me - Cheap Trick

A Message - Coldplay

Sway - Michael Buble

Levels – Avicii

We Didn't Start the Fire - Billy Joel

Marry Me – Train

Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It) – Beyonce

Heaven - DJ Sammy

Never Let You Go - Third Eye Blind

Larger Than Life - Backstreet Boys

The Luckiest - Ben Folds

Hey, Soul Sister – Train

Everytime We Touch – Cascada

Your Love Is My Drug - Ke$ha           

Lovesong – Adele

Scat Man - Scatman John

The Time (Dirty Bit) - The Black Eyed Peas

Don't Stop Believin' (Glee Cast Version)

Call on Me (Original Mix) - Eric Prydz

Spider-Man Theme (Junkie XL Remix) - Michael Bublé

Say Hey (I Love You)            - Michael Franti & Spearhead

Name - Goo Goo Dolls

Only Girl in the World (Cover) - Boyce Avenue

Bad Moon Rising - Credence Clearwater Revival

peace&love,

Jill

spiral flowers *tutorial*

This was one kind of flower that I made for my wedding last month and it worked really well for the boutonnieres. My husband's was especially adorable, and the photo below is courtesy of my stunning wedding photographer, Suzanne Corum. Visit her site here.

Here's the magic secret weapon to make these flowers look so awesome: shaped scissors.

Use the magical scissors to cut circles out of a thicker paper. I used card stock. You can make the circles as big or as small you want to, it will just affect the size of the flowers.

Then use the scissors to cut a spiral into the circle. Again, you can make the spiral as tight or as wide as you want and it will affect the size of the flower. I found that some irregularity (read: shaky hands) actually added some visual interest, so you don't have to be too careful.

I made a million of these.

Once they're all cut in a spiral, start rolling from the outside. If you pinch at the bottom as you roll it helps.

Keep going.

When you get to the end it should look something like this. 

Tuck the middle up under the bottom of the whole roll.

When you let it go it should look something like this.

I added some hot glue to the center of the spiral and gently pushed down on the top layers to get everything good and stuck together. Then I did this all a million more times.

And there you go! Beautiful flowers!

Let me know what you think and share pictures if you make some!

peace&love,

Jill

wedding files: our guestbook

Slowly I am processing all the pictures from my wedding so that I can share them with you all. 

One piece that I definitely wanted to share was our guestbook. Instead of a traditional guest book we cut pieces of scrapbooking paper and left them on the guestbook table with plum and blue permanent markers for our guests to write notes to us with words of advice or encouragement.

Those notes were displayed with clothespins on twine during the reception under the banners I had made that spelled out "Share the Love." Afterward I gathered them all up and I'm going to use them in the scrapbook I make with all our wedding photos! Cool, huh?

A dear friend of ours manned the guestbook table and explained the idea to people. I love how it turned out!

I'm just waiting on our official wedding photos to make our scrapbook and then I'll share it with you all!

What great guestbook ideas do you have?

peace&love,

Jill

heart garland *tutorial*

I made these garlands to go on our tables at our wedding and they were a big hit! 

Wanna make your own? Here's how:

You'll need some paper (I used pages out of an old French language workbook), twine, scissors and glue.

First of all cut out a heart to use as a pattern for all the other hearts so that they match. 

Next fold your paper in half the long way. I did a few pages at a time.

Then fold the pages in half the other way and wrap the control heart around that fold so that the top of the rounded parts of the heart are on the first fold you made. It is important that you don't cut through that part.

Cut around the heart, leaving the top folded over like I just mentioned.

Which is hard to take a picture of.

When you unfold everything it should look like this.

Next, fold the heart over a piece of twine and put a line of glue around the inside of it to hold it together. I kept some space free from glue at the top so I could slide the hearts on the twine to adjust the  space between them.

There you go! Just repeat until you have the length you want!

peace&love,

Jill

paper leaves *tutorial*

Purple and light blue were unconventional wedding colors, absolutely, but the other colors we added in made it work, especially the green in the floral arrangements, courtesy of these cute little leaves. 

I found the original tutorial on Skram Mama, which is actually a German language blog, but handy Google realized I don't read German and translated it for me. It was intended for fall leaves, but it works just as well with summer ones :)

Here is my step by step tutorial, except for those steps during which I forgot to take pictures. Let me know if you get lost!


Step 1: Get yourself some green paper. I used scrapbooking paper.


Step 2: Cut it into perfect squares. Your finished leaf will be about half as long as the diagonal of your square, so plan accordingly. Then cut each square into two triangles, cutting along the diagonal. Set one triangle aside.

Step 3:

Fold your remaining triangle back and forth tightly like an accordion:

When you're all the way done it should look like this.

Step 4:

Keeping everything together with your fingers, fold the accordion in half so that the long sides are against each other:

Like so:

Step 5:

If you want to be able to connect your leaf to something on down the line, add a loop of wire through the middle of the fold. If you want to be all matchy-matchy, use green floral wire. If you are a fan of using whatever you have, do like I have done and use whatever you have.

Step 6:

Put a line of craft glue down one long side of the folded accordion. 

Press together and secure with a clothespin.

Step 7:

Resist the urge to play with it while it dries.

And that's it! You have a shiny new leaf to use! 

Let me know what you think and send me pictures if you make your own!

peace&love,

Jill