Right around last Christmas I went to a baby shower. With the help of my daughter I managed to come home with this wretched pair of ceramic baby booties (tied with ribbon at the heels). I rolled eyes because what on earth would I do with it? I figured I'd just toss it out when my daughter wasn't looking. To my surprise she came home and hung the baby booties on the tree. Now I'd probably not have liked the idea so much but this pair said "April" on them (for the month) but that also happens to be my name so I kinda smiled and thought it was cute since I don't have any ornaments from my childhood. When Christmas was over I didn't have to look at the silly little ceramic booties anymore but I packed them away and decided we'd keep them. DING!
Of course this is why the light bulb went off. My wedding is in October but I couldn't bare the thought of giving out something that would either be overpriced and consumed immediately (like candy - not that I don't love candy but we're doing a candy bar so that wasn't what I wanted in favors). I also didn't particulary feel the need to send my guests home with things that were personalized with our names on it. YES it's my wedding day but my own house has become over-run with monogrammed candles, koozies and the like and while it's cute for a day I really wanted to find a favor that people could (hopefully) cherish but something they wouldn't have to look at every day which is why I created Christmas ornaments. Yes my wedding is in October, but it's close enough to make me happy! OBVIOUSLY this works for me because all of my guests celebrate Christmas.
Problem #2 - I had about 50 leftover invites. My guestlist was about 98 people long so I had ordered 150 invites (couldn't order in groups of 25) so I ran my extra invites through my paper shredder and used them to quill the "waves" in the bottom of my ornaments. I also had some shimmer blue paper leftover from envelope liners so I quilled those too! Originally I was going to use the back of my info card by cutting them into triangles for the actual sail but it was too thick to slide down into the ornament and luckily I had some canvas I had picked up at Michaels just in case. Then I just glued a toothpick from the top of the sail and wrapped the strip around the base for the sail and trimmed the extra. Although I chose to leave our names off of the favor, I did stamp the sail with our date and a heart. (the one shown only has Oct 13 on it b/c my stamp was outdated so I have to pick a new one up today!) Topped them with Ribbon and Voila! I'm also doing a sand/shell ornament that way every couple will have two unique ornaments!
I picked up the ornaments last year on clearance for like a dollar for six and since I'm recycling my invites I am using very little supplies. The devil is in the details though - I have to make about 45 of these little boats!
Anyway, I'm really happy with how they turned out and hope that this offers some inspiration to others! It's a great way to tie your invites into the favor (not to mention get rid of all the extra) and if anyone is getting married next year then stock up on the ornaments after Christmas this year to save big bucks!
April