Felt Stockings

A few years ago I made a lot of little felt stockings that sold very well at craft fairs.

I wanted to bring them back this year with some different decorations. I started by doing some fancier Christmas designs. Love the gingerbread man!

Then I made a range of dog stockings to go along with my felt dog decorations. I've already put these in my Etsy shop and they've been quite popular.

To reach a different market I've made some superhero stockings, since the super hero crochet balls I made last year did so well.

And then I made a few character stockings which I think are so cute! I've got Pikachu, Olaf and Peppa Pig.

These are the perfect size for a little chocolate bar, or they'd look great with a few candy canes sticking out the top. Or even a few pens and pencils if you fancy a stationary stocking!

A Felt Dog for Every Occasion

This year I've been expanding my felt dog business by producing dogs for different occasions.

I made a dog on a heart for Valentine's day.

A dog ghost for Halloween.

I even made a dog bride and groom to celebrate my wedding this year.

And of course my Christmas dogs in Santa hats are back for another year.

Check out all my felt dogs, and other animals, in my Etsy shop, and follow along on Instagram @lisasfeltfriends.

Wedding Guest Book

For our wedding guest book I went down an untraditional route, in that I ended up with a wedding guest bag.

The idea came from the tea-towels we used to make at school. It might have happened in your school too. Everyone draws a picture of themselves then they get sent away and printed on a tea towel of the whole school.

Photograph by Paul Summerfield

Being an artist I liked the idea of everyone doing a bit of drawing.
I cut out squares of paper and provided plenty of biros. At the venue, I'd provided a large notice board to be set up on my table easel, with lots of drawing pins for people to display their portrait.

Photograph by Paul Summerfield

It was a lot of fun going through the drawings a few days after the wedding. Not everyone did a drawing and I thought about whether to do their portrait myself, but in the end we decided to just draw Andrew's brother and Nan ourselves so that we at least had all of our family represented.

Once I had all the drawings I scanned them in and edited them as some needed to be a bit darker. Then I arranged them on Photoshop with our names and the date of our wedding in the middle.

I went with the tea towel idea for a bit but then decided to make the drawings into something  I would get more use out of; a canvas tote bag.

I found this Etsy shop to print the bag and sent them the final image of all the pictures put together.

I really love this idea as it's something we'll use every time we go shopping, rather than having a traditional guest book which just sits on a shelf.

Wedding Cards Book

We received some many lovely cards for our wedding that I wanted to do something special with them. I don't remember where I first saw the idea to make them into a book but this was one blog I looked at when I decided to do it.

I gathered together the cards and picked out the shortest one. The really big cards I put to one side and made a second, thinner book with.

I used the smallest one as a template for making the holes to bind the book. I made 5 holes, equally spaced along the fold.

I found it easier to put the fold of the card over a rubber and poke my 'pokey tool' (that's really what it was sold as) through the card and into the rubber. I did this for all of the cards, making sure the template card was in the middle of each card, which I was able to eyeball most of the time.

Next it was time to sew the cards together. A popular method is coptic stitch but I found this video, which is a slight variation on that stitch, which worked for me. Once I'd stitched two or three cards together I started to get the hang of it, which meant I could put Netflix on to help pass the time.

For the book cover I cut the front, back and spine out of mount board and glued them to a piece of fabric, which conveniently matches the colour scheme of our living room.
I also sewed a piece of ribbon to the fabric over the spine of the cover which wraps around and can be tied to keep the book shut.

I glued the back of the last card to the inside of the back cover, and I'd stitched in a blank piece of paper at the start of the cards to stick to the inside of the front cover.

I am so pleased with how this book turned out. I like how it's a streamline solution for keeping the cards and doesn't take up too much space, unlike keeping them in a box or sticking them in a scrapbook.
For the book larger book I made with the leftover cards, I added some blank pages at the front and back which I used to stick in mementos from the day, like one of our wedding invitations and our place cards. I've also thought about sticking photos of our guests to the blank sides of the cards, so there's a lot you could do with this book idea.

Wedding Touches

Now for all the other little details I put together for our wedding.

Instead of a three course meal for our wedding breakfast, we chose to have an afternoon tea. So it seemed only fitting that we had little jars of jam as our wedding favours. Andrew is a big fan of my Mum's strawberry jam so we asked if she would make some to fill almost 70 tiny jars.
I bought the jars from Wilkos which was very affordable, 20 for £3, and they already had gold lids which would match our colour scheme.
The jars also doubled up as the place settings as I made name labels to tie around them, which also made sure everyone took home their own jar as they were all named.

I was excited to use the drawing function on my Cricut to make the labels. I set it to write the names, cut them out, and cut a little hole to thread the string through. I decorated the labels with a bit of washi tape and gold ribbon.

Our venue only allowed real flower petal confetti which we found on Etsy. I got these Itsu cups from the scrapstore many years ago and was pleased to finally have a use for them. I covered them with this pink paper which is appropriately decorated with flower petals.

Photo by Paul Summerfield

For the Order of Events sign I used a thin sheet of wood that I'd found at work and stained it dark brown. I printed out the words and used chalk and a pencil to transfer them on to the wood. Then I used my white Posca paint pen to go over the letters. A lot of people didn't even realise this was a DIY that cost me nothing!

For our card box I decorated a hamper basket. I attached a cards sign which I made by cutting out the letters on my Cricut, sticking them to some brown card along with some ribbon, and then pegging them to some twine which I tied to the corners of the basket lid. I added some fake flowers and a little wooden A and L that I'd painted white and attached chain to.

Photo by Paul Summerfield

I'd been given these 'A' and '&' letters a while ago, before I'd even met Andrew, and had held on to them, knowing they'd come in useful one day. I don't think at the time I thought it would be my wedding day!

It was easy enough to make an 'L' out of thick grey card and then spray it gold, along with the other letters so they all matched. These were displayed on the mantle of a fireplace in the bar of the venue.

Photo by Paul Summerfield

Our venue was styled in a way that meant we didn't need to provide many extra decorations. The things I made just added a bit of personalisation.

Wedding Games

Photo by Paul Summerfield

When planning the wedding, one of the first things we came up with was having games out for guests to play throughout the day. We've been to a few weddings where during that lull between the ceremony and the wedding breakfast it can get a little boring, so we wanted to make sure that didn't happen at ours.

Our wedding venue had a conservatory which was perfect for setting up the games. Although, our wedding day was quite a scorcher and the conservatory got really hot so people took the games outside which worked just as well.

Photo by Paul Summerfield

Here are the games we chose:

Bananagrams, Scattergories and Dobble
These are family favourites and hopefully now many more people's favourites. My bridesmaid Steph has already been out to buy her own Dobble. These games were great for bringing people together, whether it be friends, family, groom's side or bride's side.

Wordsearch tablecloth
My Mum bought this from B&M years ago and we haven't been able to find another one since. It's just a giant plastic sheet with letters printed all over it. This one has all of the countries to find and we supplied crayons to mark them, which meant it could be wiped down to use again.

Coin pusher
Andrew and I are big fans of the 2p machines. We even went to the arcade at the bowling alley on our second date. I can't remember who's idea it was to see if they make smaller versions but we found one on Amazon and had to have it for our wedding.
The machine came with plastic coins but we found using real 1p coins much better. I emptied out my purse, looked down the sofa and, with the help of a friend who manages a shop, had enough coins to play with.

Photo by Paul Summerfield

'Guest' Who
Years ago I'd seen someone had made a personalised Guess Who game and thought it would be perfect for a wedding. I bought an old set from a charity shop for £1.50, which was one of the first things we bought for the wedding last summer. We picked 24 of our nearest and dearest, including ourselves, and I scoured Facebook to find photos of them all. I edited the photos on Photoshop so they were just floating heads like in the real game. I printed, laminated and cut up the photos then slotted them into place. I think it was fun for some of our guests to see themselves in the game and it got handed around serveral people during the day. Two of my bridesmaids used some 'alternative' questions to play like, 'would this person order a lemon and herb at Nandos?' and 'would this person enjoy the surprise aisle at Aldi?'. Not sure how successful that was...

Photo by Paul Summerfield

We also made a quiz for the tables at the reception and people got really into it! We included 20 questions which were very loosely linked to use, like 'Andrew and Lisa went to Seattle for their first holiday. What is the name of Seattle's American football team?'
After the speeches one of the groomsmen read out all the answers and we bought the winning table a round of drinks. It was a great way to get people talking on their table, especially where we'd put people who didn't know each on the same table.

Having the games was such a good idea and I hope it's one of the things that people remember about our wedding in the years to come.

What I Wore for my Wedding

Photo: Paul Summerfield

Let's talk about my wedding dress.

I first saw this dress a good 3 months before Andrew and I were even engaged. I just wanted to know what was out there for when the time came.

It was on the Dorothy Perkins website in their bridal section, which I didn't even know was a thing, for only £80! If it had been in my size I would have ordered it straight away.

Photo: Paul Summerfield

I kept looking around at other dresses, we did then get engaged, and then I found out the Dorothy Perkins dress was on sale! It still wasn't in my size but I ordered the next size up knowing I'd have to get it altered. But since the dress was only £67 I'd have plenty to spend on alterations.

Photo: Paul Summerfield

I found a nice lady in my town who came to my house for the fittings and then took the dress away with her. £40 later and the dress fit.
My thrifty side was thrilled with a wedding dress for just over £100, and I was not ashamed to tell pretty much every guest at the wedding about the price tag.

After looking for some plain, white shoes with not too high of a heel, and failing, I took my sister's recommendation and went to Deichman where I found the perfect pair, in the sale, for only £8.99!
My glitzy bridemaid Lizzi thought they could do with a bit of bling to make them more special for the wedding and bought me a pair of shoe clips from Filigree Bridal on Etsy.

Photo: Paul Summerfield

For my accessories I found this dainty necklace in Accessorize for the grand total of £4. Another sale item! My hair clip is actually a brooch that belonged to my Grandma, which I attached a hair grip to with wire. She passed away over 10 years ago so it was nice to have a little tribute to her on the day, and, if I was going for tradition, it would definitely have been the something old.

Photo: Paul Summerfield

 I got lots of compliments about my dress and I'm very pleased with my choice. Especially since it got up to 33 degrees on the day so I was thankful for a light and airy dress.