DIY: Bottlecap magnets

I am sure you all have been impatiently waiting for a DIY project! Me too.

Now that we are 253 days from the wedding, it makes sense that I can start crafting!!!

DIY Project 1: Save the date magnets

First, sending out save the dates and doing it fairly soon is important to us since most of our invited guests will be from out of town. Sending it out enables everyone to know exactly when and where the wedding will be so people can save money and/or personal days to take off from work. Also, everyone will get the address for our wedding website for traveling and hotel information and the address for this blog so more people can follow along.

Now let’s start crafting! It is very popular to have a magnet incorporated into your “Save the Date” and I jumped on that bandwagon with no shame. Magnets are fun! Slap it on your fridge and you have a constant reminder of the fun times that lay ahead. I didn’t want the actual save the date to be a magnet. I wanted the magnet to be something cute on its own so that people might reuse it. My mom and aunt make super cute bottle cap jewelry and I thought, well let’s turn bottlecaps into magnets!

Materials needed:

Bottle caps, I used flattened ones from a seller from Etsy, fizzypops, so that they will better fit into the envelope.

Bottle cap epoxy stickers from fizzypops (trust my family, they are much easier to work with than glaze)

1in circle punch

Glue dots, the mini permanent dots, the super thin permanent dots, and also removable regular size dots, one each for 1 magnet. I bought mine from amazon.com.

Magnets

A helper, such as your beautiful and generous mother and fiance

• Create image that fits into a 1in circle. I know you can use Adobe to make beautiful images but I am much more comfortable with power point so here’s my cheat method of making images. I used fonts from dafont.com and I arranged the text boxes like I wanted and made it very big and then grouped all the text boxes together. I then saved the image as a picture by left clicking and selecting “Save as picture”. Next, open powerpoint again. Resize the “slide” to be a standard 8.5 x 11 in sheet of paper. That way you will be working with the image and know exactly how it will print on a regular sheet of paper. (I changed the dpi of the image using Irfanview before the next step to make sure the image looked sharp.)  Insert the image and then copy and paste the image onto the slide over and over leaving enough space between the images so you can punch non-overlapping circles. I spaced the image too close together even though I was thinking about it, so be careful not to do this! Then, click “Save as” under “File” and save it NOT as a powerpoint file, but as a pdf file. Saving it as pdf file ensures that the size of your sheet and images remains the same when you print.
• Print on 80lb cardstock. We used a glossy paper and had it professionally printed on a laser printer at my mom’s work. But, I am sure your home printer and nice cardstock from amazon.com would work fine. We are using our home printer for the actual save the dates.
• Make your mom punch out all your images. My mom was really patient with me as the first tinge of bridezilla came out. I wanted the images centered in the bottle cap, so I kept telling her to re-punch ones that weren’t centered. Wes and my mom said it was all in my head and that not every single one had to be perfect but I think it is pretty obvious. 

See? Would you want to be the person who got a non-centered magnet? I think not… 

Quizzes by Quibblo.com | SnapApp Quiz Apps

Wes and I have a friendly competition going on, so this poll is most interesting to us. J

• Stick the CENTERED punched out image onto one of the epoxy caps with the image facing down. Press firmly all around to remove any air pockets between the cap and the paper. The epoxy caps are sticky already so just place and press.
• Put an ultra-thin glue dot into the bottle cap.
• Put your punched out image with the epoxy cap into the bottle cap.
• Put a mini glue dot onto back of the bottle cap. I liked that these little things were stuck between two sheets. I peeled off one sheet, push the glue dot on the bottle cap and then peeled off the second sheet. So easy.


Excuse my icky nails.


• Take one of your magnets and push it on! A word on magnets: I hate magnets that are too weak to stick to anything. It was really important to me that the magnet would actually stick to our guests’ fridges. So, I bought neodymium magnets. I used these ones from magnets for less. Lots of fun to play with, very small and great holding power!

• Use the removable glue dot to attach the magnet to your Save the Date so it won’t slide around in the envelope.
• Seeing that our save the dates are going to be a bit bulky because of the magnet, we ordered durable 70lb envelopes from actionevenlope.com. We will also get the save the dates hand stamped at the post office so your magnets will arrive intact.

Three hours of my life tops and you get such a fun little thing!

Photos from a booth on the Jersey Shore

Now we need the actual Save the Date… but first the very long process of designing those suckers.



So far, I love my photographer!

I know in my last post that I left things off in a "we'll see" way. However, since writing that post, it has been confirmed that I definately love my photographer. For the following reasons:

1) After signing our contract, she sent over a hard copy.... just look:

How freakin' cute is that? This stationary is an example of how wonderful her products are, including her photo albums. She has such amazing style.

2) She addressed all my concerns in our contract with no hassle. Example: She agreed to drive beyond our contractually agreed limit for our engagement photos to Clarkston, MI for no extra charge. Where I grew up! She usually shoots in Birmingham, MI and it is a very cute city, but it has no meaning for Wes or I. Clarkston is where my family is from...my dad grew up in the same house I did. It has a pretty and quaint downtown area and it served as a nice backdrop for, hopefully, some really wonderful pictures. The point wasn't to have Clarkston as the main feature of our photos, but being somewhere we considered to be one of our homes made us feel more comfortable.

3) You can probably tell by the tense I am writing in, but we have had our engagement photos taken and it was a lot of fun to work with Kristen! We don't have the photos yet... sad face. I keep checking her blog every day to see when she is going to put up some sneak peeks. I was saying before in my last "photography" post that I felt that if I gave Kristen something cool to work with that she would respond to that. Well, she did. Of course, she did all the typical Kristenesque shots. (Grabbing Wes's arm while I smile at the camera and Wes looks off into the distance while contemplating our future...so dramatic.) But, she also took pics of us on the swings, holding pumpkins from the local market, holding a cupcake from the local cupcake shop AND using some props that we brought along. Such as:

Part of what makes us a fun couple (in my opinion) is that we have completely different viewpoints on 99% of everything. Yes, that makes us fun. Well, at least interesting. Yet, ultimately we both want the same things... family, adventure and world peace. How we are able to reconcile our differences to be even better people has helped make this almost 4 year relationship more rewarding than I thought possible. So, we used these silly flags and a few other things to represent those sentiments.

I can't wait to show you some of the engagement photos!

*all images are personal photos

How to book your photographer like a crazy bride

By far, the most important expense on our wedding day for us is photography. The cake will be eaten, the invitations hopefully admired for least 1 minute (please!) but then tossed aside… my dress carefully stuffed away only to be pulled out when I am feeling nostalgic. But, the photos will remain. I promise to pinch every penny for everything else, but I have to absolutely have photos that knock my socks off.

This past summer, I was working on the major components of the wedding. I met with my first-pick wedding photographer with my mom and to-be mom. I knew going into the meeting that she was outside of our photography budget. But, I love love love her photos. I figured I would try and see if she would come down a little and she did based on that were adding a few extra goodies to our package. The moms also very much liked her photos. Her photos are crisp while still being romantic. I probably would have booked her right away, but a few things gave me pause. 1. She was very friendly! However, she wasn’t overly zealous and all warm and fuzzy – more business-like. Which is good but not what I was expecting. 2: I felt like many of the weddings she photographed all looked a little bit alike. I think it is because her customers have beautiful weddings but they lack personalization… in my opinion. So, my big question is: Can I get her to shoot my wedding with a bit more creativity?

It seemed like I had to definitely meet with another photographer in order to make a decision. I had an appointment booked with another photographer for July 3. However, the goal was to meet with three photographers, so I could feel like I was making an educated decision before spending tons of money. I found a few more photographers whose photos were also fabulous, but one by one they all got back to me saying that they were booked already! WHAT! We were still 1 year away…..how can they be booked!?!! Sad face. All those stupid wedding checklists in books, magazines and online say to book your photograph 9 months to go. Lies. All lies.

Naturally, I freaked out. All I could think was WHAT IF MY FIRST-PICK PHOTOGRAPHER GETS BOOKED BEFORE I MAKE A FREAKIN’ DECISION?! One part of me was telling me that I needed to wait until July 3^rd to meet with another photographer to ease my concerns about creativity before making a rash decision. But the other part (the crazy part) was telling me to but a deposit on that photographer NOW. What to do!?

Sigh. I gave into my craziness and emailed the 1^st-pick photographer to book her before I had met with the other photographer. Whatever. I know that I am ridiculous, but I also knew that I would be happy with her photos and she is (sort of) close to our budget.

The good news is that because we had to work out a contract I still had time to meet with the July 3^rd photographer.  (I did feel slightly guilty for meeting with another photographer even though I had told photographer #1 I would book her.) Wes and I went to the second meeting and it gave us a lot of think about, but we still felt that we had made the best decision going with photographer #1.

So without further ado… Kristen Taylor of Birmingham, MI will be shooting our wedding!

All photos from Kristen Taylor Photography Blog

Swoon.

I feel that if I make our wedding fun and unique, then Kristen will respond to that. Now, I have to make all of you promise to smile and not be talking on your cell phone in all my photos!

What do you think should be the most important thing to spend money on? Would you book somebody without meeting with anyone else?