DIY Ring Bearer Pillow

We are in the process of buying a house and it has been extremely stressful.  Today we had to move the closing date while we sort out some questions about the mortgage, which is disappointing.  But better than feeling like we were pushed into making a quick decision.  I needed a little escape, so I sat down at the sewing machine and decided to get the ring bearer pillow made for our upcoming wedding.

I'm really new at this whole blogging thing, and of course I didn't even think about writing a post about making the pillow until I was all finished.  I did have enough scraps to put together a second one and take a few pictures along the way.

Materials:
Piece of fabric approximately 18" x 9"
A few feet of two types of ribbon
A few feet of Jute cord
A few feet of lace

Sewing machine
Hot glue gun


I made my pillow with scrap fabric I had.  It doesn't take much.

The first one I cut to 9"x9" and the second I only had enough to cut 2 8" squares.  Both turned out to be nice sizes in the end.

After cutting, it's just a matter of sewing the edges of the pillow, leaving a hole so you can stuff it. 

I stuffed the pillow and then it just needed closed up.  The proper way to do this, of course, is to sew it shut by hand.  That's what I did with the first one, but the second one I didn't feel like putting that much effort into it, so I cheated and used some hot glue to close it up.  It actually worked pretty well and you can't see that it was hot glued, but that may not be the case with other types of fabrics.

Then I cut some ribbon that was long enough to overlap in the back and I glued it on with hot glue.  (This is also the point where I glued my fingers and OUCH!  That stuff was hot.)  Then I did the same with some lace over the ribbon and used hot glue to attach it as well.

Then I made a bow, making sure to leave the strings of Jute longer than the lace and ribbon, that is the string that will be used to tie the rings on.

I put hot glue across the back of the knot and attached it to the pillow.  Now I have two cute little ring bearer pillows!

Removing Engravings from Wedding Cake Knife & Server

Currently I'm in the midst of planning a wedding.  And my parents have told us "we paid for the first one, this time you are on your own!"  And I don't blame them.  So the wedding is going to be almost entirely DIY and simple since I'm working with an EXTREMELY limited budget.  Even though it will be simple, I still want to be able to do many of the traditional things.  And having a cake and doing the whole "cake cutting" thing is on that list.  BUT there was no way I was going to go out and buy a new cake knife and server set.  Last time I had an engraved set made.  They were nothing fancy, but I still was NOT about to spend even $20 to get a new engraved set.  My fiance also had a set from a previous marriage and they were beautiful.  However, they were also engraved.  So we had two sets of servers and knives and both were completely useless.  The set he had was made of stainless steel from a popular personalization place, which we will call "Stuff Forgotten" as my significant other likes to call it.  We did check with "Stuff Forgotten" to see if there was anything they could do to change the engraving, but as expected, they could not. He doesn't even remember the cake cutting part of his first wedding, so it didn't bother me at all to consider using them if we could fix them.  Since we had nothing to lose, I decided to try to remove the engraving myself!  We stopped at Menards and picked up some sandpaper.  I already had some metal surface sand paper at home that had a coarse, medium and fine grit paper included.

I wish I'd taken better pictures before I started and along the process, but I didn't have a blog or a post about it in mind before I started.  Nor did I know if this was even going to work!

 The knife had their initials on it and the server had their names and the wedding date.  I took a piece of the "coarse" sandpaper, wrapped it around a block of wood and started working on it.  I made sure to only sand in one direction because I knew I would like to leave it with a matte or "brushed" type finish.  It took a lot of elbow grease, but after some effort, the letters were finally gone.  For a time you could still see the engraving even though it felt pretty smooth and could not feel the engraving anymore.  I just kept working at sanding it.  Then to smooth it out a bit I used the "fine" grit and then the 400 grit paper dipped in just a small amount of water.  I decided I liked the finish as it was at this point and left it alone.

 And now we have a beautiful cake service set to use for the wedding!  I'm so excited about how they turned out.  One more wedding item done and it only cost $5 to do and I have plenty of sandpaper left for future projects!

*Disclaimer:  I cannot guarantee this will work for you or not ruin the engraved item.  But if it is something you have nothing to lose over, give it a shot.   

Blog Launch

Welcome to Crafty Mom, PhD!  I've wanted to start a blog for quite some time.  It is usually when I try finding some sort of tutorial online and come up with nothing. I generally have several projects going on and this will be a place to share them!  

I want to start by introducing myself. My name is Jenny and somehow life took me to graduate school where I earned a PhD in Chemistry. But my heart has always been at home. After finishing school, I stayed home with my kids (I have two of them) for a few years. That all changed when I went through a divorce and a job became a necessity. 

I'm a rather frugal person, and being divorced with two children, it is extremely important to me to avoid spending money on things that are not necessities.  Luckily I love to create things. I bake, sew, knit, crochet, paint, and try my hand at whatever crazy idea I get. I am someone who would rather try to make it myself and figure out how-to instead of paying someone else.  

So watch for posts about recipes, crafts, DIY, kids activities, and so on.  I can't wait to share my endeavors!