With that in mind I set to work on creating lots of pretty bits and pieces with a colour theme of blue, white and yellow. It was originally blue and white but despite having bright blue flowers, when I had to add a few more I had to throw another colour into the mix.
By this time I'd actually already made up my blue and white bunting but at the last minute I used some smaller bright yellow ones over the top and 'restitched' only where I needed to. I threw in a few other touches of yellow like balloons and blue AND yellow cake pokes in cupcakes that had blue and yellow swirls of frosting and I think I got away with it.
First up is the bunting. I took these pictures before I added the yellow so apologies you don't get to see the double layered effect. Here I have strings of 1 dozen all neatly bundled up ready to take to the church hall.
And here's how I made them. Obviously I started out with prety paper doilies - I shopped around to get just the right size I wanted.
I used a cream coloured cotton twill tape that was about 1/4" wide and once the tape was loaded into the machine with a longish tail and secured with a few stitches I began folding doilies over the tape with a folded cupcake case centered over that. When I later added the yellow I made sure they were slightly smaller than the blue polka dot cases and just added them in randomly by stsitching over previous stitches.
And that's all you have to it! I guess if you don't have a sewing machine you could still do this using staples or adhesive tape but I love to sew even if it's on paper so I was in my element. Not so with the flowers but that's another post LOL!
And for my cake pokes I used my new envelope board and punched up a whole stack of paper bows. This was actually the first time I'd ever made these and it definately won't be the last. I loved making these!
I found that an easier way to put these together super quick was to staple them in place. The small strip of paper that you use to create the centre of the bow easily covers the staples. I even figured out that I could do this task with the tails in situ too making it even quicker - love the 1, 2, 3 step process of making these bows this way.
Here are the finished bows before theyhave the centre strip in place. Once I covered up the centre all that was left was to curl the tails and reshape the loops, the add them to my toppers.
And here's how they look when they're finished - aren't they ADORABLE!!! If you make them up with a thicker quality designer paper such as Echo Park or Cosmo Cricket they hold their shape really well and can be quite firmly handled to roll them back into shape. I chose several verses of scripture that related to children to add to the back of them. I thought it was somehow appropriate and there were a few positive comments so I'm glad I did it.
I packed them all into a sturdy box I had handy to get them to the reception in one piece. I often use shoe boxes (which are free if you ask nicely) to store handmade items such as this in and with plenty of room they travel quite well.
And just so you can see what they looked like here they are in one of my many cake stands. Hubby bought me this one and I sooooo wish I'd gone back and gotten a few more the same. I could think of a hundred and one uses for having several the same. This is one of the stands that usually comes out at family birthday parties and at Christmas too. I am an avid collector of cake stands. Do you see the yellow and blue mixed swirls of frosting? You load up one half (side) of the piping bag with one colour, bit by bit alternating with the other colour in the other half of the bag. When you pipe you get a 'mixed' swirl. For added luxury I used my daughters gadget that takes the centre out of the cake and piped in sweetened, whipped double cream. mine was scrumptious!!!
Well I have a few more posts to do but might have to settle for just one more tonight. My 1.30 pm stay up to finish my bows and my 7.00 am early start might just about be catching up with me.
Enjoy
Suezie
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