Brooch Necklace

Today I'm here to share a necklace I made my Mom for her birthday.

Mom had seen some necklaces recently made from two or three strands of beads and a brooch.  She has a few pretty brooches she’d like to wear more often, so she asked me to see what I could come up with.

I think you all know by now that my favorite color is “Bonnie Pink”.  In the same line of thought, my Mom has “Janet Blue”, which is kind of a medium cornflower blue.  

I put together a fun mix of beads in “Janet Blue”, creating a three-strand necklace she can either wear alone or accented with her silver dogwood pin.  I love how artsy and fun it looks – perfect for Southern California!

Happy Birthday Mom! 

Bonnie Projects

Wedding Wednesday: Mismatched Coral Bridesmaid Dresses

You know how some people just have a color?  Mine is "Bonnie Pink"!

The night we got engaged, I was wearing a Bonnie Pink dress.  My mother-in-law asked me mere hours after the proposal if I knew what my colors would be, and I just held out my dress and said YEP! 

"Bonnie Pink" doesn't translate for most people though, so in real life, it's a pinky shade of coral.  And of course it was one of my wedding colors!  I couldn't leave Tommy out though, so I threw in Navy as a nod to him.

My bridesmaids were at crazy different stages in their lives - high school, college, grad student, young professional, and ranged from 15-27 years old.  I wasn't comfortable pushing a pricey dress on them, and I was 100% certain that a dress a 27 year old young professional would like would be pure torture for the younger bunch.

Besides, I loved that whimsical look of mismatched bridesmaids dresses.

I've seen a number of blogs on the wedding sites lamenting the challenge of a perfectly mismatched bridal party, so I have a few tips!

First up, I looked for ideas and pinned about 500 of them to my Coral Bridesmaids Dresses Pinterest board.  I added prices and links to where they could be purchased, so that the girls could go with any of these they might like.  (Note: Nobody ordered anything off my Pinterest page, but it was fun to make!)

Then I put a few of the best examples in a document with some easy rules:

1. Pinky-coral in color
2. Knee length
3. Sleeveless or strapless
4. Not jersey knit
5. Not slutty
6. Something you feel comfortable and pretty in!

I emailed the doc to the girls, and let them choose from there!  Style, fit, price, ... all up to them.

Easy, right?  Wrong!

Everyone was really concerned that the color wouldn't be right, or that I wouldn't like it.  At the same time, it was early spring and coral dresses weren't on the racks yet.  Slowly but surely everyone found awesome options (especially after introducing them to online shopping!), but it took a while.

To everyone's surprise, they looked amazing together!  They suited everyone's personality, body type, and budget.

The dresses were from Macy's, Banana Republic, TJ Maxx, Ideeli, and more, and ranged from $20 - $120.  My Mom did the alterations, saving the girls a few extra bucks along the way.  In some photos, the mismatched bridesmaids dresses kind of look like ombre bridesmaid dresses.  Still fun!

For shoes, I asked them to do a nude to medium brown leather - patent or natural.  I just wanted them to be comfortable in whatever shoes they chose!  I figured these wouldn't stand out too much, and they'd be able to wear them again.

Do you like the mismatched dress trend?  Have you seen it turn out disastrously?  Share your stories in the comments!

Bonnie Projects

Super Easy Mini King Cakes

It's a snow day here in DC!  I wanted to make a special breakfast since I had a little free time.  With five inches of snow on the ground, I needed to make do with what we had.

We celebrated my mother-in-law's birthday last night with a special-request homemade King Cake.  It was delicious, but unfortunately none of the leftovers came home with us!

Still craving King Cake, I decided to try my hand at making a breakfast version with stuff we already had.  It came out awesome, so I'm sharing it with you!

Ingredients:

• 8-pack Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
• 2 T melted butter
• 5 T sugar
• 1 t cinnamon
• 1 c powdered sugar
• 2 T water
• 1/2 t vanilla

Method:

• Preheat oven to 375 (350 for dark or nonstick pan)
• Unroll the dough and separate into 8 triangles
• Brush each triangle with melted butter
• Combine sugar and cinnamon and scatter evenly over the triangles
• Loosely roll triangles
• Bake for 11-13 minutes or until golden brown
• While rolls are cooling, combine water and vanilla
• Slowly add liquid to powdered sugar, mixing with a whisk (don't add it all at once!); add just enough liquid to make a gooey mixture
• Drizzle/spread glaze over the rolls
• Top with colored sugars
• Serve warm (or microwave) with a fresh cup of coffee!
• Enjoy!

Start with crescent rolls

brush with melted butter

sprinkle with cinnamon sugar

bake at 350 for 11-13 minutes

glaze and top with colored sugars

serve warm with a fresh cup of coffee and enjoy!

Bonnie Projects

Wedding Wednesday: Cloth Napkin Wedding Favors

I’ve been using cloth napkins for years.  I love that they’re beautiful, do a better job than paper, and best of all, don’t create waste (I top off any load of laundry with a few used napkins).

I wanted to share this lifestyle choice with our wedding guests.  I was averse to the idea of creating a mountain of trash from our wedding.  I was also averse to the idea of renting napkins for $1.00 each!  Thus was born the idea of making our own cloth napkins, and giving them to guests as a favor.  I was also pretty excited about how they’d jazz up our tables.

My Mom and I collected a variety of cotton fabrics in my coral color scheme, including some beautiful batiks.  She got about four napkins per yard of fabric, leaving an 11" remnant to play with later.

We used the remnants for pennants or saved them for future quilts.  I'm really excited about repurposing fabric and ribbon from the wedding into quilts, crafts, cards, etc.  Reuseability was a big motivator as I was choosing decor and stuff for the wedding.

Mom cut 17" squares with a square ruler and rotary cutter and sewed a rolled hem with the serger along each side to give them a professional finish. By starting with a neat edge, she didn't have to cut away fabric with the serger and didn't waste any inches.  Using the same thread on all the napkins helped make them cohesive.

I washed the napkins to remove any sizing or residual manufacturing chemicals, and meticulously ironed them.  My fabulous maid of honor painstakingly folded them to fit around our menus.

So that guests would know to keep them as a wedding favor, I wrote a short poem for the top of the menu:

Use this napkin for cake or for tears,
then take it home and reuse it for years.
Over dinner with loved ones, remember this night,
And say a sweet blessing for this husband and wife.

The set-up folks put the menu in upside down (the poem was designed the show at the top, not the menu, but oh well!)

cloth napkins as wedding favors

I truly hope that people took them home and that they do reuse them (and think of us!) for years.  There were several dozen leftovers and extras.  My thoughtful aunt had the brilliant idea of washing them all the day after the wedding.  She definitely saved us from finding a box of moldy and ruined napkins months afterwards.

And hey, these are so pretty that I don't mind having lots of wedding favors hanging around!

Book Signing Earrings

I am so proud of my Grandma Barbara!!!  At 85 years young, she has published her first novel!  It's an excellent read, and reminds me of some of my favorite novels by Barbara Kingsolver.  The Shoe Tree was a real tree in New Mexico - many of my family members have driven by it over the years, but none of us learned the others had seen it until my grandmother wrote about it.

The Shoe Tree by Barbara Wright

The novel is about two young women who overcome abusive relationships, and through friendships with loving people, learn to trust, love, and live again.  Check out the ad in my sidebar! 

As part of the debut, she's doing a few book signings at local bookstores.  My Mom picked up this beautiful blouse for her to wear, and asked me to make matching earrings.

 

I dug through my stash of beads and found the perfect match in some purple freshwater pearls.  I made small clusters of them for the earrings.  I think they're pretty fun!  They kind of match the book cover, too...

Congratulations to my Grandma Barbara on her book!

Bonnie Projects

Wedding Wednesday: Chair Ribbons

We used ribbons as our table runners, and I thought it would be fun to use them on our chairs, too, to jazz them up!

This project was insanely easy!  All I did was cut lengths of ribbons!

I wound them around paper towel tubes to keep them from getting wrinkled, and put them in labeled ziploc bags for safekeeping.  The set-up folks tied them onto the chairs.

Having special chairs made us feel special and added to the decor.

Chair ribbons for the bride and groom

Bonnie Projects

I dyed my wedding reception dress!

Eeek, I did it!  After months of agonizing (I started thinking about this in October) over whether it would ruin the dress, I finally decided to go ahead and dye my wedding reception dress.

I loved the style, the fit, the pockets - everything!  But it's simply inappropriate to wear an ivory cocktail dress to many events.  A cocktail dress would be great for a bridal shower or wedding, but you'll be talked about mercilessly ("bless her heart"), if you show up in ivory.

So I decided to go for it!

The tag indicated that the dress was polyester, with some silk on just the flower doodads.  Polyester is infamous for not taking dye very well, especially RIT.  Jacquard Products (www.jacquardproducts.com, 800-442-0455.) offers a special polyester dye, called iDye Poly, so I went with that.  They also have awesome detailed instructions for first-timers.

I chose iDye Poly Blue dye - I figured if it was super light, a dingy medium, or the color shifted (sometimes you get a neighboring color instead of what you bargained for), I would still be OK.  I thought baby blue, purple, or turquoise green were all OK with me.  Also, the polyester dyes only come in 8 colors, so there weren't many options.

{1,2,3,4,5,6}

The directions say to simmer your garment on the stove throughout the dye process.  I was worried the polyester would melt, but my engineer Dad assured me it would need to be around 600 for that to happen.  Water boils at 212, so I was good to go.

To remove any dirt and oils from the dress (dye won't take to dirty fabric), I washed it in a Professional Textile Detergent that I ordered from Dharma Trading the last time I dyed stuff.  I took it out of the washer before the final spin cycle so it would be fully saturated - ready for the dye bath.

Meanwhile, I brought water to a boil on the stove.  They recommend not using your dye cookware for food afterwards, so instead of sacrificing one of our nice pots, I picked up a giant one for $20 at our Korean grocery store.  This was a double bonus since I also got fresh BiBimBop for dinner.  I did sacrifice some tongs.  I also suggest trying a thrift store, but ours didn't have anything as big as the vat I required.

I made sure to cover the counters and backsplash well so I wouldn't have a blue disaster in my kitchen.

Once boiling, I added the color packet (super easy, it just dissolves and it zero-mess) and the color intensifier (comes in the kit with the dye) to the water.

I cut a flower off the dress and swished it in the dye to see what would happen.  This entire time, I had in my head that the dress would turn out light blue.  Silly Bonnie, this is iDye Poly!  The material was definitely loving the dye.

So I took a deep breath and threw the dress in!  The directions said to boil it for 30-60 minutes, so I set the timer.  After five minutes, it was already indigo!  I gave it 30 minutes anyways, but not any longer because my arm was killing me (you're supposed to constantly swirl and swish it around for even dyeing).

By this time Tommy was home and was a little frightened by his mad scientist of a wife (you know, dancing and stirring and talking a mile a minute)!  He talked me out of using our kitchen sink to drain the dye, and lovingly lugged the giant steaming pot down to the basement and drained it in the utility sink.

It was a good call on his part, because the sink is definitely blue now.  It wasn't pretty before, so it's not a disaster, but be warned!  At this point, the dress looked purple!

I washed the dress in regular detergent in the washing machine, and hung it to dry.  It still smelled like dye, so I ran it through a second time.

I pressed it while wet to get it looking normal again.  Those tucks and folds were a total pain, and it took almost two hours to get it normal-looking again.

The color isn't as vibrant as when I was in the midst of dyeing, but I think it's lovely.

I had psyched myself up for this project to be a disaster, but I really couldn't be happier with the results!  I didn't expect this exact shade of blue, but I like it. 

So there you go, a successfully dyed polyester wedding reception dress, wearable for years to come for all sorts of events!

I immediately wore it to a wedding!  Is it good luck for a couple to wear their wedding attire to other weddings?

Tommy in his wedding suit, and me in my reception dress, now dyed blue!

I'm linking up over on East Coast Creative's Upcycle Week!

Bonnie Projects