Wedding Favours

I can’t remember how I initially got the idea for these wedding favours-come-table names. But I am always hanging little heart decorations on door knobs and dimmer switches (much to husband’s annoyance), so it probably grew from there.

In my many cuttings from wedding magazines I saw something similar, in that it was a wooden heart that had been decorated . But they were sold for around £4 each and personalised by someone else, and not really done to my taste.

As I love crafting and think weddings are all about the personal touches, I took on the task of making 136 of these beauties myself. That was shortly after we got engaged, leaving me with around 16 months to play with. I had thought it gave me lots of time to go at a nice slow pace. And I did. Two months in and after various test versions I’d settled on the final template. Two months before the wedding and I was still taking it slow, with no more made!

In the weeks leading up to the wedding I (reluctantly) accepted help with the fairly basic task of painting the hearts in the wedding colours before I stamped the rest. Two pairs of hands definitely made things quicker. Husband made a good effort, I did however, have to sack the Maid of Honour from the duty (she stroked the brush in the wrong direction – unforgivable!).

As you will have realised, the hearts come unpainted. I bought sample pots of matt emulsion paint from Homebase(!) as DIY shops seem to have a wider selection of colours than craft stores, and they can even colour match for you. My wooden hearts arrived accompanied with twine which does look good, but I decided to pretty them up with some ivory ribbon. For the front (pictured) my other materials were:
-‘Birds and Nests Rubber Stamps in a Tin’ set by Cavallini Papers, which included a black ink pad.
-My beloved individual alphabet stamps.

The reverse (not pictured) had a background white stamp, and a personalised message stamped in black ink. The materials were:
-Tim Holtz ‘Birdsong’ Cling Stamp, used with an acrylic block (I also used this for my wish tags shown in a previous post).
-A white crafting ink pad.
-A custom stamp from The English Stamp Company, with both our names and the wedding message ‘From the love birds 23-06-12’. I went for the address Stamp, which for the amount of text we used came to £14.95 mounted on a wooden handle.

I got 8cm x 7.5cm hearts on eBay for around 40p each. When you bear in mind that most place names come in at £1 each, you begin to realise that a multi tasking favour like this isn’t just a pretty face!

One of the many things I love about my husband is that he’s good with his hands and can make something out of nothing (like a few girls I’ve heard about but never had the pleasure to meet!). He very cleverly made a device to hang the hearts from for drying. It was made out of a wire coat hanger (original) and enabled me to paint more in one go. As a side note: When writing prompts for this post on the tube I noticed the person next to me looking across my shoulder, the note I’d left myself for later was ‘Husbands hanging device’. I wonder what she thought I was getting up to!

The traditional wedding favour is five Sugared almonds, representing fertility, longevity, wealth, health and happiness. Not one to miss an opportunity for sweets, we had a candy bar too. Colour co-ordinated, of course.

During the reception a few of the guys attached their favour to their jacket button holes which looked cool and was nice for me to see. And now, a couple of months on, it’s lovely to go round to my friends and families houses and see the favours hung and looking pretty. As for mine? They are hanging on my chest of drawers, where husband doesn’t need to worry about them getting in his way!