Mr. & Mrs.

As you might be able to tell by our various postings that I tend to pile quite a bit of projects on my plate. Currently we have about 3 or 4 house projects that are all about 90% complete. Well, I tend to forget that there's this huge project coming up in a couple months...our wedding. I also forget that in order to have a beautiful - but - in - our - budget - wedding I've opted to DIY a ton of things to make the ceremony/reception/photo shoots super cute and personable. So I thought I would share them with you guys as we go along - they aren't necessarily house projects, but DIY nonetheless and I do hope to reuse a lot of the things we make (center pieces, favors, decorations, etc) in our own home after the wedding. 

So this weekend B and I drove up to Kansas City for a wedding and we thought we could squeeze in an engagement photo shoot as well. My cousin Amy is a wonderful photographer that has started her own little business that you can check out here & here. I wanted to use her as our photog because we don't like the typical engagement type photo sessions that we've seen done before. Amy's style is more focused on the architecture and 'scene' of the photo which we like because we are super awkward when the photo is just on us. Anyways, I'm really happy we went with her and I can't wait to see the finished project in two weeks. Before the photo shoot B's sister and I got our craft on and picked up a couple of things to use as props. We brought our Antropologie mugs that have our initials on them and we picked up this & sign from Hobby Lobby for 9.99. 

While at Hobby Lobby we saw this cute burlap banner that included 6 panels for 5.99. We thought it would be cute to paint Mr. & Mrs. on it and hold it up in a couple of photos. 

While there we grabbed this paint in Turquoise for 3.99. It's all non-toxic and stuff. 

The stencils we got included every letter of the alphabet plus some symbols (we needed the kit to have an ampersand (&) because the banner only had 6 panels so we couldn't spell out 'and'. This stencil kit was 5.99 and had all the letters and symbols individually which is nice. So I punched out the letters I needed and tested it on some cardboard first.

I used a small makeup applicator sponge to apply the paint. I knew if I didn't tape the stencil down that some paint would seep around the edges and make the lines less straight but I was totally ok with this. I wanted this to be a quick 5 minute project not an hour ordeal so I wasn't too concerned with perfectly straight letters. 

After testing one letter I was happy with how it turned out so I started in on the burlap. I simply laid the stencil over the burlap panel and dabbed my sponge in the paint then applied the sponge on the stencil. The burlap soaked up the paint really well so I didn't need much to get good coverage. 

With the '.' at the end of the R. and S. I just used the corner of a brush. Again I wasn't concerned with it being perfectly round or anything so I just kind of dipped and dabbed. 

Also we noticed in the packet for the panel it included metal rings to use for the end pieces but I guess we weren't thinking about what was going to hold all the ones in between together. So Mal dug around and found some teal ribbon that we ran through the rings of the panels and tied off on the ends. I will probably switch this out for twine when we use it for the wedding to make it a little more rustic. 

And luckily for you Mal snapped this sneak peak picture with us and our banner from the photo shoot we had on Saturday. This is from the Kaufmann Legacy Gardens near the Plaza in Kansas City. This place is amazingly beautiful and free. It's very Alice in Wonderland style. 

So expect to see a little more wedding-esque projects being posted here for the next couple months, 68 days to go. Crazy. Also please excuse my snarky face. I'm sure I was just trying to find a balance between serious and yet still smiling...this is why we don't take professional pictures. They won't all look like this I hope promise.