DIY Chalkboard Writing

I previously mentioned that I DIYed the chalkboard signs that we displayed at our wedding, and I promised I would share how I did it.  I had fallen for some of the chalkboard displays I had come across on Pinterest.  Like this…

and this…

I really wanted to have a of couple signs like this at our wedding.  If you remember, I did do some chalkboard writing for our Save the Dates…

But, I wanted to get a little fancier with the font this time around.  Here’s the thing though. When I write freehand, my words tend to slant weird ways and end up different sizes looking a little wonky.  Then, I remembered tracing in art class in elementary school.  Don’t you remember coloring the back side of a piece of a paper in a certain shape with pencil, and then tracing the outline of the shape with a clean sheet of paper underneath?  Remember?  Well, I do, and it got the gears in my brain moving.  I figured, I can do that on a chalkboard, but instead of using pencil just use chalk!

Before I got my tracing on, I had to get a chalkboard.

Sandy found this guy at Hobby Lobby, and it just so happens to be the same exact one that I saw in my inspiration photo from Pinterest. How about that?

Since this was meant to be the welcome sign, I decided to go with “Welcome to the Mace Edmondson Wedding May 10, 2014”.  Pretty straightforward, I think.  I searched online for some free fonts that I liked and decided on Villa Didot and Edwardian Script.  I then typed it up in a Word document and printed that sucker out.

You can’t really tell here, but I used legal sized paper.  I did so, because I needed my words to be a bit longer to fill the width of the chalkboard, and I wasn’t looking to do any cutting and pasting.  Next, I just cut all of the words out…

Then it was time to cover the back with chalk…

It’s hard to see the chalk, because it is white, but I made sure I covered the entire back of the paper with it.  From there, I taped the paper onto the chalkboard, chalked side facing down.  I made sure the positioning was straight and where I wanted it before taping.

Now, it was time to do some good old tracing.  I used a sharp pencil and was sure to press hard enough that the chalk on the back stuck to the surface of the chalkboard.  Make sense?

Before taking the paper off, I peeked behind the paper to be sure the chalk was transferring enough to be seen.

Huzzah! It worked.

I used a white liquid chalk marker to go over the traced wording.

Then, I added the fancy shmancy little horizontal lines that were in the openings of the letters…

And, BOOM, I had my first word.

I then covered the back of the remaining words in chalk and taped them on the chalkboard.

I completed the remaining words with the same steps and here she is…

Oh, and it’s a double sided chalkboard, so I did it all over again on the back side.

Wanna see it in action the day of the wedding?

Woot woot!  Welcome to our wedding!

I used the same steps again to make a seating sign…

I used a couple new fonts on this sign.  I stuck with Edwardian Script, but also used Ever After and Matilde.

See it hanging out there at the entrance?

I also made some Reserved signs. Some for the ceremony…

And for the reception tables…

and cookie jar labels…

and a restroom sign…

So, there you have it.  The easy way to make fancy pants chalkboard signs.

 

 

Save the Date

Warning, this is long!

When planning our upcoming wedding I had to decide what kind of save the date I wanted to send out(amongst the many other choices we need to make).  Since I love diying things and saving a buck, I decided to make my own save the dates. Who woulda guessed, right?

I first scoured pinterest and came up with a few examples that I liked.  Here’s the first…

I love a few things about this one. First, I like that you can’t quite see there faces and they are semi cut off.  Second, I love me some chalkboards and lastly, there is a dog, need I say more?  Did you know I like dogs?  Here is the second save the date I was diggin…

Come on people, how could I not love this?  Labs, chocolate and yellow! And the third that inspired me…

Look at these two, so serious!

So as you can tell I was planning to make this a dog photo shoot.  Have you seen my dogs? They might as well be models!  I had a few additional things I had to decide on.  I was stuck between using chalkboards or painted wooden signs, I wanted something simple that just says “save the date, May 10, 2014”.  I ended up going with chalkboards, but I wasn’t able to find anything I really liked that was small enough or light enough to hang on our crazy dogs necks.  Also I could just picture Charlie chewing the chalkboards off of himself and Zack.  I came across a pretty sweet deal for a decent sized chalkboard at Hobby Lobby.  It was a good size and at $6 it was mine!  My first step was to get the wording on the board.  I started working on it and came up with a few options…

Next up…

Justin and I decided this was the better choice.  I even tried adding a bit more information in this style…

We thought this was just a little too cluttered.  Justin even made his own…

Isn’t he sweet? He thinks he’s so funny.

Now that we had this big chalkboard we needed to figure out how we were going to use it.  Sandy told me she had a cute little antique chair that we could set the chalkboard on, then we could have the dogs sit next to it.  This sounded like a much better plan.  It was going to be hard enough to get the dogs to stay still, let alone wear a sign!

We decided to take the photos at Justin’s parents since they have a nice big yard with plenty of options for backgrounds.  Also we had Justin’s brother Alex take the photos, thought that would be a good plan considering he studied film in college.  Here are some of the shots that we got…

Here is one of our picks, Char looks like he’s reading the sign.

Here is another one we chose, they are both actually looking in the same direction, major accomplishment.

We loved this one because Charlie looks so handsome and proper!

This was an accident, but I am so glad Alex got this shot.  We love how close Charlie got to camera and still you can see the sign and Zack.  It’s almost like he’s saying “Please Come!”.

Alex took approximately 50 pictures.  I couldn’t decide between these four above, how could I pick just one?  So I decided to use all of them and let my guests all get different pictures.  It was not an easy shoot though, here are some of the not so great shots…

Looks like we had lost a dog and were about to lose another.

Hey, there’s a hand! Zack refuses to sit, he kept walking around.  We had so much trouble keeping him in place. Char is such a ham, he just works for the camera!

Then here’s another close up of Char man, but Zack is partially cut out so I couldn’t use it!

I also hand made those bow ties, I am pretty crafty folks! Sandy got the babies breath and burlap that I threw together also.  I think these pictures turned out great.  From here I just had to put all 78 of them together.

After having my photos printed all in 4×6, I headed out to the store to get some supplies.  I came home with this…

These are actually confetti flowers that I purchased from Michaels for $3.50 and it came with a ton so it was quite a deal.  I thought I could use them on each save the date as a little add on so it’s not just a picture.

I also picked up a few of these to attach the photos with, they are photo safe, so the photos wont yellow.  I assume that all of my recipients will keep this photo for life, don’t worry guys your photos are safe! At least I know my mom will keep this photo forever!

I also used my trusty paper cutter and of course my hot glue gun.

I also purchased this pretty shimmery ivory paper.  I created a document on our computer that would print two 5×7 cards on one piece of the shimmery cardstock.  That way I could just cut each piece and waste less of this great paper.  I went with 5×7 for the size so the 4×6 photo fit and left a bit of a border. If you can’t read it, on the top it says Vanessa and Justin, on the bottom Flagler Beach, FL. The font I used is called Yellow Peas, that I downloaded.

This is where the paper cutter comes in to the picture.

This is what I ended up with.

From there I added the sticky tabs to the back of the photos in each corner.  They come with a blue peel off backing, as you can see I already peeled the one in the top left hand corner of the first photo.

I then centered the photo on the paper and plopped the photo down in place.

I then placed a small dab of glue on the back of one of the confetti flowers and put one on each save the date.

Voila!

Here are the finished products.

As for envelopes, I went with plain white.  I also used the same font that I used for the save the dates to print each guests name and address on each envelope.

I used a blurring tool as you can see, not really sure if I should display my guests addresses here!

I used these pretty stamps. I love all of the wild Floridian flowers on them!

So those are my save the dates! I love the responses from people as they get them! I also love when people realize that there are different photos out there when they go to another friends house and see a different one!