Wedding Gifts

This past weekend my husband and I traveled all the way to Chester IL (the birthplace of Popeye the Sailor man) to attend the wedding of one of my sorority sisters. It was a beautiful wedding, and my first since becoming an avid DIY-er. Naturally, I made gifts for the bride and groom, using ideas gathered while perusing Pinterest.

The first was a set of hanging dish towels and the second was a really cute piece of art to commemorate their wedding. I loved the dish towel idea and will soon make a set for my own kitchen. They are so cute and cheap to make. You start by buying a set of dish towels (or I suppose you could use some that you already have.) I bought the towel set that the bride requested from Bed Bath and Beyond so it was a little pricy, but I am sure if you went to Wal-Mart you could get some for cheaper these were $9.99/pack of 4. 

I then went to Joanne’s fabric and got 1/4^th of a yard of fabric, used for the hanger part, in the colors of the bride’s kitchen. I was also able to score almost a yard of green fabric and fleece from the remnant bin, making my total fabric purchase about $5. You can find the tutorial for how I made the dishtowels here. 

The Materials 

Cost Break down

Finished Product 

Fabric and Fleece: $5

Dishtowels:  $9.99   

Buttons: Free (already had)

Total: $14.99 or $1.87/dishtowel 

 The second gift idea was found here. I was a little shocked by the price of $60 for something I knew I could make for way cheaper. Not only was this a cute idea, it was also an opportunity to see what the real cost could be for such a gift.

The Materials 

 We found a piece of wood from the scrap pile at Home Depot and had it cut into a perfect square. We took it home and spray painted it black. We then found an outline of the state of IL online and blew it up in Microsoft Word to a size that would fit on the square. Then we taped it to our newly painted piece of wood and started nailing. It did take my husband almost 3 hours to nail all the nails (117 of them) into place so after some consideration I could see that most of the price that I saw online was for labor. When all was done we ripped out the paper and started stringing which only took me about 5 minutes. We then asked my amazing mother-in-law to write the couple’s name and date of their wedding on black paper, which we attached to a white background before adhering it to the wood. Her hand writing is way better than mine so it added that extra cute touch.

Finished Product

Cost Break Down

Wood: $0.54

String: $1.99

Nails: $2.69

Spray Paint: Free (already had)

Total: $5.22

Before we entered the reception we remembered that we forgot to take a picture of the finished product so in the beautiful sunlight with my husband’s shirt and tie as a background we snapped a quick picture. Well while sitting at our table we were describing what we made and tried to show the picture to some of my friends we discovered that the memory stick had been loose.  So not wanting to post this without an after photo we snuck over to the gift table took our gift back to our table and as sneaky as possible took a picture of the gift before placing it back in the gift bag and back on the gift table. Talk about the wrong place and time to do something. 

Side note about the couch: It is almost completed, but sadly not at my must-be-finished date of November 7^th I have to wait till I can catch a free minute of my husband’s time to help flip the couch so we can staple everything to the bottom. That’s right, I have everything done except for stapling the fabric to the bottom of the couch. We are so close to being able to check this project off my list.