KLD Designs - Seattle Portrait and Wedding Photographer

I wanted to post the finished photos of the initials for our cake table.

I bought the letters at Joann Fabrics on sale before Christmas for about $3 each.

Travis and I picked our own images for our letters.

I had them hanging on the wall in our living room just plain. They were a brown craft paper coloring. I put up some really cute photos of Travis and I next to them. Now they are finished and in the same place. Everyone who walks in the front sees them immediately. I LOVE them.

See the original post here http://kld-designsandphoto.blogspot.com/2013/04/star-wars-personalized-initals.html



 

The more things I make the more excited I get for the wedding. I keep coming up with all these fabulous ideas to personalize our Star Wars wedding. It doesn't help I spend all my last moments before sleep browsing Pinterest and Etsy on my Kindle Fire. I am an Etsy junkie. I sell my own items and artwork on the site but I spend at least twice as much as I make on awesome handmade/custom items. If you haven't already joined the Etsy.com you should. However be prepared to lose several hours of your life to just browsing this awesomely addicting site.

I found these hangers on Etsy but couldn't justify spending $25 PER hanger. Plus I wasn't sure I could even engrave them and it not look like a 5 year old made them. Customized/Personalized Bridal Hanger for Wedding Dress - Wooden 

I ended up at Bed Bath and Beyond last week and saw a pack of hangers for less than $10. I had this half thought I could just buy them and but some kind of bow on the them. Easy enough, $2 per hanger and $1 worth of ribbon. Easy inexpensive custom hangers... I got home yesterday and laid out all the materials. Before I even knew what I was doing I had a pencil and a Sharpie marker in my hand. The crazy creative juices started flowing through me faster than I could draw. This is what I ended up with.

Customized Star Wars bridal hangers for the bridesmaids. So far I am most proud of these. There will oh so many more items to come. I need to buy more of these awesome little Vader helmets. I just wish I could find Boba Fett helmets.


I only made 5 hangers not realizing I needed to make myself one.  I am so proud of these, I can't wait to see them all lined up with the dresses on them!!
The bows were easy to make, just standard juke twine and sheer brown ribbon then I glued the helmet on. I did realize when I tied the bows on the metal part of the hang it spun around a lot. I just added a tiny dab of hot glue and solved that problem.



Each hanger was free hand drawn and each is unique. I wanted them all to be just a little bit different. I think I might go back and write the wedding date on the backside of the hanger.










I used just a standard sharpie marker but I think if I ever make these again (which I will for gifts) I would use two different sized markers, one for detailing and one for filling. I suppose I could add some spray clear coating to preserve these a little bit too.

Planning this wedding has been a heck of lot harder than I expected it to be. I am always telling brides not to stress out over the little things. I can officially retract that and fully join the "Crazy Brides Club".

For the last 6 months I have been pinning to my wedding board. Now that it's getting closer to the big day I have been trying to make sure I don't forget anything. I hardly gave a second thought to shoes until I found this idea on Etsy.

The problem with this design was it was waaaay too proper even for me and not a sign of Star Wars.

I could really kick myself for not thinking about taking photos from the start of this venture. Like I mentioned in previous post I didn't plan to blog any of this till after I started making the decorations for the wedding.

Anyway, I bought these plastic rings used for cupcakes. You can find them here for only $3.99 They are the cutest little plastic helmets of Storm Troopers and Darth Vader.

Since they were rings I had to break off the plastic ring part so I can use them on various projects. I bought a few dozen and am using them all over the place. If you are crafty at all you should be able to just cut them off or break them off. I used a pair of pliers and they broke off without damaging the helmet.


I found some really amazing silver platform heels to wear for the wedding. They are ridiculously sexy and glittery, everything a girl like me loves. Downside, still no Star Wars to be seen. I was toying with the idea of buying little charms but that seemed like it would be too small. I remembered the helmets and grabbed my hot glue gun. I glued one of the Darth Vader helmets right in the middle of the brown bows. Voila! Sexy Geeky Star Wars shoes!!
I can't wait to wear them! Gawd I love glitter. I promised Travis I would limit how much I used at the wedding but he said anything I wore was totally game. I also have a pair of flats in the same silver glitter but those wont have a bow or anything. At least I say that now! 
 

The warmer weather we had (even if it was temporary) gave me a chance to go out and take some photos. My favorite session lately is Michelle and Scott. I am so excited they are having a baby soon! I know little meatball (yep they call the baby meatball) will be the sweetest little baby ever. Michelle and Scott have decided to wait on finding out the sex, which will make child birth that much more exciting for them.

Seattle has some really amazing parks and lately I have totally in love with Ravenna Park. Such a big space with little turn outs and a million possibilities. This park really inspires me as a photographer every single visit.





 

I came up with this idea for the cake table to make my own letters. It all started with these giant unpainted letters I found at Joanns like 6 months ago. I bought T and K and they sat on my wall just as decoration till now.

 

So I thought I would start my first blog off on a personal note. Yes it is finally happening. I am getting married this July. Less than 4 months now. OMG

So excited. Travis is the best thing I could ever ask for. Plus he has been amazing through out this whole wedding planning. I knew he would be since the theme was all his idea. He is a Star Wars geek. Lives eat and breathes those movies. So it isnt a far stretch to planning a Star Wars themed wedding.

I really had no idea how difficult it would be to find Star Wars themed wedding items. Like next to impossible for something that doesn't look like a kids birthday party. So what is the next best thing? I am making like 80% of the decorations. I am pretty darn crafty if I do say so myself. I am totally up to the task of making everything.

I am making rable runners out of burlap. I found that a bolt of burlap can be cut in half giving you two pieces lengthwise. Which is the perfect size for a table runner on a large round table. I decided on painting our initials on the ends of each runner because it just looked too plain and of course I am over ambitious when it comes to crafting. I am rotating between tables, half get the standard burlap and half are getting a dark chocolate brown burlap. Since our colors are Eggplant, Chocolate Brown and Spring Green I thought it would be a nice way to tie in the colors. The chocolate brown runners will be too dark for the purple paint so I also bought Spring Green paint for the R. This was my test design and I think it went very well. I printed out the letters using Microsoft word and transferred them onto heavy cardstock. The paint is just regular acrylic craft paint from Joann's Fabric. One thing I noticed was the paint seeped through so I had to put newspaper underneath. I recommend to anyone attempting to paint burlap, don't use sponge brushes. The burlap just dissolved the sponge and I had to switch to a smaller stiffer brush.

Forgive me Photography Gods for I have sinned. I never intended to blog my wedding progress so I didn't take a lot of photos, plus I used my cell phone so the quality blows. When I start on the darker brown I will take much better photos. I promise.