For the Bride-to-Be

Hi everyone! I went to a staggette for my dh's cousin yesterday. I brought an appetizer, but I was thinking I should bring some sort of gift. I didn't know the protocol for this type of party, but I thought I should bring something...but what exactly? I thought about it and came up with something I thought was a little clever. First, I made the card. I've had this wedding set from H & M stamps called Fairy Tale Weddings. When I saw the set, it was a must-have immediately! Here's the card I made.
Isn't that image precious? I remember on my wedding day looking at myself in my mirror...I had waited a long time for that day and I just loved my dress and I felt like a princess in it! The sentiment stamp is something I've had for a long time from Rubber Stampede. When I saw the sentiment I knew immediately what my gift was going to be...I'll talk about that later. Back to the card. Here's a closeup of the bride.

My LSS, Buffalo Stamps & Stuff, just started to issue challenges this week, and their first one was a tri-fold card. Here is the link to that challenge. I loved Sue's card and decided I needed to try this. Here is my card opened.

I used Very Vanilla for my base and Fall Flowers (SU retired) dp. The blue cardstock is Soft Sky (retired). I chose the blue because of the sentiment, of course! The birds and inside sentiments are from the same H&M wedding set. Here's a closeup of the front sentiment.



And here's a final look at the front of the card. The butterfly is a cuttlebug die. I've added sparkle to the card with a Sakura Star Dust glitter pen. Can you tell I REALLY LOVE this card? LOL!

Now on to the gift. As I said, I didn't know what, if anything, I should bring. I settled on something that literally cost me "pennies". I used one of the My Timeless Templates designed by Lauren Meader for Papertrey Ink for my gift bag called Ready, Set, Wrap. It's the cutest little thing and perfect for my gift. Here's the bag.Please keep in mind that this was the first time I used this template, so I wasn't familiar with it. If I had to do it over, I would have stamped all that white space with a vine of some sort in the Soft Sky ink. As it was, I was making this at 5:00 and had to be at the party at 7:00 and I hadn't showered or done my hair/makeup yet. Still, I think it's pretty darn cute!

Now here was my gift idea. Every bride needs some luck, right? Tradition (at least in my family) has the bride place a penny in her shoe for good luck. I remember my brother giving me a special brand new penny on my wedding day for good luck! It was so sweet of him to think of that it made me cry (I'm tearing up right now, too!). So I thought if I could find a penny from the year she was born (that took some investigating), which I found was 1981, this could be her something old. I managed to find the penny, after much searching through my change jar, and cleaned it with a toothbrush and jewelry cleaner to shine it up a bit (remember I'm on a 2-hour time limit here, too!)! Here's what I did with the penny.


I created the "Lucky Penny" wordart on my computer onto very vanilla cardstock and mounted it on the dp and another scalloped piece of vanilla. I placed some white packing straw on the inside to cusion the penny. This was a big hit at the party. The bride-to-be loved it! This was something that took about an hour to create and pull together. These templates are a blast to use! Have you seen the two new ones Lauren created? I don't know how she manages to top herself each month!

Well, I've gone on long enough. Thanks for stopping in and I hope you enjoyed this LOOOOONG post! I just had to post all these pictures cause this was such a cute project (IMHO!!).