Wedding: DIY clutch and wedding party gifts

We're still (im)patiently waiting for the wedding photos to come back -- we should have them soon, but 4-8 weeks isn't atypical during peak wedding season. In the meantime, I can't share much in the way of wedding DIY since I need photos of the DIY in action on wedding day. There are a few projects that I managed to get photos of, though, since they didn't make much of an appearance at the wedding: the clutch I sewed to hold wedding-day essentials, and the boxes/bags I made to package the gifts we gave our wedding party.


Pleated Clutch

I wanted to have somewhere to put emergency items on wedding day (like aspirin, fashion tape, extra bobby pins, tide pen, my cell phone, sewing kit and scissors, lipstick, etc), but I didn't have any purses that I thought were right for the job. So I decided to sew a clutch in our wedding colors, coral and turquoise. I found a pattern for a pleated clutch on Etsy that I really liked, and bought the kit that came with the pattern, zipper, interfacing, and stabilizer (which makes the clutch firmer than it would be if it were just fabric). The fabric I bought from a place downtown -- I found some coral fabric for the outside, and some turquoise silk for the lining.

This was definitely one of those "if I had known had hard it would be, I'm not sure I would have worked up the energy to do it" projects -- but fortunately, I plunged ahead unaware. It took me a few hours one day and a few more the next (the weekend before the wedding), and was definitely a lot of cutting, ironing, and precision sewing. But the directions that came with the pattern were very helpful, and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out:

Front:

Back:

Inside:

It was the perfect size for holding my various emergency items, and I just left it beforehand on the chair that I knew would be mine during the reception.

Boxes/bags for wedding party gifts

As I mentioned in my first wedding post, we gave small gifts to our bridesmaids and groomsmen to thank them for being such an important part of our celebration, and to wear on the Big Day (but we hoped they would like them enough to wear them again in the future). For the bridesmaids I got statement necklaces in coral/peach tones from Urban Peach Boutique (each necklace was different), and for the groomsmen (and Sam) we got turquoise and gray ties from Express. We liked that the ties have turquoise in them, but it's pretty understated so they seem appropriate to wear for future occasions.

We wanted to give the gifts at our rehearsal dinner, and to wrap them I made simple boxes for the necklaces and bags for the ties out of scrapbook paper. I had gotten a big book of scrapbook paper to use for various wedding-related decor -- it was something like $12 with a coupon at Michael's, and came in handy for so many projects.

To make the boxes, I used this approach. I made 5 "bottoms" in different sizes, and then to make the lids for each one, I just made another box slightly larger to match each bottom. Then I used small cards that I already had on hand with turquoise envelopes to write thank you notes (the convenient thing about picking your favorite colors as your wedding colors is that you're likely to have color-coordinated things on hand already).

For the ties, I needed something a little bigger, so I looked around for tutorials on how to make gift bags out of scrap paper. I ended up using this approach, with a few of my own tweaks to make the bags the dimensions I wanted. I used red ribbon to make the handles.

And there you have it, some easy boxes and bags with the scrap paper I already had to jazz up the wedding party gifts.