Hindu Wedding Favors

I was given the opportunity by wedding planner Carmen, owner of A Beautiful Wedding, to make hard candy mint covers for a couple having a traditional Hindu wedding here in town.

After she consulted with the bride-to-be, she forwarded a Ganesh with instructions to design 250 candy wrappers; one half in teal with the other half in hot pink. It was a definite challenge of my abilities as the image was a very low resolution but with the aid of PhotoPosPro, a free photo-editing software, I was able to recreate the piece in a higher resolution that I used to design a few samples for Carmen to show the bride.

Revised designs went back and forth a few times but the end result was a hit. Immediately, printing, cutting, and assembling the 250 pieces began. It was a bumpy ride as my printer would hiccup between printing pieces, frustrating me to the point of grabbing my hair and yanking so as not to gather the printer in my arms, stomping to the back door and heaving it into the yard. I later found out my printer isn't fond of mass printing high resolution.

Finally, all 250 mint covers were assembled. I proudly handed them over to Carmen then watched the day of the wedding come and go, and when pictures of it appeared in the Lawrence Journal World, I wondered about the guests' responses to my design.

Carmen wrote assuring me the bride was overjoyed with them. Later,I received an email from the wedding photographer, Loraine McCall of Mojica Photography, in regards to mentioning Miller's Wrapped Expression in her blog (link).

"I did take at least one image of them! I thought they were an adorable touch next tot the cakes! I will be sure to add  that (a mention and picture) once I process that image."

At last look, the mention wasn't there. Despite that, you should go take a look at the beautiful photography by Loraine. From what I can see, A Beautiful Wedding did a fantastic job. We all should be patting ourselves on the back.

Make Flowers Out of Used (and Unused) Dryer Sheets

I needed to make a floral topper to finish off my cake slice favor boxes cake that is going into Madame Hatter's gift shop in Bonner Springs, Ks. It wasn't difficult to find the instructions on the Internet. You can see the results to the left. Tissue paper and accordian folding resulted in the colorful, fluffy topper.

While folding clothes one day, I found the used dryer sheet and was preparing to throw it into the trash but found myself staring at it. Why couldn't I make a flower out of it using the tissue folding method? But that's not what I started out doing. Instead, I decided to loosely roll it to hopefully end up with something that resembled a rose. I obtained the rose-shape, tied off the bottom with floral wire leaving a two inch tail.

Next, I cut a wooden skewer in half, wrapped it in green floral tape. Then I ripped off a strip of floral tape and wound it around the wire tail I was holding against the wrapped skewer. I thought it didn't turn out too badly. But as usual, it got me to thinking again. Why couldn't I take a fresh, unused dryer sheet and

accordion fold it into a "tissue" flower? Not only does it smell nice but it looks good, too.

If you're interested in how to make tissue paper roses or fluffy flowers, just do an Internet search using search words how to make folded tissue roses (flowers). Here's the video I used as instruction for the rose: http://www.ehow.com/video_4982729_steps-paper-rose.html