Fab Fabric Flags - Yippee!! - Pinterest Challenge Fall 2012

                        

Sorry about the crickets around here for the past few months! I figured what better way to jump back on the blogging horse than to play along with these lovely ladies in their seasonal "Pinterest Challenge".  I'll be linking this post up on Sarah's, Katie's, Sherry's, and Carmel's blogs!

So it's no secret how much I love Pinterest.  It has been an amazing tool in helping me organize my thoughts for our recent wedding.  (I've actually joked several times that my wedding was going to look like Pinterest vomit - but in a good way!) So a few months ago when I saw these fabric flags on GreenWeddingShoes.com, I pinned them and knew I had to make them my own! (The koozies were pretty damn cute too, but we decided not to get any made up).

via GWS

I purchased some fabric in white on white bubbles, yellow on yellow bubbles, and some flowery gray, white and yellow from the scrap section at Joann's months back for another project that I'll be revealing eventually but realized I had more than enough to make a few flags for people to wave at the ceremony.  I had tons of burlap from this project...and I had yet to try out my Cameo Silhouette that I received at my bridal shower.

I started by cutting my fabric into triangles - 5" x 8".  Allen was a big help during this process:

Next I played with some fonts on my Silhouette and printed out some stencils. It took me a few tries before I figured out how to cut the lines to keep the center pieces of the letters intact.

Some acrylic paint, foam brush, and paper towels for some slight bleeding and we went to town on stamping our stencils.  

We went with the following phrases: Yipee!! Hoo-Ray!! zOMG!?! Cheers!! Salute!! and Slainte!!

Does everyone's "craft station" look like this while they work? Yikes!!

Later in the week, I stitch-witched two long strips of burlap together, and then sprayed it with tacky spray to affix the flags.  I added the burlap to make the fabric a bit more sturdy and to use up some of the hundreds of feet of burlap I over-ordered. Then I proceeded to trim out the flags so each had a nice fringe.  I wasn't too concerned with burlap coming undone because these were meant for one use only anyway and the fraying gave it a nice weathered look in my opinion.

Next, I used my glue gun to attach some wooden chop sticks to the flags. I've actually had these chop sticks for years - we found them in my grandmothers house after she passed and I had been holding on to them for a special occasion.  Using them as part of the wedding props just felt like a nice little way to have my grandmother help out with the crafts.

Yes, that says 1983 for the package date! Love you Grandma!

I made about 50 flags.  The last week before the wedding we actually decided to add some little craft bells that we tied to burlap fringe so that our guests could wave and jingle them at the ceremony.  (Our RSVP cards asked people whether or not they would metaphorically come with bells on - so we figured in case anyone forgot to literally bring theirs we would provide them - clearly we are easily amused.) We left them next to the programs and I was so happy when I walked down the aisle and saw people waving them!

If any of our guests have photos of themselves with their flags I would love to see them!!  Leave me a comment or share them on my new facebook page!

And now the fun Pinterest Challenge part - go and check out what Sarah, Katie, Sherry, and Carmel put together, as well as all of the other linky participants!