A cheap, easy way to decorate your nursery

This post is several months overdue but am glad I’m finally getting down to sharing it!

In my last month of pregnancy, I finally got down to thinking about decorating our nursery. It was definitely low on my priority list compared to getting baby necessities, household chores and managing the business. What’s more, all the baby purchases started to add up despite having gotten several items second-hand or borrowing them from friends.

To help manage with the costs and not wanting the nursery to be over decorated, I decided to come up with a simple way to add a little something extra to the baby’s room.

cheap and easy nursery decor … 

Read More »

Paper flower bouquets

Sometime back, my friend Cherie and I put together some bouquets for the wedding made from artificial flowers. Those were beautiful but my hands were also itching to complete the paper flower set for the wedding (comprising paper flower pew decor, corsages and boutonnières and now bouquets).

So I managed to squeeze in some time to put together a few paper flower bouquets.

Here’s a closer look at some photos I snapped before the wedding:

paper flower | micheleng.com

A single large paper flower for our darling flower girl Sophie.

paper flower bouquet | micheleng.com

A simple flower bouquet for our sweetheart maid-of-honor Rachelle (she’s the reason we met!).

… 

Read More »

Paper flower corsages and boutonnières

Not all pinned corsages and boutonnières have to be made of fresh flowers! There’ve been really cute ones used, such as action figurines and even sweets.

To stay true to using paper flowers, our pinned corsages, boutonnières and flowers for my hair were also made of paper. Other paper flower items include the church pew decorations, the flower girl’s large flower, my maid-of-honor’s and my hand bouquet. Yes, my friends thought I was crazy.

But now that the wedding frenzy is over, there’s finally more time to share more of what was done!

paper flower corsages and boutonnieres | micheleng.com

… 

Read More »

How to dye paper flowers

Most paper flower tutorials call for dip-dyeing crepe or tissue paper before creating the actual flower. This technique is slightly different as it colors the flowers after you’ve already made them.

This gives you more control on placing the colors, and lets you change the flowers of your present flowers if you’re bored of them!

The real reason I had to do this was because we originally created white flowers for our church pews for the wedding and were feeling pretty pleased…

dyeing paper flowers with a dropper | micheleng.com

…until later on someone kindly pointed out that in Chinese culture, white flowers were used at funerals and symbolized death! Turns out this is drastically different from what we’re used to in some Western cultures where white flowers signify peace and are commonly used in church weddings. Mega oops!

Thankfully there was enough time to fix it. I didn’t want all the flowers to be too pink as the church was already pretty orange in color. So I figured the next best thing was to use a dropped to insert colors at the base. And we were actually much happier with these flowers than the original white ones so thank goodness it all worked out! :)

How to do this:

… 

Read More »

Gold dipped feather brooches

Things are ramping up now that the wedding is drawing near and craft projects really help to make me happy amidst all the craziness.

At our wedding, we wanted something to identify our friends who are helping out so that guests can easily approach them for any assistance. As bracelets won’t be suitable for our male friends and not as easily seen, we decided brooches would be a better option.

This would also make a nice simple gift for friends (or yourself!) if you’re not preparing for a wedding :)

DIY gold dipped feather brooch pin

We didn’t have a specific theme for the wedding but rather a general color theme – coral, mint, gold and grey. This made it much easier to just put pretty things together without a specific reason :)

For our brooches, we decided on simple feathers dipped in gold to suit the color theme. And since birds of a feather flock together (trying not to be cheesy here), we figured it was apt that our closest friends were wearing them!

Here’s how to make them:

… 

Read More »