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:

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DIY wedding tea pot and cups

For our traditional wedding tea ceremony coming up, I’ve been finding it hard to find suitable Chinese wedding tea pots and cups. Most are very red and overly decorated, and definitely ones that I would never use again. Anyone else with this problem?

For my sister’s wedding, I managed to find simple flower tea cups from Taiwan but they didn’t have the double happiness sign which I thought was more meaningful and relevant.

And as the mantra of most DIY projects goes: If you can’t find it (or afford it), MAKE IT!

This was a relatively quick transformation as I wanted to keep things simple. All that was needed: a plain set of tea cups and teapot, some Chinese double happiness stickers, and gold gilding liquid for an extra touch. The stickers are easily removable to use as a regular tea set in the future.

Stick on double happiness stickers for a DIY chinese wedding tea cup and pot set | micheleng.com

To my readers who aren’t too familiar with the traditional Chinese wedding tea ceremony, it is a ceremony to introduce and recognize the bride as part of the groom’s family and vice versa and to show respect to bride’s and groom’s elders. These elders include parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, older siblings and cousins, and the list goes on.

Red date tea is usually served to signify fertility in the marriage. The couple kneels while serving the elders seated on a chair (usually seated as couples).  After the tea, the elders give the bride and groom a red packet in return.

I’m definitely not an expert in Chinese wedding culture, but this is a brief overview and generally what I’ve known so far. Feel free to add on and share if you know more! ;)

To make the Chinese wedding tea pots and cups:

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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:

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How to hammer rivets (and make a tent?)

It’s our pre-wedding photo shoot tomorrow! Our photographer Andrew is wonderfully creative and we’ve decided to go for more casual candid shots. We figured if we did traditional pre-wedding shots in formal wear and stared at each other romantically, we may end up sweating and laughing like little kids the whole way.

One of the ideas we had was to set up a tent as a joint activity (the evening scene will be pretty magical, but we’ll keep it a surprise for now!). A good analogy to us building our first home together eh? :)

To set this up, we had to hammer rivets into a large piece of cloth to tie it down to the tent poles. I figured I’d post up the process of hammering rivets as a sneak peek, and in case anyone else will need instructions for it too…

how to hammer a rivet

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Make a wedding card box

One of the best parts of planning a wedding has definitely got to be the DIY craft projects!

The project for today was a wedding card box (also known as an ang bao/ “red packet” box in Singapore).

make a wedding card or angbao box | micheleng.com

As people usually place money inside cards or red packets, I decided that a box would be better than an open case. Just for safety reasons, as cautioned by the wiser, older folks ;)

Read on to find out how to make one:

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