DIY Wedding: Confetti Bags...

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I seem to have become a lot more creative within the past couple of years and I love a bit of diy! The prospect of making things myself for our wedding in September really excited me and Pinterest provided a lot of inspiration.

My first project that I wanted to do was to make some confetti bags for my guests to use after we are married and are making our way back down the aisle as husband and wife (it's going to be so strange being called this in just over four months time!). I had an idea of what I wanted to do as I'd seen an idea on Pinterest that I really liked and I knew I could just adapt it to our colour scheme. The idea on Pinterest lead to the actual project, which was on a site called b.loved weddings.

I didn't follow the project word for word as on the day when I wanted to gain access to the labels and change the colours myself to match our colour scheme, I think the website may have been down as no matter how hard I tried to get onto the website, from different places, it wouldn't load. In the end I showed Si the image of the confetti bags so he knew what I wanted to re-create and he said he could do the labels for me on Microsoft Word, which was a huge help. I purchased the glassine envelopes from Ebay (you can choose the size you want and the price you're willing to pay according to how many you need) and I was lucky enough to be gifted with my confetti for my project from a local company called Shropshire Petals who grow their own petals that they sell. The only other things I needed were some scissors which I had and a glue stick (I bought a Pritt Stick in my local Poundland). You'll also need a printer and some ink in order to print off the labels.

When Simon created the labels for me, I loved them. You can check them out via Dropbox. You should be able to print them off as they are if you wish. If you save it to your computer (not as write only), you should be able to open it up in Microsoft Word and edit it yourself, so you could change the colours or the wording to relate to your wedding/theme. Otherwise if you're pretty clued up on Microsoft Word they are pretty easy to re-create using just a few shapes, lines and colours. Obviously you only need to create one and then just copy and paste the rest according to how many you need to print out. Alternatively you could just have a play around on Microsoft Word and totally create your own, original labels. I needed to make 19 little bags for my guests (minus me & Si), so I printed out those and a few extras in-case something went wrong.

I had a fab time making the confetti bags and it felt good knowing that I was putting a personal touch into something that would be seen and used by our guests on our big day, aswell as knowing that confetti is a tradition that's been present in British weddings for over two centuries and is supposed to symbolise the wish of a fertile marriage. This is what I started with when making the confetti bags:

Ocean Mist throwing confetti from Shropshire Petals, 61mm x 92mm glassine bags, scissors, Pritt Stick and diy labels.

I was initially sent some samples from the Shropshire Petals company relating to our purple and ivory colour scheme. We chose Ocean Mist from the samples (above) as we loved the colouring and thought it was aptly named considering we are getting married abroad, by the sea. The natural petal confetti is completely natural (no dyes are added), biodegradable (easily broken down) and eco-friendly. On the website you can choose your packaging, including baskets, pails and individual sachets and then you choose your petals via the pick & mix. We were sent the throwing confetti which is 1 litre and typically provides enough for 10 handfuls of throwing confetti or enough to scatter on 10 tables. It comes in a cream 1 litre bag with a cream satin ribbon (I thought the packaging was lovely with its little ribbon and see-through window). Our confetti is available to be selected as one mix, but it is made up of classic deep blue/purple and cream natural petal confetti, with midnight blue and icing sugar delphinium petals. 1 litre of this is priced at £11.25 and we were sent 2 litres which in total would have cost us £22.50. Bare in mind that for the number of bags that I needed to make I had more than enough confetti to fill each bag and I only used 3/4 of a 1 litre bag. I emptied the remaining confetti into the other full 1 litre bag and will use this for aisle petals or table decoration. They have lots of inspiration ideas on their website, aswell as help and advice in relation to the petals that they sell, a confetti calculator (to help you decide how much confetti you'll need for your guests), show dates (where you will be able to see some petals for yourself), special offer mixes of the month (special priced petals per month) and amongst lots of other information on the website, you can also order some free samples so you can get a feel for some of the petals before you place an order.

Making the confetti bags was literally as easy as 1, 2, 3:

1 - Take a little glassine envelope.

2 - Fill it up with the confetti but make sure that you can still fold the top section over.

3 - Take a label and glue all around the edges. Position it nicely over the envelope so you have half over the front and the same or less at the back.

They were really easy to make and I'm so happy with the results. They will be placed on our order of the day cards which will be waiting for our guests at the ceremony as they take their seats.

I was initially interested in Shropshire Petals natural throwing confetti anyway and was looking at the website for some time, I liked that the company was local, the petals were grown locally by the company themselves and that the confetti was a little different to the usual paper confetti you get, aswell as the petals being natural, biodegradable and eco-friendly. Obviously this task can be made using any confetti, including if you want to cut out your own shapes using tissue paper for example but to help you on your way if you do like the sound of this company, you can get a 10% discount from Shropshire Petals when you spend £50 using this link.

Are you a fan of diy? What diy projects have you completed? Whether for your wedding, someone else's wedding, day to day life etc...I'd love to hear about/see all of your creative projects!

Thanks so much for reading!

Gemma XxOo

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