Tulle and Ribbon

Three years ago, when the young Duke and The Countess de Couv were planning their wedding my mind was on all things fancy and floofy.  Toile, pearls, ribbon, sparkle and of course, tulle occupied my mostly feeble mind.  Helping plan a wedding on a budget for nearly 400 of your nearest and dearest is taxing, people.  Fun, but taxing.  The liquor and chocolate requirements at the Manor were increased by several-fold (is that a term?  several fold?  You get the idea).  Eeeenyway, besides wine and chocolate by the truckload (in addition to not a small number of orders of McD's fries), I also bought 200 yards (or more) of tulle.  It's really super cheap for all the effect you get from it, but still.  More than 200 yards is a bit much.


Voyez...

We floofed the guest book table

We floofed the front of the church.  Notice any flowers?  We didn't even miss them.  The huge screen in back was the scene of hilarious snaps of the Duke and Countess growing up shown just before the ceremony began.

We floofed some little patootie Princesses....in all there were 5 petite Ladies-in-Waiting

We floofed the aisle for the wedding party bravely led by 2 handsome barefoot Knights

And we floofed nearly every corner and crevice of the reception.  See the guest book bouquet making its second appearance?  It's sitting on top of a milk crate I had on my deck, lit from underneath with Christmas lights and beautifully draped by the Countess' clever aunt.  Each table had a centerpiece of a cake pedestal (Craigslist) topped with 3 mis-matched glass candlesticks (Goodwill).  The plan was to have ivory tapers in each candlestick, but silly us, we didn't think of fire regulations.  It seems that nearly 100 lit and unprotected candles could be a problem.  Ahem.  Sooo, back to Goodwill, scouring the shelves for clear, glass votives - the kind from the 70's and 80's that have the little pokey thingie on the bottom that sits in a sconce or something. The votives sat atop the candlesticks, a friend of the Earl's made dyed to match tealights for them and it was beautiful!  Of course, there was tulle wrapped around each candle arrangement, and pearls.  So pretty.  I wish I had a picture of the groomsmen putting all of them together at the reception hall while us girls were primping and posturing back at the church.

Even with all of that, I still have nearly a full bolt of beautiful ivory tulle just waiting to floof up the Manor.
To that end, I've had a springtime wreath on my mind and the Countess du Greece, Princess Po
oalot and Duke Zeus and I made a trip to Michael's yesterday afternoon.  The Earl stayed home to guard the Manor in our absence.  He's not a fan of "standing in one place and looking at the same thing for an hour" style of shopping that I may or may not practice.  I picked up a simple styro wreath to be tulle-ized, along with some cute ribbon and ball fringe...

Look at that cute little ball fringe.  It makes me smile.

I wrapped the form in a long strip of tulle, pinning it in just two places in the back...

Next, I added ribbon and the cute little ball fringe, wrapping and twisting until I liked what I had done....you like?  I do....

Still, it needs something.... 

Sooo....not one to shy away from adding just a little somethin' somethin'....

My little flowers are simple layers of circles (I used the ribbon spool for a pattern) that I scrunched in the center, and because I'm lazy I didn't even hand sew the scrunchie part, I just pinned it to the wreath form.  I added a ball from the fringe that was laying on my worktable for a flower center, looped some ribbons and decided that I liked what I'd done....

My happy little wreath took its place in my Easter vignette, adding some spring cheerfulness to the Manor.  In spite of the dreary Northwest weather, it's spring at Fairfield Manor!

I linked here:

Add a Pinch, Mingle Monday

The DIY Showoff

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