Lauren and Adam's wedding {project} no. 1

Last week I told you that I was working on some projects for Lauren and Adams wedding and I'm excited to share with you the first project that we worked on for the reception.

Lauren wanted to have a sweetheart table instead of a head table and to decorate the table we decided to create a canvas banner with their initials.

The sweetheart table will be round and we are going to set up two more round tables on either side of the sweetheart table with similar canvas banners. One table will be for the wedding cake {sweet} and the other table will be for the gift card holder {xoxo}.

 I've been pinning pictures of sweetheart tables on my Pinterest boards in case you are getting married and looking for sweetheart tables inspiration as well.

Above are a couple of my favourite pictures of sweetheart tables that I have pinned.

1. http://www.stylemepretty.com/gallery/photo/orange-girl-photographs+76265 from Style me pretty blog

2. http://www.heartloveweddings.com/2012/04/pink-white-southern-shabby-chic-wedding-from-style-by-design/   from Heart Love Weddings blog by Alexandrea Beauregard

Sweetheart tables allow you and your partner to spend some time together and allow your wedding party to sit with family and friends. Just like a head table, you will want to add some extra special elements to your sweetheart table to make it stand out from the rest.

Here's a quick tutorial for how I created the canvas banners for Lauren and Adam ...

1. You'll need iron on transfers, lace ribbon and canvas banners (we sell both of these at the Toronto store), and jute rope.

2. I created the letters for the banner on my computer and printed them on a sheet of transfer paper on my inkjet printer. The font that I used is called Antique Shop. It is not a free font but here's the link if you are interested. I've shown you how to use the iron on transfers on a previous posts here or you can refer to the instruction sheet included in the iron on package. Make sure that your letters print out in REVERSE.

3. You will need to cut out each letter before you can iron the letters onto the canvas. Make sure that you leave a white space around each letter. I wanted to position the letters on the banners so that I would have lots of space at the top to add a thick row of lace ribbon. To help me position the letters, I used natural light and a window to see each letter through the transfer paper. Iron each letter as per my previous post.

4. Peel the paper back off the transfer once the paper has cooled down a bit.

5. To attach the lace ribbon to the top of each banner you can either sew it on by machine, sew it on by hand, glue it on with fabric glue or use a two-sided fabric tape. I think that the two-sided fabric tape will be the best way to go if you don't like to sew and we will have two-side fabric tape in the Toronto store in a week or two.

6. Once all of the banners have the lace ribbon attached you are ready to 7. tie the banners together with jute rope. You will want to add extra long pieces of jute rope to each end so that when it comes time to hang these up you will have lots of rope available.

Here's a close up of Lauren and Adam's banner for their sweetheart table.

In my previous post, I gave you an iron on transfer design to decorate a canvas bag. On the side of the iron on are the letters to spell LOVE. Use those letters to create this banner ...

I think that this would be cute for engagement or wedding photos ... you can see similar banners in use in photos I've pinned to this Pinterest board.

I can see this "love" banner at a baby shower and then again at baby's first birthday party.

I'm going to show you how to make the letters on these banners pop and sparkle using glossy accents and glitter later this month ... so stay tuned for more!