White summer dinner party {part two}

Saturday 11 August 2012

In my last post I talked about a friend's white summer dinner party that I was helping with.  My friends took part in Niagara-on-the-Lake's Diner en Blanc.

Never heard of "Diner en Blanc" before ... don't worry, neither did I until I started working on the project. Diner en Blanc started in Paris France over 20 years ago and you can learn more about the event here.  Basically, it is a flash mob "dinner" and everyone is dressed in white and the tables are decorated in white.

We have so many different whites and I decided to combine them all from pure white to antique white. My secret for mixing different whites is to add lots of different textures when selecting materials. I used a vintage Paris theme featuring vintage textbook papers and bird motifs.

one. Here's the wine charms that I showed you in my last post. Wine is a very important part of Diner en Blanc!

two. We used our white trees as centrepieces and decorated them with birdcage favors (spray painted antique white with tea lights inside), book paper flowers and birds and menus printed on old book pages.

three. Napkins are an important part of the Diner en Blanc tradition and we added an iron on transfer to ours (featuring the text from a vintage postcard from Paris) before we folded them and wrapped them up with handmade paper and ribbon napkin rings. These will be placed on each plate with the silverware as shown.

four. We used white burlap, ribbons and canvas banners create simple chair covers. I designed and added the art for the canvas banners using my home computer/printer and our iron on transfer sheets.

five. A nine foot table runner was easy to make using white burlap and assorted ribbons. I machine stitched all of the ribbons to the burlap including the diamond wrap. We weaved a couple of strands of lights through the burlap so that the table runner will light up during the evening.

There are a few other projects that we created as well and I look forward to sharing pictures of the final set up when I receive them!  
Here is a video I thought that you might like to see of Diner en Blanc 2011 from Paris ... they were just outside Notre-Dame! Enjoy!!


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