Bridal Shower Favors

As promised, here is how we decorated some rather nondescript bridal favors, to make them fit in with the party decor.  I found this idea somewhere on the internet - I wish I could give credit where credit belongs, but as usual, I didn't make a note of it.  Sorry 'bout that.

Ri's Maid of Honor, her best friend from church, her sisters and I all pitched in to make the favors.  In fact, we did several things that week.  We made the bridal shower favors and invitations, and tested out recipes for food and punch.  We drank so much punch one afternoon we weren't hungry for supper.

We started with packs of bridal favors that we got at the dollar store.  You get 10 for $1, which is good, because all the decorations can get pricey if you don't watch it, or keep scrapbook paraphernalia on hand.

Start by cutting the dress part off the bottom of the box.  You'll use this as your pattern.  If you have more than one person doing it, make sure you cut off the front and the back.  We ended up sacrificing two of the boxes because we had so many people helping. 

On the back side of a piece of scrapbook paper, trace around the pattern, and then glue the "new" dress onto one of the intact favors.

It didn't take long for the girls to get even more creative.

Here, she's made what will look like the underskirt portion of a dress by tracing the bottom.

Then she traces the top part and glues that on,

embellishes it, and...

voila!

An adorable dress.

Whether the dress was made from one piece of paper, or more, to create a layered effect, they were all enhanced with bits of lace (from my sewing stash), ribbon, sick-on jewels, or other decorations we picked up in the scrapbook section of the craft store.  The girls also used markers to draw some things, like lace-up backs.

My job was bending wire into miniature hangers.

I just used some wire I found with the jewelry making supplies, and shaped it with a pair of needle-nose pliers, clipping the ends off once it was done.  I had measured the width of the top of the dress so the hanger would stick out just a bit on both sides.

 And be prepared; creativity is messy.

But we had so much fun.

Once the boxes were filled, I put glue dots on the top, stuck the hanger on the dots, and then pressed the top closed.

We used my jewelry box to help display them since it looks a little like a wardrobe.

We had a dress hanging on one of the hooks on the other side.

The whole thing was so pretty.  The girls all did such a wonderful job.

And I'll leave you with this:

This was one of the other things we did that weekend; T.Lynn's flower basket.

She will be able to throw the petals that are in the center.  She's pretty happy about that.

Oh, and don't worry.  We took the monkey out before we stored it, so he could stay in her bedroom 'till the day of the wedding.  Now, we just need to remember him that morning.