diy: program fans

i decided i wanted to do programs for the wedding.  we have talked about our ceremony and both agree we do not want to do much more than walk down the aisle, say our vows and perhaps have someone sing a song and say a prayer.  there really isn't a large need to do a formal program to give a timeline.  but i did want to have something for our guests.

i felt like since our wedding will be in june and the ceremony will be outside on a patio (perhaps under a tent) that it would be nice to have our programs be fans.  that way if it is hot (you never know in ohio!), then our guests can stay cool and know who is a part of our special day.

i started a microsoft word document.  went to 'mailings' and clicked on 'labels.'  clicked on 'options' and chose 3297 half-fold greeting cards and then selected 'new document.'  word will automatically open a file showing a landscape (hamburger - not sure if any of you referred to folding paper this way.  but if you did fold paper the long way it was a hotdog and if you folded it to have smaller halves it was a hamburger..  anyway..) version of a blank paper with a faint line down the middle to show your two halves.

our colors are black, white and gold.  i'm a little upset with myself as our invites are a little bit more fancy with some petals or dots that are focused at the top with our wording towards the bottom.  but i did not go that route at all with these fans and many of my other decorations..  i wanted my invites to give the feel that our event would be more dressy and classy but i totally went black and white stripes on everything after choosing and buying our invites that was all dots.  who am i!? plus, stripes is so easy to find in clipart and reproduce on other things..  so, just go with me..

i googled black and white stripes clipart and copied the version i liked best.  i then googled vintage frame clipart and again found the one i liked and copied and pasted it on my document.  the best way to choose a good quality clipart is by clicking on it inside google images and when it maximizes the shape it'll show either a white background (no go) or grey and white checkered background (yes!) what appears to be checkered will be clear when you paste it in word.  that way you can layer things and not have this weird white squared background in the middle of your picture..  so keep that in mind when choosing pieces.  i also did a gold band in the background to kind of anchor the vintage frame.  inside the frame i inserted a text box and typed things like our venue name, wedding date and the wedding party.  the names i wanted to be fancy i made on www.fontmeme.com per usual.  another tip when inserting text boxes, make sure to have no outline color or fill color so that you just have the wording.  or if you want to make the background a specific color, then choose your fill and outline color.  you can also change the textbox shape from the normal square to any other shape available on word by clicking on the textbox and under drawing tools select 'edit shape' and then choose the shape you want.

above is my word version of our fan.  as you can see, on the front, i included our names, our venue, date, parents and our officiant.  on the back side of the fan, i included our wedding party.  the only thing i wish i would have included was our ushers since they are my brothers.  but i had already printed 250 of these before realizing my error.  i printed my fans on card stock.  

after all 250 were printed, matt and i spent one evening just folding them all in half.  the next morning i brought them in to work to cut them down a little bit closer to the frame since the paper was too tall for the sticks.  we were afraid the fans would just flap instead of actually fan at this size.  once they were at a manageable size, we started gluing them to fan sticks.  the glue i linked in the previous sentence is the glue we used for the fans.  for photo purposes and testing of mod podge, matt used mod podge to see if it had the same effect as the glue from amazon.  that version was a little pricey and we were going through them like water.  however, it worked a lot better as the mod podge was too wet and caused the paper to ripple..  so i do not recommend mod podge for this at all.

so we put some glue around the edges and both sides of the stick.  and then we pressed firmly to make sure the two sides stayed together and the stick didn't dislodge. once we finished the gluing process, we used a corner cutter to cut the sharp corners in to curved corners.  i got this punch at AC Moore but here is a comparable one from amazon.

finally, i tied some ribbon at the base of the fan to give it some extra flair.  again our colors are black, white and gold.  i used a strip of each color to tie our knots.  in some cases i ran out of ribbon, and so i was going through past projects to find any ribbon scraps that matched our wedding.  some have black, brown and white ribbon.  some of a strip of lace as the 'white ribbon.'  i was really digging deep..  our colors also include khaki, so i included some browns if i had them just so i didn't have to run back out to the store.  this part is probably the most pricey part of the fans as i went through spools of ribbon rather quickly and i needed 3 different colors for each.  it may have been a cheaper project to use less ribbon.  but i liked the look with all 3 and i only cut enough to tie a knot, not a bow.

(i love asking him to help take pictures of projects to put on my blog..  don't mind his shoes in the background..  haha..)  anyways, this is our final product.  below is a larger bundle that we busted out one lazy sunday.  our sundays aren't so lazy anymore with all these diy projects!  whoops!!

still debating the best way to display them at the wedding.  we will more than likely have them by the guest book table and have one of my nieces handing them out to guests.  currently they are in a basket but i'm quickly running out of room in my super size basket..  the struggle is real.