Look What I Imagined!

I am so excited.  I've been working on a completely new project...something I've never done before. It will help if I share a little info before I share with you what I've made.  The daughter of the Pastor of my church is getting married in August.  I always make the card baskets for our Pastor and his wife for all of the yearly events: both of their birthdays, Father's Day, Mother's Day, Pastor's Appreciation, etc.  As a wedding gift to his daughter, I asked her if she had decided on anything specific for her card basket.  She showed me a picture she found of a wedding cake with a slit on the top layer to drop the cards in.  It was plain white with some little white beads around each layer.  I looked at it for a couple of minutes and said, "I can definitely make it!"  I asked her what her wedding colors were and I went from there.


The first thing I did was find three of the mini papier mache round hat boxes.  Unfortunately, when stacked on top of each other (upside down), there wasn't much room left on the edges.  But I was determined to make it work.  I then went looking for wedding type fabric. I remember my mother, who was an incredible seamstress, had her choice of fabric stores.  There just aren't very many around anymore.  I researched online and found wedding fabric, but the prices were astrominical.  So off to Joann's, but they really didn't have anything "wedding".  One of the gals there told me about a small little fabric store down in Huntington Beach.  Success!  I found the perfect fabric and it was on sale for $5 a yard - certainly less expensive than the $40 a yard I found online.

Now I would be remiss if I did not give full credit to my sweet sister-in-law, Ann Hart for helping me make the pattern, and cutting and sewing the actual coverings.  You see I DO NOT SEW!  My mother was the seamstress.  I do everything else.  To be fair, I only helped with about 25% of the sewing project.  Ann did the rest.  Thank you my sweet sister.  You are awesome to behold!  See here are some pictures of the wedding cake up to this point:

This wedding cake sits inside this lid.  It's very snug and will definitely keep all the cards inside the cake.  The bottom picture is the lid flipped over. 


I decided because there was not much room on the flat tops of each layer, I would do a cascading effect on the side of the cake.  This was the fun part.

   This is the front view of the cake.  

                               This is the side angle view of the cake.

   

This is the side view of the cake.  

 

                     This is the back angle view of the cake.

The hardest part was sewing (well, I didn't do that part), but fitting it and cutting and gluing it onto the boxes was tedious and time consuming.  Creating the cascading flowers was definitely the easiest and most fun portion of the project.  As all you crafters know, it certainly is the most rewarding when it all starts to fall into place and become more than you'd ever hoped for.  The Wedding Cake Card Box was a success.  I believe this is one of those "one-of-a-kind" projects. 

                 It certainly stretched my imagination.....Linda