One of the wedding reception projects I'd decided was necessary early on was gift totes to welcome my mom and three friends flying in from all over the world. We'll mostly be in Rostock, but they're flying into Hamburg and staying here for a few days and the beginning and end of the festivities, and that's where we actually live, so yeah.
I spent more on these than I intended - at €3.99 they were a little steep for fabric shopping totes - but I used a gift card and they were the best and highest-quality ones I'd seen. €1.99 isn't going to get you very far, honestly; these are thick and will actually last.
They're pretty plain, though, with the graphics all clustered toward the bottom, which is pretty dumb when you realise that you can no longer see anything except the pointy building tips once there are things inside. But that's okay: my plan already included customising these with fabric paint.
I used Marabu Fashion-Liner, which I found at my local (re: ~35 minutes away on foot) craft store, in metallic gold, and it turned out to be as close as possible to the exact same gold as the printed City Hall design and 'Hamburg' text, which made me feel very warm and fuzzy OCD-satisfied inside.
Originally I wanted to do dark blue, offwhite, and red nautical ones, but on our side of town
I couldn't find the ones I'd seen, and they were cheaper and crummier anyway.
Plus black matches everything and is more adult.
Okay! Well, off to a good start.
I knew I wanted to make the Rathaus look a bit like the Disney castle
and decided on the text I wanted to go with.
"Courtney and Hannes' Hochzeits-Garten Party Extravaganza!
♡ August 2018 ♡ "
Drying..
Ironing on high temperature / cotton setting with a thin piece of fabric over the paint
in order to fix it and make it machine-washable..
And finally, done!
Disneyish, just as I wanted. Yas.
This one's for Angelique: a little bottle of Absinthe and a Mucha bookmark from Prague, winter house slippers (because she lives in Cascadia near the Canadian border), awesome dark witchy stickers by Meika, and The Botany of Desire by the insanely-appropriately-named Michael Pollan.
For NiQui: "It ain't a book unless someone's dead!" so I found a highly-rated murder mystery published last year, and she really digs England, so bonus points for me, because it's Victorian too. Sanddorn (sea buckthorn, a Baltic thing) tea, ceramic teabag/spoon rest and tiny wooden scoops, all from Rostock, a cute filter for loose tea like this, and a very pretty jar of Italian cherry topping.
For Rejon: Lavender honey (her favourite) from Bulgaria, the same tea and a similar holder, also a shot of strawberry-lime liquor for both her and NiQui, a Miraculous Ladybug vinyl sticker by PomiFumi, and finally, This Earth of Mankind, the first book of The Buru Quartet by Toer, because she's living in Jakarta now and this is an Indonesian classic.
Last but definitely not least, the gift package for my mom: a book I thought she'd like based on her loving The Goldfinch, sad romances, and historical dramas; herbal chill-out tea and lavender aromatherapy drops for the bath or shower, a pretty summery wreath, a hand-painted wooden egg and two adorable little corn husk ornaments from Prague (the second one with the lovebirds is in with the wreath because I'm going to see if she'd like me to attach it).
Also a handmade Prague bookmark, two pretty ceramic bird clips, a half dozen of the stickers I made for her to take home, and oh yeah, some sugar-free Danish butter cookies :3
Cute, huh? I hope they're surprised! :D
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