DIY Paper Parasol

On my list of DIY stuff for the wedding was a paper parasol. I had fallen in love with these while browsing through pages of wedding porn on the web. I looked around to see what my purchase options were, and I had three:

• purchase one from Etsy
• try to snag a used one from another bride
• or do it my damn self.

The parasols on Etsy ran about $45- $50 and, if y'all don't know by now, I'm kind of cheap. I wasn't paying that much.

So I tried to hit up the 'Trash to Treasure' boards on The Knot. There were so many listed there, but they were snatched up so quickly, I never had a chance.
So onto Plan C: Do it my damn self.
I have to say, this was relatively easy. I purchased a plain white parasol from TheKnot store

I hemmed and hawed about having it say "Thank You" vs. "Just Married". After giving it some serious thought, consulting JEGs and my mother, I decided on Just Married. We still plan to stick the picture in the Thank You cards, but now if it is a really nice picture that we want to frame, it wouldn't look weird saying "Thanks!!"

Once I finally decided what I wanted it to say, I typed it up in a Microsoft Word document. Here is the tricky part: you need to make the letters super big in order to fill up space on the parasol. I used the font Chopin Script (which you can download here ) and bumped it up to 550 pts. For the word 'Just' I printed out the 'J' seperately, and then the 'ust'. 'Married' was split up three ways- 'M', 'arr', and 'ied':

Next, I taped the letters to the back of the parasol with scotch tape:

Then, I began to trace them onto the parasol- first in pencil, then in black marker

Tada! All traced out!

My next step was to run to Michael's (with 40% coupon in hand) and grab some black acrylic paint and brushes to paint over the letters

I chose two different brushes: a No. 1 flat shader for the outlining and smaller areas and a No. 10 Filber to fill in the thicker areas (like the trunk of the 'J').

One slow night at work, I sat down and started to paint over the tracings I had done. About 2 hours later I had this:

It is super important to let the paint dry before you close the parasol. I actually left mine open for about a two days (we were having a week of very hot, humid days).

So what do we think? I am pretty happy with the way it turned out. I just hope I remember to use it the day of the wedding!!!

Always & Forever,

ME