I know this seems totally out of order, but I saw this idea on another gal's DIY Wedding website, and I fell in love with it! So, here is my step-by-step of how to make these VERY easy place card holders...
1. Go to your local craft supply store, and pick up some modeling clay and paper clips that you like. I bought Sculpey Clay - it's a little pricier, but you can cook it at low temps at home in your oven, and it only needs to bake for 15min for every 1/4 inch of thickness. These little guys were done in less than half an hour. The paper clips I got were "swirls" but they also had cute heart swirls, too. I bought them out of these and keep waiting for my store to re-stock them... but I suppose w/ Christmas, they have more important things to do than re-stock paper clips!
2. Take the clay and work it into small, half inch round balls. I enlisted the help of my fiance, because, well, it's his wedding, too. Bonus - he WANTED to help! :) I knew there was a reason why I am marrying him...he's amazing. After rolling them into balls, I slightly flattened them, so that they would have "feet" to stay on (as Rachael Ray would say), and so they don't roll around or fall over so easily. I flipped them over, so that the perfectly flattened side (from the table) was the top, and the not so perfectly flattened side (from my hand) was on the bottom.
Also, make sure you're working on foil or wax paper to protect surfaces in your home. Before these are baked, they can damage nice finished wood surfaces and other materials - so be careful!
3. Bake! 15 min for each 1/4 inch thickness - mine took a little less than a half hour. Note: we baked ours in our mini-toaster oven. If you do this, make sure you properly pre-heat the oven so that the little heating elements aren't constantly on, and make sure you place them on a lower rack, so as to not cause them to burn. One of ours got a little brown (which was okay after the next step, but still...). Also, they give off a weird chemical haze type smell. We opened a window for a little bit (in cold cold 30 degree weather, with the heat on... fiance was NOT happy), which seemed to keep it to a minimum. I recommend doing this when the weather is a little more favorable so that you don't have to worry about it!
4. Cover in glue, sprinkle with Martha Stewart fine glitter in your choice of color! I chose Turquoise, since our wedding is all blues and greens, and that was the closest color I could get in the big tub of glitter. I figured the big thing was twice the price for 4x as much product - how can you NOT go for that?
As you can see, I used a coffee filter to make clean up a cinch. Word to the wise: this glitter is VERY fine, and it will stick to *everything.* Seriously. You can see the wax paper underneath where I dumped the glitter on the glue covered holders, just as an extra precaution. Make sure you really cover the clay w/ glue - the glitter will only stick to it where there's glue! I didn't bother doing the bottom of the balls - no need to waste glitter that people won't see.
For now, we're storing them in a cereal box that we cut one of the sides out of, (1) to protect them and (2) to protect everything else from the glitter.
One box of Sculpey made us 48 of these balls. They're all different sizes, because we're only human, and well, I kind of liked the charm of it all. Next box we do we'll probably try to squeeze out about a 50 or so, but we'll see.
Total Cost: $13.99 / box of Sculpey /48 balls => $0.29/holder
$9.99 / container of glitter (and I only used ~1/10 of the bottle) /48 => $0.02
$3.50ish / box of 24 paper clips => $0.15
$2 / bottle of tacky glue w/ brush (with plenty left over) => $0.02
Total cost: 48 whopping cents per place card holder.
The ones I saw online that I liked were easily $2-3 each! Holy Moly, look at the SAVINGS! Plus, I have the pride in having done them myself (well, ourselves... we did them together).
Next post will be about our DIY Save-the-Dates...otherwise known as STD's in the wedding world :)
