fold, fold, fold, f*ck!

this diy bride has taken a step back in time.. to her six year old days of paper crafting with white glue and popsicle sticks.

the vision: easy to put together paper crafts to make the resort/beach wedding feel a little more our own...

after looking at various wedding decorations and accessories, i set my sights on beautiful rounded fans for our guests to cool themselves during our afternoon beach ceremony.

just as i was about to place an order for 60 of these gorgeous fans... i figured i'd try my luck at seeing if i could make them first.

so, we gathered in the backyard with a few of of our lovely wedding party members to start of our fandemonium. we had our paper, our glue, our paper punches, our scissors, our popsicle sticks, and of course, our fancy drinks.

the reality: our first few, okay the first many prototypes were disasters. from ripped paper, unsticking glue, uneven folding - you name it. i am sure a six year old could have done better. i'm not sure how many tries martha stewart has before recording, but... after an afternoon of fold fold fold f*ck, i realized there would be a lot more to these easy diy crafts than i originally thought.

refusing to believe i am not the next martha stewart i spent the next week working and reworking my fan prototypes. many nights were spent folding, punching, glueing and swearing. i finally took pictures of our most recent failures, but these really don't capture just how bad our first attempts really were...

and then. finally. after waiting for my glue to dry on what could be my 100th fan, i folded it open to find. it worked! it worked! i wanted to shout from my rooftop that i am the fan-master!!!

however,  i only have another 56 to make...

thank goodness for friends that are willing to fold, fold, fold, glue with us... hopefully with fewer four letter words.

of course, shortly after my first successful fan - my fancy paper punch jammed up. leading to whole other vocabulary of four letter words.

paper punches breaking and curse words aside, we are well on our way to keeping our guests cool with our very own handmade fans.

here's to hoping our next diy project is a little more user friendly...