Monday, August 20, 2012

Succulent Book Planters

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My brother got married earlier this year and we needed decorations for the center of the tables for the wedding breakfast. The colors were black & white with apple green. These book planters were the perfect way to use all of her colors. Black and White from the vintage books and the green with the succulent plants and moss.

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My sisters and Mom got together at my house one weekend and we did an assembly line to get these book planters done. Even with all my sisters and my mom….we didn’t finish until 3 a.m. BUT, there may have been a little bit of talking in there too!! (Love you girls!)

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I found a lady that was selling vintage books. I wrote down the info and by the time I called her a day or so later, I couldn’t find her post anymore. She had sold all the books she wanted but, I called the number I had jotted down and she was nice enough to let me come look. She had boxes of books and said, “I didn’t know how to sort them so I did them by color.” It was perfect…..I opened the box of “Green” and got to work. I picked out the books with cool binding, the right color, or a dictionary….anything I thought would work. I thought she had listed them for 25 cents a piece. So, with my stack of 35 books, I brought up how much do I owe you….they were 25 cents right? She replies “I thought I listed them for 10 cents a piece.” I was (inside of course) jumping up and down. I pulled out my cash and had two dollar bills, some change and a twenty. I owed her $3.50. So, she looked for change but, said “I’ll just let you have them for the two dollars and change that you have. So…that means I got 35 VINTAGE books for like $2.46. SCORE!!

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We used this “ribbon” moss to cut and fill in the hole after I had Xacto’d the rectangle out of the center of the book. We really were going to do real succulents but, I found a whole bag of REALLY GOOD (real looking) succulents and we decided that it would be easier to keep alive and transport if they were artificial. Plus they looked as good as the original!

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After making the planters, we wanted to have each book personalized. My sister wrote in them, put their name on the binding of one of the books…anything that would personalize each one individually.

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Each book was personalized for the wedding. We sat and looked through each book for some line we could use or a picture or a definition of “love”….anything that would personalize the centerpieces for the table. Equations of love. Highlighting individual letters on a page until it spelled “Boy(his name here) loves girl(her name here)”. It was fun trying to come up with something new for each one because each book was different.

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One of the books was King Arthur. We opened it to the wedding picture of the royalty getting married. (My mom tried to talk us out of using a vintage book like King Arthur from Camelot but, we just kept reminding her…we paid like 7 cents a book…it’s okay!)

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A couple of the books we cut right into the actual cover of the book if the “title” of the book was what we wanted to accentuate. We had references to places they had lived and languages that they knew. We wanted everything to reflect the couple…..and have it really personal. My sister(she has the best handwriting) wrote in the margins, highlighted sayings….doodled in some of the margins like a love sick girl who write Girl Name + Boy Name over and over. It turned out really cute!

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These planters were really fun to make. They were really inexpensive to make and my sisters, mom and I had a ton of fun together making them. After the wedding breakfast was over, we gave a few to the happy couple that had their name all over. The general ones (about love and such) we were all able to each take one home. So, we each have our own succulent book planter.

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This one is mine…the dictionary open to the “love” section. I love it (no pun intended)!! It’s fun to have something to remember the happy day with but, also have something beautiful that you can display in my home!

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