M'Ladies

I've been meaning to officially invite my girls to be bridesmaids for months. While I did ask my MOH to be my maid of honor the night we were engaged, I had been waiting to ask my other bms until I could think of a great way to do it! With five bms in 4 different cities, I knew I'd have to mail something to them. I took my time and came up with a sweet little bag of goodies for my favorite ladies!
These are three of the bags all ready to go. "T" was up in norcal for a family visit this weekend so I sent her down south with two other bm bags so I wouldn't have to deal with shipping these bad boys. I decided to turn the letters into magnets. I bought the unfinished wood at JoAnn's, stained them with a walnut finish, then tied them to the bag with a thin mauve ribbon.I was going for a proposal theme. I found these small boxes at Michael's for 50cents. I wrote on a white circle, "Will you" and fastened it with a sticky zot. The "ring" was a ring pop of course, nestled on some curly raffia I picked up at Big Lots. The white circle inside says: "say yes!"This brown accordian envelope was from Martha's line at Michael's. It holds five photos in 4x6 slots. I stamped our date on the outside with stamps I found at Tuesday Morning. I had the paint on hand. I has hoping it would come out less solid, but I think it still has the messy look I was going for. Inside the accordian envelope was my bridesmaid poem, three pictures (one from high school, one from college and one more recent). The bottom slot was a personal note I wrote to each bm. They turned out all mushy and sweet. It was nice to get to say some really meaningful things. It's been a while since I've told them how much they mean to me!

Inside the bag was a mix CD that I threw together. As you can see I didn't have any CD cases on hand so I printed the list of songs, along with an explanation of who it reminds me of on an envelope. I warned them that these are not the best songs in the world, but whenever I hear any of them it takes me back to a very specific memory of one of my girls!

I also included a notepad from the dollar bin at Michaels. I wrote out my Googlegroup site where I hope to be able to keep in touch with them regarding wedding business.

I love when people do this for their DIY so I'll break it down for ya:

Small White Gift Bags: 10 for $3.88 or 39 cents each x5= $1.95+tax

Unfinished Wood Letters: 99cents each= $5+tax

Thin Mauve Ribbon: about $4.00 for the spool, I used about half= $2.00

Brown Accordian Picture Envelopes: $1.99 each= $10.00+tax

CDs: borrowed from DF ;)=Free

Small Boxes: 50cents eachx5=$2.50+tax

Ring Pops: Two for $1= $2.50

Raffia: $2.50 ( I used about 1/20th of the package)

Stick on Magnet Strips: $2.99 for a pack of 6. I used three total= about $2.00

Notepads: $1 each=$5.00

Stamps: $3.00

Paint: Already had it= Free

Paper: Construction paper I had on hand= Free!

Grand Total: About $45 or $9/each with tax.

I will use so much of it for other projects that it actually breaks down to be less, but that's what I spent hunting down items for these bags-not bad!

I'm not a huge DIY person-so this was a big first step for me. I was with T when she opened hers and she was definitely excited! I can't wait for showers and dress shopping!