Final OOT Bags

So, after a myriad of posts about our Out of Town Bags (OOT Bags), I never actually got to post about completing them. Largely because it happened about 2 days before the wedding, and I immediately moved on to another project (like rehearsal dinner centerpieces, ribbon wands, etc). But I can say that at least I took some good pictures of a completed box, and my Matron of Honor's husband declared them to be the best welcome gifts EVER!

I tried to include a few items from Wayne's home state, my home state, the state where we now live, and few extra fun items. I got a little bit crazy; however, and I kept adding and kept adding and got to the point where Wayne was starting to think I had gone straight up bananas.

The whole idea started with homemade snowflake marshmallows from an Etsy vendor (Deidre Woods). I packaged up 4 per bag, with several packets of hot cocoa mix:

From there, I wanted to include something to represent Georgia. I decided to include honey butter biscuit mix and peach preserves. I found the preserves for such a good price that I ultimately included a jar of blueberry preserves as well:

Coconut and key lime cookies were chosen to represent Florida:

I couldn't resist these chocolate snowflakes that I found at the dollar store. I also included some Moon Pies to represent Tennessee. Did you know they were developed in a Chattanooga bakery?

I also found a wonderful Etsy vendor that makes soaps and lip balms and she created some custom winter-themed scents for my guests. I included 2 soaps and 2 lip balms in an organza bag:

The kookoo-bananas part came about the time I couldn't resist adding a bunch of extra snacks, like Georgia peanuts, saltwater taffy, fruit and nut mix, and chocolate mint kisses:

A bunch of fun extras included "Love" playing cards with custom labels, rum or tequila and mixers, a flamingo Christmas ornament, trusty Jack Daniels, Florida tourism brochures and postcards, and custom-labeled sunscreen (the wedding was in Florida, after all):

Just add water (or a couple bottles of custom-labeled waters) and voila!

The whole kit and caboodle was gathered in a large kraft gable box, tied with a red satin ribbon, and labelled with a welcome message! I also tucked a welcome booklet into each box to thank everyone that traveled for our wedding. To see the welcome booklet, click here.

I know a lot of people think welcome bags are unnecessary, and they might be, but everyone that received one went out of their way to thank me for the effort and tell me how much they enjoyed the gift. By the time the wedding started, most of them had already chosen their favorite item and couldn't wait to tell me about it!

Can I Offer You a Drink?

Of water, of course! What OOT bag would be complete without a couple bottles of water? But plain ol' bottled water without custom labels? Not on my watch! I knew that I wanted to add cute custom labels to my bottles, and debated doing them myself. After some thought, however, I decided that I need to bring in professional reinforcements on this one. Our hotel has fridges in each room, so I figure that folks might toss their bottles in there. Once the condensation starts, I knew that my little inkjet labels would melt, slide, and run into a drippy mess.

I looked at several sites that print custom labels and most of them had some pretty decent pre-designed templates. Because I have such a specific design concept, however, I really wanted to find a company that would print completely custom designs. I decided to use a company called Bottle Your Brand.

I opted to have the company apply my labels to the bottles and send the whole shebang at once. In hindsight, I should have just ordered the labels, because my order (bottles + labels) was approximately $30 before shipping. Just ordering the labels would have been under $10. With added weight of the water bottles, shipping was also more expensive, so note to self: Duh, just order the labels and spend the 20 minutes adhering them yourself, ding dong.

But, I will say, I'm very happy with the results. The labels turned out great and the cute little 8 oz. bottles will fit perfectly in our gable boxes.

I loved being able to create custom designs that corresponded perfectly with my other DIY projects... all the way down to the right font and cute little red lovebirds.

Lip Balm Lovelies

I was a DIY machine this past week end. I doggedly plowed through project after project... until my printer ran out of ink! Ugh. With no motivation to voluntarily go out in the 95-degree heat in my un-air conditioned car, I came to a stand still.

Before said ink depletion, I finished by lip balm labels. I love only having to do 15 OOT bags, it makes doing things by hand actually feasible and not an act of mind-numbing tedium.

To make the labels, I used a string wrapped around a lip balm tube to find the circumference. Combined with the height of the lip balm label, I had my lip balm size: 2.125" X 1.675". I printed 12 on each sheet. I used laser brochure paper, which is slightly glossy and a little heavier than regular paper.

I had tried to use photo paper, which is even heavier, but the photo paper had NO interested in being cylindrical and no amount of adhesive could convince it!

I just cut out each label by hand and used a Tombo adhesive runner to adhere the labels to each tube. All in all, it only took about 1/2 hour to print, trim, and adhere all 15 labels.

Plus, these were a budget bonanza because I got the lip balms from a colleague that was giving them away as promotional items! AND, they're even tropical flavored (which I think is some sort of pineapple - coconut combo), which is perfect for a Florida OOT bag!

One more project done!

Mmmm... Cocoa

Remember the snowflake marshmallows discussed earlier? And the cocoa packaging I highlighted in an earlier post? Well, I finally finished that little project, and it went something like this:

Step 1: I printed all the labels on glossy photo paper and trimmed them to size. I busted out my trusty Xyron machine, and ran all the labels through to make them adhesive. Thank goodness for this wonderful machine, which has saved me oodles of time using glue sticks or tape runners.


Step 2: I adhered ribbon around the pillow box, making sure the ends met on the front of the box so that they will be hidden by the label.


Step 3: I adhered the label to the front of the box, hiding the ribbon ends.


That's it... a completed set of personalized cocoa packets, ready for packing into the OOT bags!

My Favorite DIY Project So Far (OOT booklets)

Also known as my OOT bag booklets. These are a labor of love, for sure. I say "are" instead of "were" because I've only finished one. They are 8 pages, front and back, and time consuming... to say the least. But boy am I pleased with how it turned out!

I printed the pages on white card stock and trimmed each page to 5.25" X 7.25." Then I mounted each page (front and back) on dark brown card stock, trimmed to 5.5" X 8.5." I cut a small piece of red card stock to wrap around the front and back of the booklet. Using a small finishing nail, I pierced 2 holes through all the pages. I used silver brads to hold the whole thing together.

Due to the thickness of the completed booklet, I wanted to add a ribbon tie to keep the booklet closed. To secure the ribbon, I attached it to both covers, between the card stock and printed pages.

The entire booklet consisted of the following pages:
Welcome Postcard Photo
Welcome Message from Bride and Groom
Description of Contents
Schedule of Events
Directions
Local Map
Things To Do
Places To Eat
Photo-sharing Information
Explanation of Local Landmarks
Crossword Puzzle
Word Search
Maze
Sudoku (2 Puzzles)

Here are some highlights:

Scanned image of a Weeki Wachee mermaid postcard

Welcome letter from us

Schedule of events

One of the Sudoku puzzles

Although it will take me a big chunk of time to finish 15 of these lovelies, I think our guests will really appreciate the personal touch. And if our guests don't notice, then at least it was a fun project to work on!

Visit Florida (a.k.a. More OOT Bag Fun)

Next stop on the OOT bag express? Informational brochures. On my last trip home, I stopped at the Florida Welcome Center to collect informational brochures to place in my OOT bags. Not only did I want to highlight all the state has to offer (aside from theme parks), and I wanted to find anything highlighting the local area where we will get married. Boy did I hit the mother lode! I found information on hiking and paddling trails, state parks, and even travel tips for Florida.

I also spent some time shopping in local gift shops for cute local post cards. I found some kitschy Florida postcards with flamingos and alligators and I found cards from local attractions. Take a look at the booty:

In order to package them up for guests, I opted (for once) to take a relatively simple approach- I wrapped them like a package.

I took curling ribbon that you would commonly use to wrap gifts, and twisted it around the entire stack of brochures and postcards:

Although I had 3 rolls of curling ribbon, it was difficult to find enough to wrap all 15 stacks of brochures because I had a "helper," trying to steal and eat all the loose ribbons:

Despite all the "help," I was able to get all 15 stacks wrapped in a little under 1/2 an hour, so it was, by far the easiest OOT bag project to date.

Packing Cocoa

As I mentioned earlier, we purchased a variety of cocoa packets for inclusion in our OOT bags. Since I'm really into creating custom packaging (if you don't believe me, read this post, this post, or this post), I decided to create cute little pillow packs for the cocoa. I ordered pillow boxes from Nashville Wraps, and when they arrived I enlisted some help to get started.

These cute little boxes are the perfect size for 2 gourmet cocoa packets from Land O'Lakes.

I created cute custom labels:

that I will print on glossy paper, trim to size and affix to the pillow box with a ribbon wrap. So ridiculously cute!

Cookie Condoms

Since this is my personal blog, I can call this post whatever I want. So "Cookie Condoms" it is. You'll see why I developed this inappropriate moniker in a bit.

When I began work on our OOT bags, I admit, it was with much gusto (My obsession has been chronicled here and here). I've been laboring over contents, design, distribution, etc. I've begun the process of collecting items, which has involved a great deal of internet research to find cost-efficient options. I found these adorable boxes of cookies:

at The English Tea Store. They had both key lime and coconut, which are such great choices for our OOT bags.

While the boxes are very cute, they don't match our colors. Now, admittedly, I have a problem. I'm a classic over-thinker (to borrow a line from The Office), so I decided to create a label to dress up the cookies. I didn't want to wrap the whole box like a present, because I thought it would be bulky and a bit amateurish. Ultimately, I decided to make a wrap out of kraft card stock.

So I pulled out my paper trimmer, bone folder, and scoring blade and went to work. Here are the wraps and cookie boxes, before they met:

Now sliding the wraps around the boxes was a bit trickier than I had imagined. I measured very carefully so that they would fit snugly, and boy did they ever (Hence my name for this post). I persevered; however, and triumphed over cardboard. I know I have a problem. Not everything has to have our logo and/or motif. But I can't help it; they are just so darn cute.

I created labels and printed them glossy photo paper, wrapped each box with brown ribbon, and affixed the label to the front:


Here they are, a box full of label addiction:

Next, I'm working on hot cocoa packets, lip balm, and sunscreen. Stay tuned as I continue to be my own worst enabler...

OOT Update

Yep, my obsession with OOT bags is back and in full force. Do I want saltwater taffy or molasses taffy? Whiskey or whiskey bread? Is there any chocolate in there at all? What if people don't like sweets (Emily, I'm looking out for you)? Hours and hours of time have been lost to internet research. What are other folks doing? What have their guests said? Do we need things like toiletries or just snacks? There is a lot that goes into these crazy things!

Since we've decided we're taking a "Hometown Homage" approach to our OOT bags, we've decided on the following items:
Georgia- peach preserves, blueberry preserves, Georgia peanuts, and biscuit mix
Florida: Key lime coolers, coconut cookies, saltwater taffy
Tennessee: Tennessee whiskey, moon pies

I found these adorable mini-jars of jam and the prices were so reasonable, I ordered 2 flavors!

Doing my part to support the Georgia Peanut Commission.

What winter gift bag would be complete without cocoa and marshmallows? I got a variety pack of cocoa so that I could include a couple packets in each bag. These will go with the snowflake marshmallows that I wrote about earlier.

Oogling OOT Bags

I admit, I'm incredibly obsessed with OOT bags. For those of you that are unfamiliar, OOT bags are welcome gifts for Out of Town (OOT) guests. I love the hospitality of the gesture, the ability to shop for fun, mini-size goodies, and the craftiness of creating custom labels.

I haven't decided how I'm going to proceed, but here are some fun ideas:

I don't know if I'm going to go with baskets, gift bags, or those cool gable boxes, but I do know that we want to feature regional snacks from our hometown states:
Me: Georgia
Him: Florida
Us: Tennessee
Possibly moon pies from Tennessee? Peanuts and/or peaches from Georgia? Coconut patties from Florida? Yummmmm... the possibilities are endless.

Snowflake Marshmallows

Now, most girls probably go a bit ga-ga over dresses and shoes, but I'm not most girls. What have I gone ga-ga over? Marshmallows. Yep that's right- marshmallows. Lovely, little snowflake-shaped marshmallows to be exact. Courtesy of ETSY crafter, Deidre Wood.

I could't resist! I ordered a bunch for our Out-of-Town welcome bags. Can you blame me?