It has officially been six months since the wedding (happy half-year, Mr. Eggplant!). I thought I'd celebrate by sharing one of my most favorite parts of our wedding: Our slideshow. I've written about how we used media as an inexpensive means to make our wedding incredibly personal. You've already seen our entrance music video and heard our first dance songs. But the grand media finale was a thoughtful, embarrassing, and slightly cheesy slideshow that Mr. Eggplant created.

Slideshows usually aren't the main event at weddings. Some brides opt out of making one for fear of boring their guests. After all, who wants to inundate people with an endless barrage of baby pictures? Well, when our wedding was over, a comment I repeatedly received from our guests was how much they enjoyed our slideshow. Many even told me that it was their favorite event of the night. What? No one noticed my hand-punched place cards that took weeks to assemble? What about my color-coordinated jellybeans? Apparently, our slideshow received the most bang for our buck, in terms of wedding prep hours.

Putting together a slideshow is no small feat. It's not easy to dig through a lifetime of pictures and choose only a sampling that reflects your life story. But the end result is worth the work. With a few man-hours and a little personalization, a wedding slideshow can be an experience the people will enjoy and even remember. Your wedding will probably be the only time in your life that you can force a large, captive audience to watch ten minutes of footage all about you, so why not make it entertaining?  You may even get to watch your guests reacting like this:

Mr. Eggplant's cousin watching our slideshow.

Or like this:

My MOH during our slideshow.

Me, totally embarrassed from the tween-year pictures that Mr. Eggplant included in our slideshow.
*All images property of Apertura Photography

I can't believe I'm about to share my awful adolescent pictures on the internet. But for the sake of helping other brides, I will endure a little embarrassment.  If you happen to find our slideshow useful, you can thank Mr. Eggplant for the video. Without his help, I wouldn't have been able to post it for you guys. He went through the trouble of voicing over names to protect the privacy of our family members. He also has quite a few unflattering, nerd-o pictures in the video, so beware.

(Minutes 1:35 to 3:29 are all baby pics, so skip to minute 3:30 if you get bored.)

The slideshow project was Mr. Eggplant's baby from start to finish. As a mass communications major in college, Mr. Eggplant has always had a love for all things media-related. He really wanted our slideshow to be funny, entertaining, and illustrating of our story. Many long nights were spent pouring over video footage and scanning piles of baby pictures. Papa Eggplant gave us some videos of me as a toddler. The footage added an element that our guests really enjoyed. After everything was scanned and uploaded, we spent a few hours recording a narration of the video. Mr. Eggplant taught himself the tips and tricks of iMovie through various web resources. As a final touch, he thoughtfully paired the perfect songs with each video and photo montage. The tunes that he picked and the timing of the music made all the difference in the world (watch minute 6:50 of the slideshow if you're not sure what I'm talking about. ).

I hope you enjoyed our wedding slideshow. If you have any questions regarding Mr. Eggplant's process, leave 'em here and I'll send him on over to answer.

If I haven't convinced you to buy a Cuttlebug yet, maybe this next tutorial will sway you. I've shown you how to emboss using Cuttlebug embossing folders and today I will show you how to use Cuttlebug dies. What is a die? A die is a metal form or stencil that is used to punch or cut out shapes. Below is a picture of the Cuttlebug die called Flowers:

The front of the die has a picture of what the finished cuts will look like.

The back of the die is padded with foam. If you press down on the foam, you can feel the metal stencil edge that cuts through the paper.

For my project, I only needed to cut one flower so I trimmed a small piece of paper down and placed it over the shape that I wanted to use. To use the dies, you will need to use the sandwich technique that I showed you in my first tutorial. (A plate + B plate + die tool + cardstock + B plate). Once I finished assembling the Cuttlebug sandwich, I cranked it through the machine.

I removed the top plate and here is what the die cut looked like.

After removing all the surrounding paper scraps, I was left with a single perfectly cut flower.

Note that the top B plate of the Cuttlebug sandwich will have permanent impressions engraved from the metal edges of the dies. The plate warps a bit when it is sandwiched with the dies and will eventually need to be replaced after heavy usage.

I added the flower as an embellishment to another thank you card I made. The card is 5.5" x 4.25" and the center rectangle is 4.25" x 3". I layered the center piece with different patterned paper and ribbon. "Thank you" is stamped on a small piece white paper and layered onto a rectangle of celery-colored cardstock that I cut with a pair of scalloped scissors.

Here's a close up picture. I added a little rhinestone to the middle of the flower to give the card some sparkle.

Go out and buy your Cuttlebug today!

I finally finished sending out "thank you" cards to all of my wedding guests... all except for my bridesmaids. Five months have passed since wedding and I haven't officially thanked them! That's awful, isn't it? I had my heart set on making each them personalized cards and I just didn't have the chance to get around to it until recently.

I made another "thank you" card for one of my bridesmaids last night. Since a few of you liked my little entry on the Cuttlebug, I have more Cuttlebug fun for you today.

One of the first things that I do when I make a card is choose a color combination. For this thank you card, I pulled out sheets of colored paper and mixed and matched until I found a combination that I was satisfied with.

  
I love choosing neutral colors with one bright color in the mix.

 
This Cuttlebug embossing folder is called Divine Swirl.

 
I cut a piece of paper to the size that I wanted it and then placed it between the embossing folder.

 
Next, I did the whole cuttlebug sandwich process that I talked about in my last entry and I cranked it through it through the machine. Out popped a sheet of swirly embossed paper!

 
This is a slit punch. It punches a half circle through a sheet of paper. By punching a bunch of half circles in a row, I can create scalloped borders for my cards.

 
Here is the finished product of the scalloped circle punch.

 
I used it as a border for my swirly paper.

 
Finally, I stamped a few images on white and guava-colored paper, cut them out, and stuck the pieces onto a piece of brown cardstock for the final product.

 
Here's one last close up view. I wanted to give the card depth so I used pop up foam squares to adhere the pieces to the cardstock. I love the effect!

There are so many neat folders and dies available for the Cuttlebug. You can use them for cards, invitations, altered items... The possibilities are truly endless!