Wedding Photobooth and a Carrot

I loved doing projects for Joni, my eldest daughter's wedding recently. She was toying with some ideas and I happily volunteered to make this.

As you recall, I collect scrap wood from this furniture shop that throws them out.  (I always feel like a little squirrel storing nuts for the winter :)  I also made my white privacy screens on rollers this way - you can see them when you click on the grey words.  

These are bed slats.

I knocked them off their frames, sawed some to get more-or-less the same lengths, then nailed them together to make three columns.  I was hoping to get them all in their natural wood colour (see how the last few pieces are a different shade?)..

 
..and waited and waited for the shop to throw some more out.  Then I couldn't wait anymore, and so had to paint them with a very, very diluted grey paint to even out the shade, yet leave it still rustic-looking.  My husband helped me with making the back supports.

  

Then I used masking tape to help me figure out the positioning of the different lines of words (words were chosen by bride and groom).

Joni had given me an A4 size picture of the font etc that she had arranged.  I do not know how to do fonts, word arrangements, or stencilling.  Heck, I don't even know how to put the words into a thumbdrive and have them enlarged at a photocopying shop! (where's everybody when you need them?) So I just winged it - I drew the words on, free-hand, using pieces of blackboard chalk.

Then I painted over the chalk using white gloss paint and a fine brush. (It was like drawing eye-liner on for ten thousand 700 ladies).

And here's where the carrot makes it debut.  I am an amateur DIYer.  I do not have the proper tools or machines or fancy equipment for my projects.  I grab whatEVER works. No kidding. So... see the dots in the picture below?

 Yep, I cut off the tip of a carrot and dipped it in paint.  Worked fine.

On days when the haze situation was bad or it got too hot out at the back of our house, I just hauled that whole column in and painted it in my sitting room.  With the air-conditioning on.  Like a boss.  :)

Here are my models.  The words for this column were taken from their pre-marital course.

The words for this column are part quotation from a writer, and if someone is dying to know, I'll find out from the groom for you as soon as they get back from their honeymoon :)

My husband and I having a little fun.

Our long-time family friend's daughter in a beautiful saree, totally outshining my photobooth :)

 Oh.  And the carrot?  Well, here's a story for you!  A long time ago I was teaching Sunday School to a group of village children in Kuching, East Malaysia.  I was teaching them a vegetable printing (okra, potato) craft.  One of the children had exclaimed, "Eeyer, Cikgu -  membazir...." (Malay for, "Oh no, Teacher, what a waste..."). 

Some things we'd never bat an eye at, like using store-bought vegetables for a simple craft.  Yet for some, they see it as using produce from months of hard work on a farm.  Boy, I never forgot that remark...

I cut off the painted tip of the carrot.  And put the rest of it in a stew..  :)