Wedding: CARD Suitcase

Using a vintage suitcase to hold the gift cards was a decision that Brandin made before I was on involved but I love the idea.  The biggest drawback-and it has to be said-is that it leaves the card in plain-tempting- site, possibly tempting someone to make a withdrawal when no one is looking. Of course it is sobering to think someone would steal from you at your own wedding but the reality is people do.  We solved this simply by emptying the suitcase as it filled up and stashing the cards in a safe location.  Be sure to assign this to someone you trust implicitly and who isn't in the wedding party-they will be too busy to adequately keep watch.

Making a suitcase into a card "holder" is pretty simple.  

Brandin purchased this vintage suitcase from a mutual friend who has an amazing little booth of vintage goods in a local consignment shop. 

 Like all vintage suitcases it smelled musty, icky and had a few issues that needed to be attended to.

The leather trim was loose in some places and falling apart in one corner. I carefully applied Fabri-Tac fabric glue to all the loose areas and held the trim it in place for a few minutes until it held.  This was a very easy fix.

****Excuse the Dark Shadow you see in this photo. This was happening at about 5am-roughly 12 hours into my wedding projects that day.  I think around 2am or so my give-a-s*#t level tanked.  All those perfect tutorial-ready photos....yeah, WhatEVER.  Staging became just-get-the-shot-and-MOVE-on.  My basement studio is amazing, really it is...it is full of overhead lighting..as in "it provides a lot of great OVERHEAD light".  The downside? It provides a LOT of OVERHEAD light.

The leather trim looks much better after it was glued in place.

As is typical of a lot of vintage the luggage the inside is icky. I did take the suitcase outside and brush all the loose dirt out after I took these photos...remember the *** above?  Yeah, I was TIRED when I shot these photos.

I was worried that the ugly interior would be an unnecessary distraction at the wedding.  Nobody wants to see this ugly mess.  I needed to beautify the lining. Now, if this suitcase was going to be permanently on display with the lining showing, I would do something more detailed and pretty.  But for our purposes, it would only be on display for a few hours, my solution was simple and two-fold.

The musty oder inside was also a big turn off.  I contemplated several solutions-kitty litter, crumpled newspaper, oder-removing prodents- but in the end, I decided to start with the easiest and cheapest....Mr. Sun, Sun Mr. Golden Sun.  I let the opened suitcase sit in the sun for a full day. It worked well enough for our purposes.  Then it was time to do my favorite part....dress it up!

I made a simple garland using #10 manilla shipping tags, chipboard letters, vintage lace and seam binding.  I misted the tags using Heidi Swapp's Color Shine in Mustard and Georgia Peach.  I stamped randomly using Pretty Peony stamp by Impression Obsession using Archival Ink in Sienna.  Finally, I inked the edges using Vintage Photo Distress Ink and an ink blending tool.   The letters C,A,R, and D came from a set of chipboard letters I've been hoarding for ages... I have no idea who made them.  I colored them using Tarnished Brass Distress Paint.  It really gave it a vintage look and covered the chipboard well in two coats.  I used hot glue to attach lace to the back of each tag as well as the dried chipboards letters.  Finally I ran a length of the seam binding through each hole and tied it once so the tags wouldn't slide along the ribbon.  The ends of the seam binding were lefty 6-8 inches long and were attached tot the suitcase using large Zots glue dots.  I didn't want to use anything that would damage the suitcase.  I tied two separate bows, using the same color seam biding.  The bows were used to cover the area where the seam binding was attached to the suitcase and add a pretty detail. I used more glue dots to attach the bows.

 The bottom of the suitcase was covered with a square of the darker peach, sheer fabric.  That was layered with a pretty lace overlay that I cut from an old lace tablecloth.

That is it....easy, vintage, and romantic.  I think it looks much better than the wedding card boxes I see for sale.

Have a day filled with Sunshine and Glitter....
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