The Wedding Gift: Complete

So here it is – just a few days later – the wedding present!
I struggled a bit with how to format the top, but it came together more organically in the end.  I wanted to make sure it closed somehow. This seemed important to me as if it would be upended at some point and the bottles need not fall out.  Maybe not, but security is important when transporting precious bottles of wine.

So I measured the wine bottles – the dimensions of a wine bottle are about 3.25” in diameter at the bottom by  12.25” tall if you are curious – and planned out my pieces and got to work cutting.

Once the pieces were cut out, I transferred the image from their “Save the Date” card onto the leather using my own version of carbon paper (covering the back of the paper with pencil and then tracing – it worked in grade school, it works now!).

Then I branded and painted the pattern into the leather:

Since my Antique Black leather dye often has a little bit of a grey-brown look to it, I decided that would be the final color of the piece.   The “Save the Date” card was gray and gold, so it was the closest approximation that I had.  Next stop – dying:

After all the pieces were dry, I stitched them together and added the snap closure at the top.  Here are a few pictures of the finished piece:

There is a divider inside, too, to keep the bottles from clanking together.  I decided to make it removable because for some reason it really bothers me when the dividers are fixed.

My husband still says they won’t like it as much as I do, and that I wasted my time.  But really – who wouldn’t like this?  Especially a couple who owns their own winery?  I know I’m taking a bit of a risk here, since I’m giving a handmade present to someone who is in his family and not mine (and theoretically he should know better than I what they like), but it’s really, truly, from the heart.  Choosing their "Save the Date” graphic for the design gives me some assurance that it will be more their style, too, than if I’d just made something up from my imagination.

Now for round two:  As I was making this, I was thinking hard about how to wrap it, and also if I should put anything in it.  It seems really strange to give an empty wine tote, doesn’t it?  And if you’re giving wine to someone with a winery, then – well, that’s just not somewhere I wish to venture.  So I thought about putting a few bottles in there full of notes, a “message in the bottle” sort of thing, but all having to do with marriage and love and relationship, etc.   Or I could fill a bottle with $1 bills.  Everyone likes a bottle of money!  I might just have to leave it empty, though, and focus on wrapping.  I’m afraid my husband would think I’m totally off the deep end if I go with the “message in the bottle” idea.

So then the next step is wrapping, which I will tackle 20 minutes before I have to go to the wedding, like always.

Happy giving,

Caitlin