DIY Wedding Favours: Custom Matchboxes

I love crafty things, and as my wedding planning progresses I'm realizing more and more how much I want to do things for myself. Not just because it usually is less expensive, but I think I get a certain sense of pride when someone complements me on something I've made. That's why I've made a lot of the things for our wedding myself I think. Today I'm going to share with you the favours Andrew and I made for our wedding. I love how they turned out and I love how much money we saved by doing it ourselves.

For those of you who don't know, Andrew and I love fire. We live building campfires, lighting matches and playing with lighters. Basically, all the things your parents tell you not to do with fire, we do it. The first time I went over to Andrews house we sat in his backyard and he taught me how to flick matches. So naturally our favours are matches.

 I decided that I wanted boxes of matches, not books of matches, which unfortunately is more expensive, but totally worth it for ease of lighting the matches in my opinion. However, when I looked online, custom boxes of matches were a dollar per box plus shipping! I thought that was too much money, so I figured out a plan for how to do them for under $30 for 150. By doing it myself I saved over $120, which I think is pretty impressive. Here is how I did it:

You will need:

- matchboxes (I got mine at the dollar store for 6 cents each)
- paper(I got mine at Michaels for $5.00)
- glue(I got mine from the dollar store, $1.00 per pack and I used 3 packs)
- printer
- printer ink
- Microsoft Word or some other word processor
- ruler
- paper cutting device

Instructions :

Step 1: measure your match boxes with the ruler, you will need the length and width of the box.

Step 2: in Microsoft Word, create a text box the same size as your match box and fill it with the text you want. To resize the text box to be the size of your matchboxes, right click on the match box and then select the option that says "Format Object".

 Then select the "Size" tab and change the height and width to match the size of your box.

Step 3: copy and paste the text box so you fill the whole page with your custom text boxes.

Step 4: print out your boxes on your paper and cut them out

Step 5: glue the paper to your match boxes

Step 6: repeat steps 2-5 for the back of your matchboxes

Step 7: marvel at all the lovely favours you have just created!

I decided to punch our little hearts to glue to the front side of the boxes, since I already had the cute little punch. This whole process took me about 6 hours for 150 boxes. And I enjoyed making them so much!

Leave a comment if you have any questions!