SERIES: girls DINNER, summer tapas party

Remember the pizza party I posted a couple months ago? Well, the girls (tobe, morgan & carrie) and I are back with the second installment. We're calling this one a summer tapas party complete with colorful finds and plenty of munchies!

Laid back, refreshing and easy are words I would use to describe this tapas dinner. We lounged, grazed on the assortment of tasty treats, and enjoyed sangria (one of my summertime favorites). Be sure to visit tobe, and morgan & carrie to see the entire dinner.

Right here I'm going to show you the DIY project I did for this dinner. I wanted to come up with a fun way to mark our drinks while staying with the casual feel of this dinner.

DIY BRAIDED DRINK MARKERS

MATERIALS NEEDED:

- double sided silk material (1/8 yard for each color)

-1/4" elastic

-pins (not shown)

-matching thread (not shown)

STEP 1: Cut three equal strips of fabric for each color being used. 

Mine measured about 1/2" wide by 12" long

STEP 2: Taking three strands of fabric of the same color and a piece of elastic, cut to about 2"sandwich them together and secure with a pin. 

STEP 3: Sew across the "bundle" to secure the elastic and strips of fabric, making sure the elastic is in between the strips of fabric. This makes for a cleaner finished product.

STEP 4: Braid the fabric, making sure to keep the colored side you want on the top as you braid. The fabric might have a tendency to twist, but just continue to flip it right side up as you braid and you should be fine. 

STEP 5: Continue braiding until you have about an inch of fabric left at the end. Bundle the strips together and sandwich the other end of the elastic and secure with a pin. Sew across the "bundle" just as you did before to make a complete circle. 

STEP 6: The fabric that I chose to work with tends to fray, which was one thing I loved about it, but I trimmed the edges so it wasn't too ragged looking. :)

There you have it! The double sided fabric works great for this project, because you can just flip each one over for a total of four different markers.