Friday, September 9, 2011

DIY Wedding Wire Name Hangers

Something that I came across on Etsy that I really wanted for the wedding was the wire name hangers that people make. Now I couldn't bring myself to spend $25-$30 on one name hanger, so I set out to try and figure out how to do them myself.

During this process, I stumbled across a DIY that someone had posted on a Weddingbee board. After reading over how this girl did hers, I decided that I had to try it. It seemed easy enough. You can find her DIY here. So here goes my own DIY Tutorial of how I made these awesome wooden name hangers.

Supplies:

  • 18 Gauge wire-I bought mine at Lowe's for around $4.88 I think. It comes in 110 ft rolls.


  • Wooden Hangers-I bought a 5 pack at Walmart for $4.98. Make sure they don't have that bar that goes across the bottom for pants to hang on. 


  • Drill
  • Drill bit. The drill bit needs to be a little bit bigger than the gauge of the wire. The one we bought was a 1.6mm drill bit.


  • Needle Nose Pliers
  • Wire Cutters. We used our Leatherman and it had the pliers and the cutters both on it. 


  • Font that you are wanting to use. Make sure you use a script font because you want the letters to connect. I used Riddle like the girl did in her tutorial. You have to download this font. (Once you have downloaded it you have to extract all files. It should pull a file out that looks like a stack of books. Once you have that file extracted, you need to go to your control panel and click on Fonts. You should be able to just click and drag the file into the Fonts folder and then it should pop up with a box that says something about downloading or processing. Once that box closes you should be good to go. Just open word and pull down your font menu and it should be in there.)
  • Hot Glue Gun
  • Glue Sticks
  • Ribbon
Directions:
  • Once you have your font installed open word and type in the names that you are wanting to do. Make sure that you make the first letter a little bit bigger then the rest. I believe her tutorial called for 225 for the first letter and 110 for the others, but I messed around with mine a bit to make them look how I wanted. Once you have that figured out, print out the sheets so that you can get started.


  • Next you want to cut a good length of wire. I think about 4 ft will do it, you can do longer though if you are worried about it. I found that I would end up with a lot of extra wire and it wouldn't be long enough to do another name so I would end up wasting this wire.
  • Once you have your wire cut, lay the wire against the name and start bending the wire like you are tracing the name.(Helpful hint: use your imagination with some of it. I had a name that had a "z" in it and the font didn't have a cursive "z" so I had to do that one without a guide. If you don't like the way one of the letters looks in the font that you chose, make it your own and don't be afraid to mess up because it is bound to happen.)
  • Once you have the wire bent into the name, you can start to attach it to the hanger.
  • First, you need to drill two small holes in your hanger. One on each side on the underneath part of the hanger, directly under the little etched out part that you would hang the strap on. You can go all the way through, but I didn't just so that you wouldn't see the wire poking up through.


  • Next, I laid the hanger down on the counter and tried to center the name the best that I could. 
  • Once I had the name centered, I would cut the wire to the appropriate length.
  • I would then bend a little piece of the wire up so that it would sit in the holes that I drilled.




  • Once I was satisfied with the way that it looked, I would put a little bit of hot glue on the ends of each piece and put them into the holes that I drilled. 



  • From there I would adjust them however I needed to, i.e. if something wasn't laying right or if they weren't quite straight across.
  • I then tied a bow onto the hanger of each person's name.




And that's it! They are done! I made one for me, all of the girls in my wedding party, my flower girls, my moms, Aran's mom, both of my sister in laws, our guest book attendant and one of our readers. Now you don't have to do that many, but I felt that each one of these people would really love these. And let's face it, I had the supplies to do it. So overall, I spent around $15 on the hangers, and I ended up having to buy a second roll of wire because I played around with it so much so that was another $10 and then about $2 on ribbon and then I also had to purchase the glue gun and glue sticks so that was about another $6. So overall I made 15 hangers and spent a total of $33 dollars which works out to be about $2.20 a hanger. That is pretty dang good!















I hope that you guys can use this tutorial and make these for yourself if you have been wanting them. It is definitely a cheaper route to go and it is kind of fun to make the gifts for those that you have asked to share your special day with you. I can't wait to see how they all look with everyone's dresses hanging on them. If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to leave a comment or you can email me at mdvervaecke@gmail.com. 

Did you make any of the gifts for your wedding party? Did you find that it was cheaper or more expensive than it would have been to buy them?

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11 comments:

  1. Wow! These turned out amazing! You are such a crafty one! Hope your wedding planning is going good.

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  2. i love love loveeee this tutorial. last night i was really trying so hard on etsy not to buy myself a hanger. you came up with this tutorial just in time! i'm SO doing this!

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  3. Yay! I am so glad that I could be of some help financially! Haha! I can't wait to see how yours turn out. And Nikki Lou, there isn't a picture of yours finished, but I am sure that you noticed your name on that sheet, haha! There is one for you, I promise! I finished it last night!

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  4. I have all the supplies to do this, I just haven't started on it yet, lol. Yours turned out wonderful! Love them!

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  5. Okay- I love your "t"s!!! I was freaking out about how to make them... I kept trying and failing... but seeing the bow tie- LOVE IT!!!!

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  6. THese came out sooo awesome!!! I have wanted a hanger but like you didn't really want to spend the money on one! I am saving this as a favorite and going to purchase the stuff to buy and try this!!! Thank you sooo much!

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  7. This is awesome!!! Ive seen them before but never thought of actually making them yourself! You did an amazing job!

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  8. wow!! Oh my goodness if I knew it was THIS EASY to make these I sooooo would have done them too!! Man..I wish I could go back in time- i'll def. make these as gifts for friends though...great tutorial!

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  9. Thanks so much mine turned out awesome

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  10. Thank you so much for your tutorial.. I am going to go out and buy the materials tomorrow and give my own ago! Yours look Fab!

    Celia =)

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