Botanical Art DIY

Create simple and pretty table numbers using beautiful botanical illustrations. Inspired by lush garden weddings, these table numbers offer a pretty and simple alternative. This DIY offers a lot of room for creativity, so play around with it to make it your own.

By Stephanie Sturino

This DIY can be done in any word processing program, we did ours in Word, just be sure to print your final items onto quality paper for a polished look, try specialty stores like The Paper Place. We chose a heavy card-stock paper in a shimmery off-white.

Method

• Using the online collection of botanical illustrations from the New York Public Library, link below, copy and paste a favourite image into a blank document.
• Next, select a font for the text. On our samples we used a soft and elegant font to give a more sophisticated feel, look at font download sites like dafont.com for inspiration. Be sure to set your image behind your text, so the number can be sit on top of the image. Colour and size of the font is up to you, try to coordinate with your colour palette. Once you’ve perfected your image, print and test for size. We chose to cut down our image to a 5″x7″.
• We love the idea of having different but coordinating frames for each table. Shop local antique markets for vintage inspiration. We also created a sample without a frame that can be incorporated into a centerpiece or sit neatly in a place-card holder, we used a plastic cube holder. The key to this alternative is the double layer of heavy card-stock, which helps it stand straight. To do this, simply measure out a rectangle about half an inch bigger than your image and secure the two with glue. We also used a rounded cut-out for our corners, a variety of design cut-outs can be found at any local craft store.
• Alternatively, use tear outs from botanical art calendars or old books to avoid any computer programs and print or stamp a number on to them.

Notes on Sources: Botanical Art at the New York Public Libraries link, DaFont