Crafty Countdown Book Review

The Crafty Countdown is the second book written by the DIY Bride.  Just like the first, it has tons of wonderful DIY projects, but this one makes it even better.  It gives you a timeline of when you should do each project.  That will help you manage your time better with all your DIY projects.

A Little About the Auther
Khris Cochran is the author of The DIY Bride and creator and founder of the award-winning DIYBride.com, one of today's most popular bridal crafting websites.  In addition to dishing out wedding expertise daily on DIYBride.com, Khris teaches craft classes and workshops of all kinds in the San Francisco Bay area where she lives with her husband and son.

The Crafty Countdown includes 40 projects ranging from save-the-dates to centerpieces.  All these projects are arranged to be made in the months, weeks, and hours before your wedding.  For each project, Khris gives you the amount of time it should take and whether you should tackle the project alone or with others. 

There are definitely a few projects from this book I'm going to tackle, including:

Memory Lane Table Markers (takes about an hour to make 10-15)

Cupcake in a Jar Favors (takes about four hours)

Customized Water Bottle Labels (takes about 30 minutes to complete half a dozen bottles)

At the end of every project, Khris includes tips and hints to make the project easier for you to create.  Then, she gives you a cost comparison of the store cost vs. making it yourself.  For every project in the book, it's so much cheaper to make it yourself.  A lot of these projects take a good bit of time, so make sure you're committed to them before you start.

About half of the book are projects that you should start to make about 6 months before your wedding (including tons of cute save-the-date and invitation ideas) so I recommend buying this book really early in your planning.  I wish this book would have been out when I started planning because I would have used on of her invitation projects.

I highly recommend this book and The DIY Bride to anyone looking to make some of their own projects for their wedding.  It will help save money and you can add in your own personal touches.