Home DIY Projects + Tutorials Sparkly, Luxe DIY Wedding Favors With Freixenet Cava (And An Awesome Giveaway)

As most experienced wedding pros will tell you, favors are generally a "hit or miss" thing; guests wills either love them or totally ignore them. It's not at all uncommon for many favors to be left behind at the reception and thrown away by the cleanup crew. Quelle horreur! That's a lot of time, money, and effort wasted right there, my friends.

Because I loves ya, I'm going to let you in on a not-so-secret secret: edible favors are (usually) the foolproof way to give your guests a little gift of thanks that they'll appreciate. Almost everyone digs a sweet treat or something to munch on; hardly anyone wants to drag home a ceramic tchotchke or a random trinket engraved with someone else's initials.

Today, you lucky League of DIY Awesome™ friends, I'm going to show you how to make a gorgeous luxury-level favor that's both pretty and sure to be appreciated by your adult guests.

With the help of Freixenet, the producers of these beautiful mini bottles of cava sparkling wine (also known as cava), I've created this little box of pure joy. And wait until you hear what Freixent has in store for you!

My, my... what do we have here?

A beautifully adorned wooden box. Isn't the black, white, and gold combination just beautiful? (The correct answer is YES.)

And inside...

A simple embellished Freixenet cava mini bottle and a pair of gorgeous sweet treats nestled inside a box with a gilded interior lid. How could one not swoon over such a luxe presentation?, I ask.

Before we begin the instructional part of this post, Freixenet is offering DIY Bride readers an opportunity to win 125 mini bottles of Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut and a Memory Magnum for your wedding day. Enter the Freixenet All Love Sparkles Sweepstakes Facebook contest for a chance to win one of 6 prize packs. One lucky winner will be selected each week starting March 24th, 2014. Good luck, lovelies! The Cordon Negro Brut is absolutely delicious; don't miss this opportunity to share it with your guests.

If you're not familiar with Freixenet, they're the sparkling wine expert. Based in Spain, they've making sparkling wine for over a century and this year marks the 100 ^th anniversary of their first bottling. Freixenet (pronounced fresh-en-ay) Cordon Negro, a sparkling wine crafted in the same method of French champagne, takes two years from grape to glass to produce and they are known for the attention to detail and great care paid at every step in order to maintain the consistent quality they're known for. You can find Freixenet at their Facebook page or on Twitter.

INSTRUCTIONS for THE BOX

Supplies Needed:
Unfinished wood box, approximately 8.375in x 5.25in x 3.43in., found at craft stores
Black gloss acrylic paint
Foam paint brush
Decoupage glue
Gold leaf (copper leaf or silver leaf works just as well)
Soft-bristled paint brush
Newspaper or other material to protect your work surface.

Directions:
1. This part is pretty easy! Paint your box with the black acrylic paint and the foam brush. You'll need about 3 - 4 coats of paint to get a nice, dark and evenly painted surface. Though the paint dried very quickly, I did the exterior painting on one day and the interior painting and embellishing on the next. I also painted the hinges and hardware black because the gold hardware clashed with the copper embellishment on the inside of the box. Pro Tip: Be sure to paint with the box open otherwise you run the risk of painting the box shut. Go ahead - ask me how I know this. :-/

2. When your box is fully painted and dry, it's time to gild the lid's interior. Using a clean foam brush, apply decoupage to the interior of the box lid. Let it sit for a few minutes (3 to 5 minutes should be aces), just enough to get tacky but not dry.

3. Using the soft-bristled brush, pick up a sheet of copper leaf and apply it to the box lid interior. The idea is to carefully lay the sheets down with as little folding of the leaf as possible.

4. Using the soft bristled paint brush, just gently tap, burnish and rub the leaf down. It gets really easy with practice - you'll feel like a pro after just a few tries. It's ok to overlap the sheets a little bit; in fact, it's unavoidable. Don't sweat it. You're doing it right.

5. Keep adding leaf until the interior lid is covered. You should be able to scrape away any leaf that strays - and there will be a lot of it - that settles on any surface that doesn't have decoupage on it. That's really all there is to it. Do go ahead and admire your work and starting planning the next 100 things you'll want to add metallic leaf to.

(The gold leaf in these shots look a coppery. The real color is a true gold.)

Supplies Needed:

1 piece of striped cardstock cut to 4 in. x 4 in.
1 piece of glittered cardstock cut to 3.75 in. x 3.75 in.
1 piece of white cardstock cut to 3.5 in. x 3.5 in.
Double-sided tape
Rubber stamp with "thank you" design
Black ink
Glue gun and glue

Directions:

1. This one's easy! On the 3 inch piece of white cardstock, stamp "thank you" with black ink.

2. Using double-sided tape, stick the cardstock layers together: stripe on bottom, glitter in the center, and the white cardstock on top.

3. With a hot glue gun attach the label to the front of the box, in the center. I used one dot on each corner to make the label did not budget. You might get away with less glue. BE CAREFUL with the hot glue!

INSTRUCTIONS for THE FREIXENET BOTTLE
Supplies Needed:

• Freixenet mini bottle of sparkling wine
• Masking tape
• Spray paint in gold
• Newspaper, old cardboard, or other material to protect your work surface
• Newspaper or cardstock to protect the top of the bottles

Directions:

1. Remove the labels from the bottles. An overnight soak in the sink (or a tub) will do the trick. Let me assure you that scraping labels off bottles is no fun. Let the water do the work for you.

2. Dry the bottles by either wiping them with a dry cloth or letting them air dry. Remove any leftover debris from the labels, as necessary. You want a smooth, clean bottle to work with.

3. Next, add rows of painter's tape to the bottle to create a template for the gold stripes. The area between the rows of tape will be where you the paint goes. Don't be afraid to vary the size or number of stripes here! I did three simple stripes for ours but you can be as creative as your heart desires.

4. To protect the top part of the bottle from being painted, I used wrapped a piece of cardstock around the top and secured it with masking tape. This can be reused over and over. Wrapping newspaper around the top works as well.

5. Spray the bottles with light, even strokes.

5. Let the paint dry per manufacturers' instructions. Mine took a couple of hours to become fully dry.

6. Gently remove masking tape and admire your beautiful gilded bottle.

INSTRUCTIONS for THE COOKIESLemon Shortbread Cookie RecipeIngredients:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 3 tablespoons lemon zest
• 2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325º F.

2. Line two cookie sheet pans with parchment paper.

3. Sift the flour in a small bowl; set aside.

4. In an electric mixer, beat butter until creamy, about 3 minutes.

5. Add sugar and continue to beat, about 3 minutes more at medium-high speed, until very light and fluffy, scraping down the sides once or twice.

6. Beat in the vanilla extract, lemon zest, and lemon juice.

7. Gradually add flour, mixing just until blended, scraping down bowl once or twice.

8. Roll out cookie batter to 1/4-inch thickness on a lightly floured board and cut out with a circle cookie cutter. Place cookies on a baking sheet about 1-inch apart and chill at least 1 hour.

9. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the bottoms are just turning golden; the tops of the cookies should remain pale. Cool cookies completely on pans set on wire rack.

Cava Buttercream Filling:

• 1 stick [1/2 cup] unsalted butter, room temperature
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 to 3 tablespoons Freixenet Sparkling Wine
• A pinch of salt

Directions:

1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes.

2. Add the honey into the mixture.

3. Add the Freixenet Cava, 1 tablespoon at a time, until filling holds together and is smooth and creamy, about 2 minutes.

4. Transfer to a bowl, cover, and set aside until ready to use.

ASSEMBLING THE COOKIES
Supplies Needed:

• Pastry Bag. Either a cloth pastry bag or a disposable one will work.
• Star Tip. I like Wilton's 8B tip but any medium to large star tip will do.
• Wilton's Sugar Pearls in Black
• Luster Dust in Gold
• Edible Glitter. This is NOT the same as craft glitter. Craft glitters, though often non-toxic, are made of plastics and are not meant for human consumption.
• Offset knife for spreading icing
• Spoon for sprinkling glitter

ASSEMBLING THE BOXES Supplies Needed: Directions: // NOTES //

Things to be aware of: