If you’ve ever looked inside an Ikea catalogue or — God forbid — a wedding magazine, you’ve noticed the utter perfection of everything: perfect furniture, perfect accessories, perfect lighting, etc.

And then you most likely despaired at the thought of never having such a pretty apartment or such a pretty wedding. You couldn’t possibly, with your family telling you to take the old couch to college because it’s free, or your kindly older aunt telling you that you should wear her shoulder pad-tastic wedding dress from the ’80s because it’s also free, right?

Or maybe you just got engaged, you’re still in college and you have to create a budget that will allow you to furnish your apartment _and_ get married somewhat respectably. Welcome to my world!

With the help of my spirit animal, Martha Stewart, and my fabulous bridesmaids, I’ll be creating crafts that can do double-duty in an apartment and a wedding ceremony, and I’ll be sharing the experience with you. It doesn’t matter if you’re not engaged or your parents own their own Crate & Barrel — maybe you just really, really want to know if someone can make their own veil for under $20, or if Christmas twinkle lights can actually be used year-round without burning the apartment down (We’ll find out!). Maybe you browse through Pinterest sadly, wanting to make all those beautiful crafts, but you don’t believe it’s really possible for a mere mortal, and you don’t want to look like a fool for trying.

Don’t worry; I’ve already got you covered.

For a bit of an introduction, I’ve already decided to make paper flower bouquets for my bridesmaids (who’s the foolish one now?) and paint glass bottles to look like frosted sea glass for my centerpieces. At the moment, I’m torn between splurging for invitations and taking the time and effort to create them myself.

A tip that I’ve received from several DIY wedding-planning sources is that you should put a dollar value on your time and estimate whether you should spend time or money on a certain project. Spending time certainly is cheaper, but there may be way more pressing things that you need to be focusing on right now (like school, right?). On the other hand, paying money for a service is certainly faster and less of a headache, but if you had a ton of money to spend, you probably wouldn’t be reading this column too closely.

One of the things that I would like to do myself is my wedding invitations, both for cost-efficiency and the chance to put a personal touch on my wedding. I’m really intrigued by the idea of printing out my own invitations and stamping them with the magic inside the Inkadinkado Stamping Gear Deluxe Kit. This baby allows you to stamp circular or square patterns with amazing precision, so your project doesn’t look like a drunken 5-year-old made it. And they have sea turtles! The kit itself costs $50 at Michaels, but if you can get your hands on a 40-percent-off coupon or better, you can get a steep discount (Pony up, Michaels!).

For me, $50 or even $25 is a lot of money for something I might never use again, so I’m interested to find out if you can use the stamps with something other than ink. Some of those stamps are really cute, and I would totally use them with some fabric paint to decorate tea towels, pillowcases or whatever else I could get my hands on. I could even create a “family pattern,” unique to my husband and I, and decorate everything with it: invitations, towels, bedspreads, etc. — like a modern-day family crest.

Creating your own crest could be a great way to dress up those blah drapes your parents bought you before you moved away to college. It would also be a good way to distinguish your towel from your roommates’, so you can catch them if they’re stealing it.

So there you have it! Don’t you feel inspired already? I’ll be coming up with loads more DIY crafts like this for you to be proud of… Unless you totally screw it up, and then you should maybe just burn it with fire. I have faith in you, though. Happy Pinteresting!