Homemade Vanilla favors from SMP tutorial

We made homemade vanilla as favors for our guests using a Style Me Pretty tutorial.

We bought our jars from Save On Crafts. They are 3.5 oz cork-top triangle-shaped bottles. They are 4.25" tall and sell for 44 cents each.

We used the vanilla labels linked to on the SMP tutorial, which say "Love Gets Sweeter By The Day." We took the .pdf file to FedEx Office where they printed them onto their own sticker paper for very cheap. We cut them out by hand with scissors, not an x-acto knife.

We used a few varieties of vodka, based on whatever was on sale at the time we went to the liquor store.

We got our gourmet Tahitian vanilla beans at a very affordable price, purchasing 1 lb of beans for $20 plus shipping from this eBay seller, vanillaproducts. We had plenty left over and have been enjoying using them for cooking and baking, and have given some away to friends and coworkers.

We found the exact same pattern of mini-gingham brown ribbon that you see on the SMP tutorial at JoAnn Fabrics.

Our vanilla was soaking in the bottles for about four months before the wedding, though only about two months is necessary. Once the vanilla is in the little bottles, the increased exposed surface area will result in some evaporation (even with a cork plugged in tight) so be prepared to top off the bottles with extra vodka about 6-8 weeks before the wedding.

This was a fairly easy project and the little bottles looked great sitting out at each place setting on the dining tables. The guests loved them, and we heard that one of our ushers was scooping up extras to take home with him.

how much did one batch make you? it says 3 vanilla beans and 1 cup water, that doesnt sound like much 

Hi, I just saw the questions on this post, sorry for the delay. We multiplied the recipe many times in order to make enough vanilla. We made 60 favors, and put about 3 oz of vanilla into each tiny 3.5-oz bottle. So that's 180 oz, which worked out to three handles of vodka from the liquor store. The pound of vanilla beans was way, way more than we needed to make that much vanilla. We made sure to put at least one vanilla bean into each little bottle, as it made a very pretty visual inside there and enhanced the DIY look.

Hi holly24, we made the vanilla while it was still in the vodka handles, but after it was done we put 1-2 beans in each little bottle (we started putting one in each, then doubled up a couple of them to use up all the beans). The beans were long, so that's a folded bean you see in the photo.

One bit of advice - after we transferred the vanilla to the little bottles, we still had a couple of months to wait before the wedding, and we found that there was enough evaporation that occurred during that time that we had to top off the little bottles a week or so before the wedding. Your corks may be tighter than ours, but just a heads up in case you might need to have more vodka handy.

@amw511s Definitely - that is exactly what we did, let it sit in large containers for a few months and then transferred to small bottles. I very much *wanted* to have the individual beans in each bottle, since I love the look and also that made it more apparent that the vanilla was homemade. But it's certainly not necessary to have a bean in each little bottle if you make the vanilla in large containers.