The INVITES – Part 1

Hey everyone! I hope live and wedding planning (if applicable) is going well for you! Life has been uber busy for me lately, so I apologize for being a little MIA lately but I’m here armed with a new laptop to fill you in on what has been going on in the land of our wedding planning!

Today’s post is about our INVITES!!

Okay sooo if you don’t know, I’m a graphic designer. And what does that equal when added to a graphic designer’s wedding stationary? ULTRA PRESSURE OF DOOM OMG!!! High expectations from others? Maybe. High expectations from myself? OMG YES. I just can’t settle with ANYTHING. Nothing is exactly what I want… it’s like when your options are limitless… when you can make it look like whatever you want and it’s free… my head explodes. I have a kajillion ideas. I just have to make it work within our theme and somehow make myself happy.

So what did I come up with you ask? What is it that cured my crazy tendency to freak out over something that I could have easily bought a print at home $30 kit for and been done with???

HAH! You didn’t think it’d be THAT easy did you?! 😀

Here’s a teaser to hold you over until I get these babies printed up, and assembled.

DIY – Easy Save The Dates

Sorry I’ve been a little MIA lately… I have good reasoning, I promise!! Firstly, I’ve been socking away at wedding tasks and secondly…

I GOT A JOB! This wont be a habit (not posting for a bit) I just have to get back into the swing of things. I have hit a pretty good stride with the wedding planning though!

Our babies save the dates are off!! I am so happy with how they came out! It was a super sweet experience and I learned some things that I will do differently for the invites.

Since I’m a graphic designer I have high standards for all of my wedding stationary. I have too many options because I can literally do whatever I want. I could do something fun, something whimsical, something flowery, something artsy, something different, etc. The wedding stationary has been the hardest decision of my wedding planning thus far. (I picked the first dress I tried on!) I only finally made my decision on the stationary when my save the date deadline was past nearing the last minute. (Let me live in my delusions that I haven’t been behind on anything for the wedding yet!)

So what did this graphic designer and her lovie decide to do? We went on a classic route. I went with Damask. I didn’t want to have the same exact anything as anyone else, so I actually designed my own damask pattern. I wanted something with a little less graphic approach than a lot of the damask I have seen, so I used thinner flourishes and whatnot.

I only needed 50 envelopes for the Save the Dates. I looked around online for teal envelopes but had no luck finding the color I had in mind in a quantity less than 500, so I decided to make my envelopes. Lesson #1. I will NOT be making my envelopes for my invites. While the ones I made are good, they took a LOT of time to make only 50, and I think it is a little bit of stress I would like to save myself a couple of months before the wedding when I’m making invites. If I make a birthday card or something in the future though, I would totally do it again. For the template for the envelopes I made, check out my envelope tutorial.

So without further ado, here are some pictures! (Cell phone pics, but they’ll have to do for now!)

The outside.

The back. – It says “Laura & Russell”

The inside.

The save the date.

The save the date back. I decided to print the pattern on the back for added interest.

The save the date in the light… the pattern on the back shows through and it is so neat! I love the added effect, and I did this all on my regular old desktop printer!

Supplies: 110 lb. Index Cardstock, printer, paper cutter, corner rounder.

Steps:

1. Print Save the Date front, at this size (4.25×5.5) You can do two to a sheet if you want the pattern to go all the way to the edge like mine, if you don’t have a pattern to the edge, you can do 4 to a sheet. Turn printed sheets over and print on the backs if you want a pattern like mine. Remember to print a few extra in case you mess up on the cutting!

2. Cut the cards out using your paper cutter. Make sure they fit in your envelopes, trim them if you need to so they fit comfortably. Round the corners using your corner rounder.

3. Address your envelopes. Put cards in the envelopes AFTER you address them, You don’t want the ink to seep through the envelopes onto your save the dates, and you don’t want to have to take the save the dates out of any envelopes you mess up addressing. I also made stickers that said “Laura & Russell” to go on the back of the cards. Once I stuffed the envelopes, I sealed them, put the stickers & stamps on and they were wood to go!

I also made little magnets using one of our engagement pictures. On the top is: Laura & Russell and our wedding website, and on the bottom is a calender of the week of our wedding with our date circled with a heart. It also has the city we’re getting married in on the side.

Supplies: 1/2″ adhesive backed magnet strips cut into 3rds (you don’t need that much magnet on the back of each.) So each magnet once cut was about 1.5″ long.

Steps: Print out your designs on cardstock, cut them out, corner round them, peel off adhesive backing on magnets and stick to the back of your magnet cards.

I really love these. Making them was a special experience because Russell helped a LOT with cutting, magneting, corner rounding, gluing envelopes, placing stickers, etc. He goes, “I can watch TV doing this! This is nothing!” He was very insistent on helping and it meant a lot to me. In fact once I was done printing, cutting, and addressing… he was still working on his part and told me he would finish up and to go take a relaxing shower. I totally couldn’t. I was so in awe of HIM doing the wedding task while I was doing nothing that I didn’t know what to do with myself. I paced the apartment watching him in sheer amusement. lol

I was so nervous putting these in the mail! We worked hard on them and it really was like putting a little piece of us in the mail. I hope everyone gets them okay!

DIY – Envelopes & Liners

Hiya!

I am about to take on my Save the Dates, because they have to go out Friday. (Better late than never, right?) 🙂

I haven’t been able to find an envelope in just the right color that I can get in quantities less than 200/250, and I only need like… 75, so I figured I would just make them. 🙂 I’m not sure if there are a lot of other brides out there or not that are wanting to take this on, but this is an extremely good thing to do if you want a special envelope but don’t feel like paying shipping, don’t feel like paying an arm and a leg, or can’t find what you want!

I will update this once I am finished with our envelopes, but I thought I would share the template I made for envelopes. I have made 2 templates, and one is for an A7 (5.25×7.25) or Invitation size envelope, and the other is for an A2 (4.375×5.75) or RSVP/STD/Thank You Card envelope. I will also make liner templates for these too, but that will probably be tomorrow.

Firstly, I will show you how I made the templates.

I took apart an envelope carefully and traced the edges on a flat piece of paper (8.5 x 11 paper.)

I then closed it up, and traced the closed shape  into the middle of the opened traced shape to show where the folds would be.

I then scanned the tracing onto the computer.

I then made a clean version in illustrator, and wrote some directions for people who use it on the places that would be cut off so they wouldn’t have text on places that they would be using if they decide to print the template directly on paper.

Then I printed out the template I made, put that sheet of paper back into my printer and printed a light damask pattern on the side with no template so that when I put it together the template would be hidden. I cut out the template, folded it where it says to fold it, added glue to the side areas that needed to be glued, put a card inside of it, and glued down the top flap to seal it so I could address it and mail it.

This is a really cool thing because you can trace the pattern onto a piece of two sided scrapbook paper, cut it out, and fold it according to my directions, and then you have automatically lined envelopes! Or, you can print a pattern on the side without the directions so you can have patterned envelopes, etc.

The possibilities are endless!

Enjoy!

-Laura

A7 Envelope Template by Laura Grove

A2 Envelope Template by Laura Grove

A7 Liner Template by Laura Grove

A2 Liner Template by Laura Grove

The INSPIRATION TEASERS – Details & Decorations

 

So there they are. 🙂 Some snapshots inside my brain for my wedding. On this one little board are 17 of the different DIY projects that I plan to take on. (Did I really just say 17 of the projects… as in there are more?? I think I’ve lost it. lol)  

 

The colors, the textures, the tons of DIY ideas, the everything are just… so romantic, and soft, modern with a twinge of vintage. I love it all. We shall see what of all of this I can achieve. Making inspiration boards is very helpful to clarifying to yourself what you want, especially if your mind goes a mile a minute with tons of ideas like mine does. If anything I have too many ideas for the wedding. haha.

 

A good resource if you don’t have or know how to use Adobe InDesign like I made these in, is Polyvore. Polyvore is a website that you can take snippets and pictures of things online and gather them into neat collages of inspirational coolness… even if you know nothing about image editing! It is super easy.

 

We will be at the 6 month mark next Friday. Why does that make me feel a little panicky? lol Maybe it’s not panicky. Maybe it’s excited. 🙂 If it is panicky, then it’s because of my insane amount of DIY to do. 

 

Until next time…

Laura

 

Inspiration Teasers 

Hair, Accessories & Make-Up

Flowers

Details & Decorations