How I "Made" My Invitations
I'm not going to lie, I'm a pretty crafty lady. I made invitations for the Big Sister's baby shower (please see exhibit 1 below):
And I always knew I'd make the invitations. I had a couple ideas that I rolled around in my head and finally came up with "the one." Somewhere, in all the wedding blogs I stalk, I had come across a big oak tree at the top of invitation. It was less traditional because of the tree motif and the use of brown (versus black ink), but still felt traditional enough to convey formality and a nice sense of occasion. Also, we're using baskets of apples as our table centerpieces and the save the dates had a image that incorporated an apple tree and initials carved into a tree, so it all tied in nicely.
I found this online:
and ordered it along with a copper stamp pad, embossing tool, and embossing powder from Joanne's and started experimenting.
For all my craftiness, I had NEVER embossed anything before. It was a heck of a lot easier than it looks. And the image you create with this very simple process is actually quite stunning.
I think the two keys to embossing are 1) don't let the ink dry! get the powder on there right way! and 2) practice a couple times before you start on your project so you can get a good feel for how long the ink stays wet, how far away to hold the embossing tool from the paper.
Once I was confident in my ability to emboss, I still had some logistical issues to work out. Namely, how to get the dang return address on my outer envelopes and RSVP envelopes. I'm pretty sure Kinko's can assist with this, but I had a Scarlett O'Hara moment when this crossed my mind, and decided that I would think about it tomorrow.
For all my obsessing about the invitation, I mean I'm only showing you one incarnation in a vast evolution of our invitations, I kind of left it there. I was defeated by return addresses. And our Save the Dates were tugging my attention away as well. Around the same time the embosser and stamps, etc. arrived, I had also just gotten the designs from Rori Bean, so I put my full attention on creating the Save the Dates.
When I got the finished product back from Vista Print, I was SO HAPPY, SO UNBELIEVABLEY DELIGHTED at how easy and efficient it had been, I started to re-evaluation if I really wanted to make the invitations. It's all about time and opportunity cost, friends.
I had the time (uh, this was back in February, invitations don't have to go out till August), but I was started to wondering if I had the mental resiliance to power through making 58 invites by hand. Between work gearing up and my realization that there is absolutely NO good place in our house for crafting, I decided no. So I went back to the "we're buying our invitations" drawing board.
And I always knew I'd make the invitations. I had a couple ideas that I rolled around in my head and finally came up with "the one." Somewhere, in all the wedding blogs I stalk, I had come across a big oak tree at the top of invitation. It was less traditional because of the tree motif and the use of brown (versus black ink), but still felt traditional enough to convey formality and a nice sense of occasion. Also, we're using baskets of apples as our table centerpieces and the save the dates had a image that incorporated an apple tree and initials carved into a tree, so it all tied in nicely.
I found this online:
and ordered it along with a copper stamp pad, embossing tool, and embossing powder from Joanne's and started experimenting.
For all my craftiness, I had NEVER embossed anything before. It was a heck of a lot easier than it looks. And the image you create with this very simple process is actually quite stunning.
I think the two keys to embossing are 1) don't let the ink dry! get the powder on there right way! and 2) practice a couple times before you start on your project so you can get a good feel for how long the ink stays wet, how far away to hold the embossing tool from the paper.
Once I was confident in my ability to emboss, I still had some logistical issues to work out. Namely, how to get the dang return address on my outer envelopes and RSVP envelopes. I'm pretty sure Kinko's can assist with this, but I had a Scarlett O'Hara moment when this crossed my mind, and decided that I would think about it tomorrow.
For all my obsessing about the invitation, I mean I'm only showing you one incarnation in a vast evolution of our invitations, I kind of left it there. I was defeated by return addresses. And our Save the Dates were tugging my attention away as well. Around the same time the embosser and stamps, etc. arrived, I had also just gotten the designs from Rori Bean, so I put my full attention on creating the Save the Dates.
When I got the finished product back from Vista Print, I was SO HAPPY, SO UNBELIEVABLEY DELIGHTED at how easy and efficient it had been, I started to re-evaluation if I really wanted to make the invitations. It's all about time and opportunity cost, friends.
I had the time (uh, this was back in February, invitations don't have to go out till August), but I was started to wondering if I had the mental resiliance to power through making 58 invites by hand. Between work gearing up and my realization that there is absolutely NO good place in our house for crafting, I decided no. So I went back to the "we're buying our invitations" drawing board.
posted by Miss Fairfax at 3:30 PM
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