Wedding Invitations

I know I promised this a long, long time ago, and I thank you much for waiting so patiently while we got through a whole bunch of stuff. It was just too much for Christen and I to do all this work on the wedding AND find time to blog about it. I did make sure to take lots of pictures, so I hope you’ll think it was worth the wait as I start on this series of wedding posts. So without further adieu, I would like to share the invitations we made. 

Christen and Travis chose to wait about a year before getting married so they could have time to save up for the big day and to give us plenty of time to make all the crafty things we wanted. They found the perfect venue soon after, and we kept getting asked whether they had set the date, so we decided to send out “Save the Date” cards.

I designed these myself in Photoshop, using several fonts I downloaded from the internet. These included Lightfoot Shadowed, Safina Fancy, Jazz LET, Playbill, Dakota, and Little Lord Fontleroy. I also used Helvetica font, which usually comes installed on most computers.

For printing, I sent my postcard to Got Print, my go-to printing company. They offer fast, convenient service, highly competitive pricing, and they even have a facility right here in North Texas. Before sending your designs for printing, you’ll want to make sure you have designed the front and back as two separate files. You may need to convert to CMYK color, so be sure to read the instructions carefully for the optimal file format and observe the bleed marks, etc. We chose full color on both sides 4”x6” standard postcard on 14 pt. Uncoated Cover paper. Choose the online Instant Processing Proof to speed up the service and keep the costs down. We paid $31.88 for 100 postcards, including tax and shipping. Larger orders offer greater savings.

We had a lot of ideas about the actual invitations, but after months of playing with a Silhouette cut file that wouldn’t cut all the way (just too intricate at that size), we gave up and ordered this die set from Amazon*. We made about 130 invitations in all, and it took us a lot longer to cut out than we had estimated. For one thing, this tiny intricate die didn’t always cut well. We wound up having to use a shim and we had to stop frequently to cut wax paper with it a few times to help it release the little bits and pieces. There are so many tiny pieces in this design that it literally shredded my Sizzix Die Brush Tool*. After that, we tried a soft-bristled toothbrush before we settled on a stiff brush from my Sonic Scrubber*. The combination of the stiff bristled brush and the above-mentioned wax paper worked well, if a bit slow.

The die we used comes in two pieces, as shown. One cuts the pocket and the other is an edge die, which has a score mark to be placed against the fold-line of your trifold invitation. This particular die was designed to create a 4" x 6" card -- NOT the standard A2 (4 ¼" x 5 ½") card most commonly used in the U.S. We searched all over for a die to make the right size, to no avail. So we decided to make do with this one. The problem we found with this was that it was very difficult to get the score marks exactly perpendicular to the length of the card and exactly where it needed to be scored since we couldn't line up the edges of the die perfectly. Rather than try to precisely place the die on the fold, we chose cut the paper into 5 ½” x 12” strips and used the die on one end. Once it was cut, we could score at the edge of the die-cut area and fold it inward before trimming to the desired length…in this case, a standard 4 ¼” x 5 ½” card. So basically cut first, score, then trim.

The pocket die also contains score lines to help with construction. Simply fold the tabs inward and add adhesive before sticking it to the right-hand flap of your card. I used ¼” Scor-Tape* for a sturdy hold. 

The remaining parts inside the card were printed on my laser printer using Stampin’ Up Very Vanilla paper and a brown-toned ink using the following fonts: Imprint MT Shadow, Bell MT, and Octavina Swash. The Octavian font came as a bundle I purchases a while back from FontBundles.net, however it is also available for free on various font websites. The paid version offers contextual and stylistic alternates for many of the letters. We also added a text embellishment from the Type Embellishments One LET font. Embellishments like these are fun to play around with, and sometimes you can create lovely embellishments by combining two or more into a single arrangement. 

Inside the card, we included the formal invitation (on the left) and a Details card and the RSVP card in the pocket on the right. Right before we sent the invitations, we decided to also add a COVID statement/request as another item in the pocket to remind our guests to wear masks. 

The invitation was held together with a 1” belly band, trimmed to size. The “buckle” on the band was created with Mirri Lava metallic rose gold paper from The Paper Cut and the Artisan Label punch from Stampin’ Up. The punch is discontinued, but there are many fine dies and punches that would work just as well. The inner part of the buckle was printed on Stampin’ Up Very Vanilla on my laser printer using the Little Lord Fontleroy font again. I simply built the design using multiple layers of boxes and text boxes, moving each layer around until I had it where I wanted it. It’s hard to tell from the photo, but it was actually printed in black and then Travis (my new son-in-law!) ran it through my Heidi Swapp Mini Minc* to foil it in Teal*.

The other products we used to create the invitations were:

Bazzill paper in the color Blue Oasis, which I ordered from my good friend and former Crafty Neighbor instructor, Karrie Allen at Scrapp’n Savvy in Conroe, Texas.

 

Kraft Cardstock Paper from Hobby Lobby* 

 

One more little thing...because of the weight and thickness of the complete invitation, we had to add more postage when we took them to the post office.  My advice...put them all together and take one to the post office to be weighed before you put any postage on them...there might be a single stamp in the right denomination!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little tutorial on making these lovely and lacy wedding invitations!  I’ll be posting more of our wedding crafts and other tips and projects soon. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss out!

*Here are links to many of the products I used. As an Amazon Affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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2019 December Daily

 I just spent the weekend in my old hometown working on getting my mom’s belongings moved into storage. I can’t remember if I posted about it (pretty sure I did), but Mom has been living with us since January. She has dementia, and her care occupies a lot of my time. I’m not quite sure how we did it, but my daughter, Christen, and I somehow managed to pull off a really nice wedding with tons of handmade decorations, bouquets, and more. And all of it while we were under lockdown and social distancing orders due to COVID-19. I’ve been trying to get around to posting more of those projects, but it just hasn’t happened yet. So all this to say that I finally found a solution, and I’m hoping there will be more posts on here soon, and that they will be more regular in frequency!

One of the projects I’ve been meaning to get around to posting is my 2019 December Daily project. This was the first time I’ve participated in the popular challenge hosted by Ali Edwards, and I have to say I had the besttime! I finished my album in January, and I even recorded a flip-through video, but then I never could find the time to edit it. Now the 2020 December Daily project is fast approaching and it seems like everyone is posting their flip-throughs as part of the #donebydecember challenge created by Ali’s design team. The idea was to prompt everyone to actually finish their projects, and it guilted me into finally editing this video while traveling home.

 

 

Sorry for the lighting…it’s a work in progress! Here’s some still photos of some of the projects:

 

 

I hope you enjoyed my little flip-through and I hope you’ll come back for more crafty projects here on my blog and on my YouTube channel. Until then, I’d love to hear about some of your unfinished projects. Tell us about it in the comments below!

I Can Do That!

Hello crafty neighbors! I hope you are staying safe and healthy through all this crazy COVID situation, and if you are sheltering at home or working from home, I hope you’re not going too stir crazy.  It’s been a strange few months around here.  It seems like time is both speeding by and at a dead standstill. I don’t know how that’s possible, but it sure feels like the year is whizzing by, even though the days are all the same. My husband calls it “Blursday” because it’s often hard to tell what day it is -- the days all run together. In many ways, I feel like we are still in March, so how can it be near the end of July? What happened to all the time in between?

While nothing is really back to normal around here, we have managed to settle into some routines that help. Hubby is mostly still working from home, but he does have to go in from time to time.  We still aren’t allowing visits in our home from friends and family with the exception of my daughter and her soon-to-be family – we have too many wedding details to manage, so she really must be here. The wedding details have kept us super busy all summer, and I feel really bad that I haven’t kept up the blog posts about it as I had promised. Luckily, we’ve done so much work, I have plenty of material to do posts with, so I’m hoping to get back into the habit of sharing those details here.

My most recent wedding projects have been making all the floral arrangements. We opted to do our own rather than spend a fortune on fresh flowers that wilt in a day. I  had long admired the beautiful brooch bouquets I saw on Pinterest, so we thought we’d give that a try. You can see some of the one’s we liked on my Pinterest board here. 

I started by ordering a large variety of brooches on Amazon.  I’ve linked below to some of the ones we found. I was really surprised at how inexpensive they were, but a little bit disappointed in the availability of brooches in rose gold. Most of what we found was traditional gold and silver, and with the tiny pictures that are often used, it can be hard to tell. Some of the brooches we ordered looked rose gold but turned out to be gold instead. It was okay, they still worked, but that was not what we were looking for.

Actually starting on making the bouquets was a bit daunting, and I kept putting it off as long as I could because I’ve never really done any floral arrangements and I wasn’t sure if I had the skills. In actuality, it turned out to be quite fun, and I think I did a pretty good job of it for a novice. I think the hardest part was settling on the design – there are so many ways to do it! 

We originally planned to use the wooden dowel and Styrofoam ball method, but the more I looked at those, the less I liked that perfectly round design. An alternative was to buy plastic forms, which were ok, but didn’t really match the esthetic of Christen’s country chic theme. Besides, it would mean yet another trip to Michael’s or Hobby Lobby, and we wanted to save money. We settled on a more natural look using the faux stems on some pretty little floral bundles we bought at Michael’s. If you’re being ultra frugal, you could use these just the way they are; they were tied up with raffia and are pretty much a bouquet in their own right. You could add a bit of ribbon or lace to dress it up and you’re good to go.

We wanted to add a little more variety to the flowers, but we liked the faux stems on these. Luckily, they slide right off and can be used on pretty much any floral stem. When I had the shape and flower placement the way I wanted, I bundled them off with rubber bands to hold them in place and started adding the rhinestones.

There’s a lot of variation in brooch bouquets…everything from all brooches and no flowers to all flowers with just a few brooches. We wanted a mix of both. There are also several different methods of adding rhinestones to the flowers. Originally, we planned to turn the brooches into floral stems by wrapping floral wire through them.  This method works really well if you are using the Styrofoam base, but not so much for bundling with natural or faux flower stems. Instead, we used the more common hot glue method, and it worked very well since we had a mixture of brooches of different sizes, both with and without pin backs.

The first one I did was the tossing bouquet, since it is often a smaller, simpler version of the bride’s bouquet. I figured it would be good practice and it would be okay if it was less than perfect. Once I made that one and was satisfied with how it looked, I had the confidence to proceed with the others. I sorted the remaining flowers until I had a good mix for each of the three remaining bouquets (Maid of Honor, Matron of Honor, and the Bride), and bundled the flowers as I had done with the tossing bouquet.  Adding the brooches was quick and easy and I had them done in no time. I started with the largest brooches first, then filled in gaps with smaller and smaller pieces until I was satisfied. I can see how easy it would be to fill the whole things up with brooches!

[Hot glue tip:  To prevent those spider-web strands of glue on your projects, let go of the trigger and whip the gun in a circle like you’re beating eggs before pulling away from the project.]

The finishing touches on the bouquet were lace handle wraps.  The bride’s bouquet was wrapped with a David Tuterra wrap we bought at Michael’s (don’t forget to use your coupons!). I wrapped the others in lace we had on hand, turning the cut edge under and hot gluing it into place. I added pretty ribbons and a bow, and they were done.

I’m really proud and excited about these bouquets, especially since I had never done anything like this before. It was super simple to do, costs hundredsless than any brooch bouquet you could buy online, and it gave me the confidence to do the other floral arrangements we needed. I hope this gives you the confidence to make one, too!

To view a list of the brooches we purchased on Amazon.com, view our list here.