Going The Inkjet Route
November 27th, 2007 @ 5:13 pm by Mrs. Peony
I love letterpress. Thermography, with its raised effect, is also very beautiful. And who can forget engraving? Swoon!
However, with 250 invitations that need to be printed and the extra pieces from our Korean and Chinese translations, having the invitations professionally printed wasn’t a financially viable option. At this point, every penny counts. Gocco was tempting, but hand-pressing more than 1,500 individual sheets of paper seemed too daunting with a full-time job.
And so Mr Peony and I decided to use (gasp!) our inkjet printer for our invitations. Luckily, we have a high-quality printer (the Canon PIXMA Pro9000) from a project I had done earlier in the year.
As we are nearing the end of the design process and are about to enter the heavy printing and assembling stages, there are certainly some things that I’ve learned along the way…
- The heavier and more porous the paper, the more chance there is of the ink bleeding (unless you use photo paper). I printed many samples on all the different settings available on my printer. In the end, the “Plain Paper” setting beat out the rest by producing the most crisp images. There is still some very slight bleeding around the edges that will bug me until the day I die, but I’m crossing my fingers that no one will scrutinize our invitations that closely.
- Mr Peony was dead against using white paper, because traditionally the Chinese associate pure white with funerals. (This is why we couldn’t use matte photo paper which would’ve printed better.) So we decided to print on cream cardstock instead…. which turned out to be a nightmare in terms of color-matching. Once again I had to print various samples to get the desired color output because the printed results always took on a darker, yellow tinge from the paper.
- I admit it: inkjet printing really does not have the same look and quality of letterpress, thermography, etc. In short, the end result looks very plain and a bit dull. One of the best ways to combat this problem is to add embellishments. I will be adding tiny self-adhesive crystals to my invitations to give them an extra oomph.
I don’t think I am saving that much money from printing and cutting all my myself, but I was hellbent on saving the moolah. Because of the extra paper needed for the Chinese and Korean translations, the invitations still ended up costing quite a bit at about $7 per invite, including envelopes and embellishments. However, when I had proposed my design to several professionals earlier, the cheapest was $12 per invite so I did save some money at the end (and not just by switching to Geico).
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6 Responses to “Going The Inkjet Route”
i’m doing the exact same thing~! we have about 250 guests and are also printing them ourselves and i’m in the midst of crystal gluing right now~! 
I took mine to a local printer and for $25.00 had inserts printed on regular linen paper. All I had to do was glue them to the envelopments. Voila. I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with it as long as your happy.
What a great idea to add some crystal embellishments to a simple design. I’ve done several projects on my Epson with beautiful results and while I see the difference, honestly the average wedding guest will never notice. They’ll probably be more impressed that you actually made something so lovely yourself ; )
I did the same thing, even with the same (wonderful) printer. I had 150 invites and everything came out beautifully. At the wedding, it turned out that our invitations were a much discussed topic, because people liked them so much!
We’re inkjetting it too. We don’t have that many invites (only 55 for about 100 guests) but I knew I was going to need to be in complete control of the design process (OCD much?!?!). We’re in the process of assembling them right now. I’m so excited to be able to send out something that we did ourselves. And they are EXACTLY what I wanted! Good luck with all the gluing! Double stick tape is my best friend right now.
Mrs. Peony, New York
Age and Occupation: 27, Marketing Coordinator
Fiance's Age and Occupation: 30, QA Engineer
Engagement Date: June 28, 2007
Wedding Date: April 18, 2008
Venue: The Fountainhead
Blogging Since: August 7, 2007
About Me: Both Mr. Peony and I are huge computer nerds, and our conversations usually consist of the latest gadgets, programming languages, and video games. At the same time, I can also be very girly with an obsession with handbags, makeup, and high heels. And art! I've studied studio art extensively, almost majored in art history, and freelance as a web and graphics designer. Mr. Peony and I are having a ball of a time planning a wedding for 250(!) guests, doing our best to infuse our personalities (geeky chic) with the wishes of our very traditional Asian parents.
I think I am going to follow the advice of… Mrs. Emerald (???) and get my printing done by http://www.overnightprints.com which has great printing for really cheap. You can have them print a full-color image, so you could mimic the look of a cream background. The only challenge is that they only print a few sizes, so you’d have to figure out how to work with those sizes or else cut the prints to the size you need.