Weddingbee Blog

Well, I promised you a a follow-up post on our DIY Invitations and a follow-up post you shall have! I apologize for the delay, but I’m just getting over something that I was fighting during the latter part of last week. This is a testament to the necessity of taking your vitamins and getting your beauty sleep while planning your wedding. Otherwise, you may end up wasting valuable DIY time by watching hours of Olympics without much energy to do anything else. I digress.

I should preface this post with our original budget amount so that you know what my creative restraints were - I wanted to create 100 invitations for under $500, including cards, envelopes, labels and all postage. This, of course, meant no letterpress - but gave me a little wiggle room. In this post, I’ll cover a few tips and tricks about printing/designing your own invitations, how to tie that pesky-yet-lovely square knot, where I got some of the fun graphics, and how I ultimately was able to come in under budget.

Tips & Tricks

Image via SteamStudios

I Heart Bleeds!
I had originally thought that bleeds were simply put in place to accommodate to-the-edge printing. This marks only the beginning of my misunderstanding of the printing world. I soon discovered that bleeds are the saving grace of all things creatively printed. Not all printers, trimmers and “precision” cutters are all that accurate. Therefore, it’s not super helpful to spend many hours trying to get your artwork aligned to the nearest pixel - to be honest, it won’t matter. Instead, make sure to extend your artwork out by .125 inches to alleviate any discrepencies when printing and cutting out your pieces.

Shop Around!
After having such an amazing experience with Kinko’s during my DIY Save the Dates adventure, I had assumed that this would be where my DIY Invitations would be completed. However, the prices were ghastly! The simple cost of printing the cards would nearly put me over budget - add cutting, scoring, hole-punching, and face trimming to the mix and I was at nearly twice my original budget. After shopping around, I found them to be at the pricier end of things. I lucked out by pulling a few strings with some business contacts and was able to get all of the work done for well-below Kinko’s original estimate. I’m glad I spent the time searching for the right printer.

Proof It!
When I discovered CatPrint, I thought I had struck printing gold! But - once I received the proofs I ordered (two copies for $10), I knew it wasn’t meant to be. I am a true paper snob and was unhappy with the paper they offered (I wanted uncoated cardstock). I’m glad I only wasted $10 on my proofs and not hundreds to see my mistake - even if it did take 5 days to receive them in the mail. Plan ahead - so that you can print as many proofs as it takes!

Those Pesky-Yet-Lovely Square Knots
Mamita Pom informed me that the Square Knot is an old Girl Scout trick. Having never been a Scout myself, I trusted her expertise. All in all, they’re very simple - the rule is, left over right, right over left!

I started out with each end on either side of the center ribbon.

Left over right…

…right over left…

…makes a perfect little square knot!

Fun Graphics
Please do not use any of these graphics shown below. First off, they are non-vector images and will not size well. Secondly, an artist has worked very hard to create these and deserves to be paid the minor amount of money it would take to buy themon iStockphoto.

Seamless Rococo Swatches
5 credits by Ceneri on iStockphoto
The lower left portion of the swatch set contains the black and white damask pattern I used throughout the design.

Ornamental Scroll
5 credits by schismstudios on iStockphoto
This was used on my DIY Save the Dates, as well as in a multiude of other elements throughout the design.

Floral Lines 03
5 credits by sanyal on iStockphoto
I used two of these for the top and bottom of the monogram.

How I Came In Under Budget
I attribute my under-budget status to the following four reasons:

1. All of our pieces fit on one piece of 11″ x 17″ sheet of paper and could be separated by only 7 cuts.
2. I used quality uncoated cover weight cardstock, but it was not fancy linen textured paper.
3. Our invite folded down to 4″ x 6″, fit in a standard A6 envelope and was lightweight - so it only required a single 42-cent stamp.
4. Our response card was a postcard and therefore only needed a single 27-cent postcard stamp.

Printing for 100 Invitations $271.53
This included the paper, cutting, scoring, hole-punching, and face trimming of the invites.

100 Paper Source Moss A6 Envelopes $31.50
From the same color suite as the DIY Save the Dates

3 Spools of Paper Source Moss 1/4″ Ribbon $10.50
I used every single bit of that ribbon - there were no leftovers.

25 sheets of Paper Source Superfine White Cover Stock $6.50
I bought this in bulk and used a few sheets for the address labels.

1/4 of a Xyron Acid-Free Permanent Adhesive Cartridge $4.50
This was used to turn the printed labels into sticky labels.

100 Black & White Copies on my work’s copy machine $5.00
My cheap fix once I decided that I wanted to line our envelopes with black and white striped paper at the last minute.

100 Charles and Ray Eames 42-Cent Stamps $42.00
Loved these! We used them in lieu of custom Zazzle stamps on the outer envelopes.

100 Tropical Fruit 27-Cent Postcard Stamps $27.00
Uhm, how could I pass up an opportunity to put a pomegranate stamp on our RSVP card? I couldn’t.

GRAND TOTAL $398.53

**I did not include our iStock graphics - they have and will be used in many other DIY projects, therefore their budgetary impact was very minimal.

Any questions? Feel free to post them in the comments below - I’ll try to answer as many as I can!