Weddingbee

Other posts in this series:
[1. Paper Trails]
[2. A Lucky Find]
[3. Help Me Print These, s’il vous plait?]

Now that you’ve seen the main components for the invitations, here are the last bits of DIY and purchased goodies we used to round out the look.

(Mr. Sweet Tea puts in his fair share!)

After we finalized our invitation design, I contacted Sweet Papery about customizing one of her lovely address stamps for us.

It was a very affordable—and timesaving!—touch of personality. Within a week of agreeing on the design, I had our lovely stamp in my hands, and with some basic black ink from Michaels, stamped all the invitations and small RSVP envelopes.

Our stamp had a damask border and a cute cursive font that was a close (but slightly more informal) match to the one used in the invitations. So we could use the stamp both before and after the wedding, we only used our first names. So you’re not left totally image-less, here is a doctored picture of the proof we approved:

Our biggest DIY project to date was lining the envelopes with different papers I found online at Paper Mojo. Their selection and prices blew away the competitors. Even after I accidentally over-ordered (by A LOT), we still saved money overall on this.

Other bees have posted on how they lined their envelopes, so here is just a quick and dirty recap of how I did it:

1. I first traced an outline of the inside of the envelope on the side of a manila folder, and cut it out as a template. I made sure when I was tracing, that I left room at the top for the glue line—I didn’t want the liner to overlap it.

2. Then, I folded a piece of the Paper Mojo paper (they are LARGE sheets) in half length-wise, and traced a row of envelopes back-to-back. The bottom of the envelope was at the ‘open’ side of my folded paper so that when I cut it, I wouldn’t have to then worry about cutting the two identical templates apart from each other. It’s hard to explain but… you know how you make a string of paper dolls? You basically want to do the opposite of that.

(Here, you can see how I traced the envelopes—I had them share a side, so there would be less work cutting overall.)

3. Cut out the liners! I used a cheap cutter from Michaels that didn’t really give me many problems. I’ve heard others have a hard time with cheap paper cutters, so here’s some tips: don’t try and cut out too many pieces at once, or it will jam. And though there is more risk of the edges fraying, the rotary/disc paper cutters are better than ones with a handle, because you have more control over the line.

4. Easy-peasy liner adhering: Place each liner in an envelope, and close the envelope to make a crease in the liner BEFORE permanently attaching the liner with a Tombo Mono Adhesive (the permanent, not re-stick-able, kind). I bought a bone folder to help make a straight crease, but it wasn’t necessary.

Another tip: address the envelope before lining it, so you don’t bother lining envelopes that might be thrown out due to typos.

5. All done!

Our last touch was a lighting-flash of genius. In the midst of stamping the envelopes, I realized I’d be flying to New Orleans for our cake and caterer tastings just a few days later. We had planned on having the invitations hand-canceled anyway; how cool would it be to have the stamp come from New Orleans? No one probably noticed this but us, but it’s probably one of my favorite things about the invitation.

We assembled around 80 invitations over two grueling days of liner-making, stamping, hand-addressing (no budget left for calligraphy!), and stuffing. And when I say grueling, I mean I spent six hours the night before my flight to New Orleans doing all the liners in one shot. My grand plan for hand-canceled Nola stamps really rushed along the process, but that is okay, because I’m sure we’d still be sitting on those invitations now if we didn’t have that reason!

I know our invitations aren’t as beautiful as some others out there, but I’m pretty proud of our mini-DIY efforts since I’m not such a crafty bee. And hey, as long as they get out the information, that’s all that really matters, right?

Did any other DIY-challenged bees tackle making all, or part of your invitations?

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