Wedding Blog

I truly wish calligraphy was in my budget or that I could create such beautiful characters with ease and consistency. I had dreams of teaching myself some calligraphy techniques, but every attempt was a big FAIL, and I just didn’t have the time or commitment to practice the skill. I wanted the addresses to be handwritten, so my own handwriting would have to do.

My biggest challenge was keeping the writing straight. When I addressed my Christmas cards one year, I had way too many where the names looked like they were climbing a mountain. Since I was using colored envelopes for the wedding invites, I couldn’t do the trick where you place a lined piece of paper inside the envelope to guide your writing. But, I did have one tool in my massive craft supply collection that proved to be one of the best investments I’ve ever made: The Journaltopia from Creative Memories.

Basically, this tool is an eight-inch ruler with nylon loops across the top.

You use the loops as a guide to help you write in a straight line. Unlike writing on a straight edge of a ruler, the loops allow you to go below the line when making letters like Ys, Gs, Ps, and Qs, without having to move the tool. It also saves time over the technique of drawing and erasing pencil lines.

I bought one a few years back at a scrapbooking party and have used it quite a few times on my craft projects. When I realized I could use it for the wedding invitations, I was pleased that this tool (which couldn’t have cost me more than $10) was the perfect solution to keeping my writing from slanting upwards or downwards. I couldn’t find it on the Creative Memories site, but I see some people have them for sale on eBay.

Here are some pictures of me putting the Journaltopia to use:

And here is a finished address. The blurring for privacy kind of messes up how straight my lines look, but you get the hint.

Of all the envelopes I screwed up, none of them were because of a crooked address. My biggest challenge in writing them out was centering (the ruler on the Journaltopia helped with that, but I still wasn’t that great at judging the spacing) and writing the word “Pennsylvania”. For the record, I officially hate writing the word “Pennsylvania”. For whatever reason, my hand could not always glide into the “y” after the “s”, and I ended up writing what looked more like a cursive “j” on about 15 different envelopes. It’s terrible when you get so close to finishing an address and you screw up on the last word and have to toss the whole thing.

What technique did you use for keeping your lines straight on your invitation envelopes?