Weddingbee Blog

When I wrote my last post, I had a mess of supplies, a fast-approaching deadline, and big DIY dreams. I literally got less than an hour of sleep that night; I was too busy thinking about these cards. What would I do for them? And how would I make them snazzy, cute, and FAST?

I had been envisioning multiple papers, ribbon-tying, and all sorts of time-consuming but drool-worthy ideas that I love. I turned to my fellow bees to vent some frustration, and those level-headed ladies set me straight. “Do a postcard!” they said. “Save the dates don’t have to be fancy!” they said. They reminded me that most people send a magnet or a little one-page card, not some elaborate edge-scalloped, belly-banded masterpiece. I had been looking forward to DIY for so long that I’d become bent on creating The Best of the Best. But I simply did not have time, and those smartie-bees helped me realize this.

And a postcard? I hadn’t considered that approach. That’d save on postage and envelopes! (Envelope-buying is a real problem for me - I’ll discuss it in a bit.) Once I OK’d the postcard idea with Mr. Mary Jane and his mom, I felt a lot more confident about my ability to finish these save the dates.

But what about all the paper FMIL had bought for me to use to make these? I love it, and really wanted to incorporate it in the STDs. I ultimately decided to save it for the invites. It’s double-sided, so it’ll make a perfect folder for all of the important information.

When collecting supplies for the postcards, I considered a few important factors:

I needed paper that would be quick to cut, pretty much uniform in size, and thick enough to hold up as a postcard. I had some plain off-white 12×12 cardstock, but I didn’t think it’d be thick enough and I didn’t want to have to cut out each postcard if I didn’t have to. 12×12 paper won’t fit in my measly paper cutter anyway: what a pain. I also considered that we’d need envelopes for the invitations we’ll be sending in a few weeks. You cannot buy artsy-fartsy envelopes in this town. We used to have a Ben Franklin, but it closed a few years back. That had been my major source for paper and crafty stuff. Aside from normal security envelopes (I have considered these even! Barf!), we Grand Forks brides are SOL when it comes to envelopes. We do not have a Paper Source (or similar), and Michaels doesn’t carry envelopes alone. You have to buy the cards with them.

But wait: would buying the cards be so bad? I needed heavy cardstock for postcards, and buying folded cards would only require me to make one cut on an already scored and perfectly straight line. And I’d get envelopes with them, which I could save for the invites. Granted, I do still have time to order envelopes online to use for our invites… but why, if I can get them along with perfect post-card paper? I went to Michaels and bought three packages of plain ivory 4″ x 5.5″ cards with envelopes. They come in packages (”Value Packs”) of 20, which netted me 60 envelopes for use with the invites. With the envelopes I already had at home (leftover from another project), I knew I’d have enough for the invitations. I bought three packages for about $5.50 each.

Then I went home and had a mini-meltdown. I was tired, hungry, and stressed beyond belief. Luckily I have an understanding and thoughtful guy: one good pep-talk, several hugs, and one enormous plate of nachos later and I was ready to get to work.

I opened my packs of cardstock and separated out the envelopes, setting them aside for the invite project I’ll be tackling soon. I whipped out my trusty single-sheet paper cutter and got to work. It took me about 10 minutes to chop up about 40 cards in to 80 postcards. (We’re sending about 65, but I wanted some extras to experiment on!)

My corner-rounder is in these pictures because I originally intended to round the corners of the postcards. I ultimately changed my mind because I was afraid the post office wouldn’t be happy about that.

Then I grabbed my laptop and got to work. I wanted to do some cool effects, so I chose to use Adobe Photoshop CS3*, but you could easily do something similar in Word or another program as long as you set your margins appropriately. I created a 4″ x 5.5″, 400 DPI new image and got to work. I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do, but FMIL had suggested the idea of doing a slight 1920s/Art Deco theme because she feels that my e-ring fits that style. She also didn’t want anything too fancy: the event itself won’t be too fancy and she didn’t want to mislead anyone.

I spent a lot of time messing with fonts and wording, and finally came up with something I liked. Then, because I really did want to incorporate the beautiful paper I’ll be using for the invites, I scanned it and cut out some elements from it to use for decorating the postcards.

The fonts I used were Isadora (capitalized portions), CAC Pinafore (cursive portions), and Omnibus (date), and all were free from DaFont.com. (Sidenote: I really like DaFont because you can type in your text and instantly see what it looks like in all the fonts, before you download them. It saves tons of time because you can weed out the ones that looked awesome in the example, but funny with your own text.) As I mentioned, the little flower detailing is from the scan I made of the paper. I spent a lot of time cutting just one flower out, erasing its surrounding elements and making its background transparent. I normally would not “steal” an image from something that’s surely copyrighted, and I certainly would not sell or distribute this design for others’ use. I’m hoping that if the artist of the paper does by chance see my use of their flower, they’ll be flattered and not pissed. Also, FMIL did buy an assload of their paper and we’ll be using it for the Invites!

Here’s what I came up with, after several tries and lots of Photoshopping.

As you can see, I decided to jazz up the address portion of the postcard, too. Again I used the flower image. For the embellishment that will surround the stamp, I used a Photoshop brush from the Curly set, by Green Eyed Butterfly, which I found on Brusheezy. The address will fit to the right of the flower.

I printed one post card to test print quality, and Mr. Mary Jane and I were both thrilled with the result. I’d successfully turned this:

… in to this:

And a margarita helped me out with that transformation.

Cost of supplies: $16.50 for the cardstock, plus another $0.55 for the sheet of paper I scanned to get the floral pictures. (We bought several sheets, actually, but I’m not counting that here because those will be invitation expenses.) $28 for a roll of 100 polar bear stamps (the leftovers will get migrated for the invite RSVPs).

So to figure out the per-cost: The $5.50 package contained 20 cards (40 postcards after I cut ’em) and 20 envelopes. Assuming the envelopes were half of the price, Let’s say that 40 postcards cost $2.25. So the postcards themselves cost about 5 cents each. The time to design and print was my own, and the stamp was $0.28 for each. 33 cents for each save the date is not bad, not bad at all!

I already owned the paper cutter, but you can get one like mine for about $20, I think. My printer already had the ink in it, and my computer had all the software I needed.

Before printing the rest of the cards, I took my one printed card to the post office and asked them if it would be OK to mail. It was! The gal measured it, and it was slightly larger than their minimum size. Hurray! I bought my roll of polar bears and left, ready to print ’em out. In the next post, I’ll show you how they looked all printed out and ready to mail, and I’ll tell you how paying a wee bit of attention in IT 101 my freshman year has saved my butt repeatedly.

Are you (or did you) DIY your save-the-dates? How complicated were they to make and assemble?

*Addendum: A somewhat-brief note about Photoshop (or any other complicated design program). Adobe Photoshop is not a program you can just open up and use. I do NOT recommend buying it just because you want to use it to design stuff for your wedding. I was confident in using Photoshop for my stuff because I had a good 10 years of experience, trial and error under my belt. It is seriously complicated program and It is not intuitive at all. There is no true tutorial for the design above because I really can’t explain what I did to someone who’s just starting with the program. I opened a new document and clicked around through hundreds of tools and menus until I liked the result. I will tell you this: I used layers, slices, custom brushes, transparency, and a lot of transformations, among other tools. My best advice to anyone getting started with Photoshop or any other software? Google is your best friend. Want to know how to install a brush or font? Google. How to make text diagonal? Google. Google Google Google.