Weddingbee Blog

Remember these?

Yes, the long lost Duckling invitations. I know I have been promising the tips from the DIY process, but due to some computer crashes and general life craziness it’s been a little difficult to get everything together.

The printing of the main invitation was very basic.

We basically just designed the invite using a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. We used my very favorite font—Feel Script from Veer, which we had also used for the Save the Dates. Graphics for the entire invitation suite were bought from Istockphoto for a few dollars. We found an image that had all 4 patterns to use so we only had to buy 1 item. Probably the hardest part of the main invitation step was figuring out how to do borderless printing so that the design went to the very edge. Once we figured that out, it was a matter of printing 50 at a time until we were done.

Most of the work and labor was bundled up in our little Matchbook booklet, aka: “Everything you need to know about our wedding”.

Earlier in the summer Mr. Ducky and I were at my favorite store, Paper Source, and found a whole bunch of these matchbooks for 50% off. We weren’t planning on using them, but who were we to pass up a good deal? So, we bought everything they had, not knowing what we were going to use them for. Well, eventually we came up with the idea to use them as the holders of all our inserts in the invitation, versus doing something like a pocketfold invite.

On the base we put directions on one side and then details for our website on the other. We printed them on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and then cut them out individually. To avoid messy glue sticks and other adhesive messes I used my trusty Xyron. Or, should I say, Mama Duckling used the trusty Xyron?! She figured out just the right technique to not waste Xyron sticky and to go through each insert quickly.

Here is what they looked like after they popped out the Xyron. After that it was a matter of simply removing the sticky backing and then placing the insert evenly onto the matchbook.

Many of you loved our accept/decline stickers for the RSVP cards. (Thanks for all your sweet words!) I have to tell you that was one of the easiest parts of the whole process, which means you can incorporate this into your own DIY project without much trouble. We bought 1 1/4″ round labels from Paper Source and then it was a matter of printing and cutting. One column was “Accept” the next was “Decline”, and then we repeated that for the next two columns.

After printing, the paper was all a solid khaki color with the stickers. We carefully peeled away the background surrounding the stickers so that we were eventually left with the backing paper full of round stickers. That left a white background, and the stickers popped against that.

We found it best to first cut lengthwise after our 1st accept and decline column, and then width-wise so we  were left with 2 stickers. For the actual RSVP card, we designed it in Illustrator and used the circle shape to indicate where guests should place their answer.

I packaged everything together so it was in one unit and would look presentable when guests opened it. At the last minute I decided to stamp the outside of the matchbook because it seemed like it was missing something.

I knew I wanted to do envelope liners but I was pretty mystified as to how to do them. Was I supposed to print the whole page and then cut? Or make some sort of shape? Or just give up completely and do plain envelopes? Remembering Mrs. Gloss’ beautiful invitations and envelopes, I asked her how she did it. She explained how she just printed the shape of the liner on paper and then cut it out. After her feedback, Mr. Ducky and I figured out how to get 2 liners out of one 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper. We shrunk down the depth of how far the liner would go in the envelope and lined them up on the edge. This probably doesn’t really make sense, so just look at the picture below. You can see the 2 liners on the page and then the cut out versions. By having the bottom of the liner on the edge of the paper, it also saved some cutting time, versus putting it in the middle of the page.

Here is Mr. Ducky dutifully cutting out envelope liners.

To adhere the liners to the envelope we used 3/8″ Adhesive Runner by Xyron that we had previously used for the Save the Dates. It works so well! We “drew” a triangle on the back of the liner in the upper area and then tucked it into the envelope.

And that is about it for the Duckling invitations. I hope that helped. Let me know if you have any questions.

What helped you with the DIY process? Did anything seem difficult and then end up being simpler than you thought it would be?