Weddingbee Blog

The very first time found Weddingbee was while I was searching for inspiration for our invitations. While researching through the blog I found several amazing invitations, and a weird word to me at that time! It was Gocco. I wanted that little machine so badly! Not just because I wanted to have DIY invitations, but because I loved the freedom you had to design, plus the fact pretty much any surface can be printed. Yes, I was in love. Sadly, Gocco did not have a long future in supplies, and the price was not within my budget.

I thought about different alternatives to make our invitations budget friendly and really pretty! My first idea was to save ink by using fabric as pops of color on our invitations. I had an idea of the kind of fabric I wanted for our invitations, but after I drew the pattern, I became obsessed with that particular pattern.

I did some quick research and found Spoonflower, a really cool website where you can upload your design and print your own fabric, but then again, when we finally set a number of invitations we needed, the price offered on that website was not within our budget.

So, I was not going to have the perfect purple fabric, but still loved the idea of using sewed details, Kraft paper and purple ink!

We were going to print the invites on Mr. Poodle’s printer, but then I found this giveaway. Free Brochures! I saw potential!

To my surprise, I actually won that giveaway and got 100 free brochures from Uprinting! HOW PERFECT! I could actually use the purple pattern I loved and the first 100 prints were going to be free!

I loved the idea of having booklet invitations, just like Mrs. Lime had! (I have to say that those invitations were the reason why I found Weddingbee!)

{ Source }

So, I got to work, gathered all the information I wanted on our invitations, and divided them by page:

• Our names, date, time, address etc.
• Map and directions (I really wanted to draw my own map, plus I could add our website address there, too)
• RSVP postcard—we thought about doing it online but for our older guests, we decided to do it the old fashioned way.
• Timeline of our relationship – After I saw this below, I wanted a timeline really really badly!

{ Source }

So, I had 4 pages of information. I tried as hard as I could to condense all of the information to fit the 3 fold brochure (I left the timeline off the brochure), and once Mr. Poodle and FMIL did the triple spelling check, I closed my eyes and clicked send. 3 days later they were sent to us!

I loved the way they ended up looking! but there was a lot of work to be done before they looked like the invitations I envisioned. We had to cut the top and bottom of the brochure to make single pages, and then print the last page with the “love timeline”. We also needed to sew all the pages together and make the Kraft paper belts.

Our envelopes were a lot of work, but I got a really cool deal back home. I bought 200 Kraft paper envelopes for $2.00! It was totally awesome.

Did I mention that I got a little obsessed over a puncher? I blame it on Martha!

Before I came to the U.S. I did all the hard work of taking the envelopes apart, so when I got to the States we only had to make the liners and sew the labels.

Want to have a peek of what our invitations look like? Well, before I reveal our BIGGEST labor of love so far, I’ll show you how our envelopes were made!

First I drew a label template so I could fit 5 of them on a letter sheet. I turned the paper punch into a graphic for decoration and used Aquarelle, one of my favorite free fronts ever! <3

We cut them and used a corner punch (which I previously measured so the lines would match).

Then we arranged all of them so the sewing could be easier (yup, we had a pretty cool assembly line going on at the Poodles’ place! ).

Notice the address? I’m such a sucker for Weddingbee!

A detail shot of the label’s edge…

… and some more details.

Did you print your DIY invites on your own or did you have them printed somewhere else? Did you think pro printing was worth it?