Weddingbee Blog

In my last STD post I told you about how much fun I had trimming and rounding my magnets and I hinted at how they would look as a finished product. Today I will show you the real final product (because you know I always change my mind) and clue you in on all the fun details of how I got there.

PART I:

First off, I knew I wanted our magnets mounted to something purple and a little bit fancy. I didn’t so much feel like driving to the store to start my trials so I went to my crafting closet (aka our guest bedroom) and took inventory.

I found this:

… Minutes later and after nearly suffocating myself in my apartment I ended up with this:

I know, I know, silly Locket! I should have known that spray painting indoors (even with the windows open and a fan to ventilate) was not a good idea. I let the first coat dry and decided to take my project outside and setup shop on a few large pieces of cardboard in my drive way.

All I could think was A) that it was cold (it was March) and B) that my neighbors must have thought I was crazy. ”What’s that loon doing outside in 30 degree weather spray painting that fabric?” Either way, crazy or not, I saturated the fabric with paint until you could no longer see yellow. An hour later I came back outside to check the painted product. It was perfect! The color was just right and the dried paint did wonders to stiffen the fabric. All I had to do was cut it down.

I created this template (measuring approximately 4×6″):

I traced like crazy until I had 50 of these shapes drawn in ball point pen on the back of my newly purplfied fabric. Then, I cut all the straight lines with an X-Acto knife and a steel ruler as a guide. It was a painstaking process (literally, I accidentally sliced my finger once or twice) cutting all 200 sides. After I had all the straight lines cut I still had to take care of those corners… in came the scissors and out went my sanity. Sorry peeps… there are no photos to document this exciting process, but I do have this to show you:

This is how I put my purple fabric to use. But, wait, how did I get there?

1. Cut 100, 5X7 pieces of ivory cardstock using my Fiskars paper trimmer (Easy peasy)
2. Use my Fiskars border punch to punch out the design on the edges. (I Had to use some brute force to punch through.)
3. Break my border punch after about 40 pieces have been punched (I guess the recommended paper weight was off)
4. Go back to Michaels and exchange broken punch for new one. (Yippee! No questions asked.)
5. Go crazy because punching the design took 3 punches for each side (that’s 600 punches! I had carpal tunnel issues for a few days)
6. Jump up and down in rejoice! Each piece has been punched!
7. Place a thin line of fabric glue all the way around 3 sides of the fabric (it looked like a backwards C on the wrong side)
8. Carefully place the sticky fabric to the punched paper backing. You can get technical and measure/mark, but it’s much easier to eyeball it.
9. Place the glued fabric/paper under a heavy object to dry (I used 3 old chemistry text books on top of the stacked pieces) and repeat 50 times.

I only decked out 50 of our Save the Date backings (these were for our out of town guests). The other 50 got a simple punched paper backing (for our in-town guests). I would have done them all the fancy way, but I ran out of time, patience and supplies. I have heard of brides skipping on sending Save the Dates to their in towners, so I didn’t feel too bad about sending some less than fancy ones to some of our guests.

PART II:

I have shown you how I created my purty purple backing and how I stuck it to some purty punched cardstock. Now you get to see my final steps of my Save The Date project madness and how I cut, sliced and punched my way through it (Yeah, I totally sound like a bad ass ninja!).

The Inserts:

Step 1: Wordage

Create a Word document with desired message and a few symbols (I used one of the Zapf Dingbats) to up the pretty factor.

I spaced my message out so that I could fit 5 per page, making sure to leave enough space for trimming later. (Oh yeah, don’t forget to print on cardstock!)

Step 2: I’m-a-cut-u!

Unfortunately, I don’t have fun pictures documenting my trimming process (because really it wasn’t fun). It was rather redundant and I didn’t really get too specific with the measurements (I won’t lie…I kinda eyeballed it).

Step 3: Slice Slice

This part was a bit more tricky because I needed to figure out a way to make the angle of the trimmed corners even on both sides (a task made more difficult because I didn’t measure in my last step). Not to fret, I wasn’t too off in my eyeballed measurements and was able to create a decent angle when I lined up my “tag” with my cutting mat grids and followed the diagonal.

And, soon my unsliced corner pile began to shrink as my nearly ready tag pile grew. AHHH progress.

Step 4: Punch it out!

Using my handy (newly purchased) Fiskars punching set I punched away. This was actually quite enjoyable for me… just in case you haven’t used this style punch before I’ll explain the process.

• Place the “punching end” (sorry for lack of better terminology, I am winging it) where you want your hole.
• Pull the opposing end up while holding the punching end flat.
• Let go of the opposing end once you have pulled up with enough force. Make sure you do this on a cutting mat, you won’t want holes on your coffee table.
  

• And VOILA! a neat little punched hole!

Step 5: Setting the eyelet

This part was just as easy as the last. All you need are eyelets of your choosing, but make sure they are ones that will work with your eyelet setter (the size needs to match). I chose a bronze color because it was the closest the store had to our color scheme. All you need to do is place the eyelet through the punched hole (nice side facing up) and set it using the same method as punching with the opposite end of the tool (the setting end).

Eventually you will end up with a pile of eyelet punched tags ready to be strung.

Step 6: Stringing the tags

I used 3 different colors (our colors) of embroidery thread for this part of the project. Again, I didn’t really measure, I just cut all the lengths the same and paired the 3 different colors for each tag. Fortunately, I had just enough thread from the three to tie all of my tags. I attached the 3 strings all at once to each tag with a simple slip loop through the eyelet.

Step 7: Stuffing the tags

Remember how I only glued down 3 sides of my fabric to the cardstock? Well, that was so I could create a cozy home for these reminder tags. Each tag was stuffed inside my fabric/cardstock pocket creation like so:

Step 7: Magnet meets the pocket

This step is another really easy one. I sprayed the center of each magnet with spray adhesive and stuck it to the fabric side of the stuffed pockets while the glue was still wet. Easy, right? Spray, stick and repeat.

And, the nearly final product:

Step 8: Wrap it in ribbon and you’re done!

Final product wrapped in ribbon:

So there you have it—our final “less-than-perfect” STD product.

I say less-than-perfect because they didn’t turn out quite as nice as I had envisioned.

I wanted to create something fancy and elegant, but I got crafty and cute. I am my own worse critic so let me be the judge and be the first to tell you they aren’t great. Either way, they are finished and were well received so I can’t complain (even if getting them to this point was a long and sometimes grueling process). All-in-all I am glad the project is over and done with and am hopeful that the invites will turn out much better.

Did any of your projects turn out different than you intended or expected? Were you disappointed or were you happy with the results?