Weddingbee Blog

Relax! I’m not going to complain about them anymore. Now that they’re out and everyone should have received theirs, I can finally reveal them to the blogosphere! I’ll also be sharing some key learnings—in bold so you can’t miss them and won’t screw up like I did! So, yeah, long post ahead:

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? Here’s what guests will see when they pull their envelope out of the mailbox:

Sorry for the privacy blur. You get the idea, right? If you’re from Connecticut, you may also notice that I accidentally put a Danbury zip code on our Atlanta address label. Whoops. I designed the address labels in Illustrator, then printed them onto metallic paper with my home inkjet.

We learned pretty quickly that inkjets and metallic paper are not friends—we had to heat-set these suckers with a heat embossing tool, and even after that, they CANNOT get wet. One drop of water and that ink is taking off like…um…I don’t know. It totally smudges. Next time, we’ll use a laser printer. Anyway, then we cut them out using the Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot software, and ran them through the Xyron 510 to make ‘em sticky.

Here’s the back of the envelope:

I used the same design as the address labels and had JLMould make us a sweeeet custom stamp. We stamped them all with ColorBox MetaleXtra ink in “platinum.” Another related lesson: Metallic paper really doesn’t like any kind of ink to sit on top of it, especially extra-thick “rich pigment inks.” This ink also did not dry. Ever. I mean, it still hasn’t. One light touch and they’re smudged, too. Sigh.

Here’s what the guests saw when they opened the envelopes—that is, assuming that they opened them PERFECTLY without ripping a single fiber of the envelope.

I made the stripes for the envelope liners in Illustrator, and printed them onto metallic paper the same way that I did the address labels. To cut them out, I scanned my envelopes, scaled them down in Photoshop, loaded the shape into Sure Cuts A Lot and cut them out with the Cricut. I attached them with a Xyron 5/8″ adhesive runner. I sort of copied Miss Turtle’s envelope liners. I hope she doesn’t mind! Thanks for the inspiration, Miss Turtle!

Here’s the whole package found inside:

We tied the main card and accommodations card together with Divine Twine in lemon, and attached two tags. The purple tag was printed on my inkjet and then cut out with the Cricut (using the tag from the Accent Essentials cartridge), and the aqua tags were cut out and then stamped with my last-minute “formal invitation to follow” stamp, also purchased from JLMould. We used ColorBox regular ink in “royal blue.”

Here are all the pieces all spread out:

And here’s the main SAVE THE DATE!:

This was the complicated part. I designed the main card with Illustrator and had it printed onto extra-heavy cotton paper by Catprint. I cut out the center shape with the Cricut, and also cut a slightly larger version of the same shape out of blue metallic paper—same color as the envelopes. Yet another lesson: The Cricut likes metallic paper, but it hates cotton paper. The cotton gets all wadded up on the blade and it has to be cleaned every 10 cuts or so.

The main card got run through the Xyron 900 and stuck onto the photo and purple backing layer. I stuck on the blue frame with a Xyron 5/8″ runner.

By the way, that’s one of our engagement photos in there! I realize I haven’t done a post about those or our photographers yet. It’s coming, I promise!

And that’s it! That’s it, right? Man, this process just went on, and on, and on. I didn’t even bother to explain the accommodations card. You get the idea—designed it, had it printed, cut it out, cut out the backing layer, stuck it on, blah blah blah.

Here’s all the materials that went into this beast:

• 6.5? square envelope in “sparkling sapphire”: CardsandPockets.com for $0.17 each
• 81lb text-weight Stardream metallic paper in “quartz”: EnvelopeMall.com; $12.95 per 100 sheets
• Divine Twine in “lemon”: WhiskerGraphics.com; $15 for a spool
• 8.5?x11? 80lb cardstock in “turquoise,” “pansy” and “lavender”: CardsandPockets.com; $4.99-5.75 per 25-pack
• 8.5?x11? 105lb Stardream metallic cardstock in “sparkling sapphire”: CardsandPockets.com; $7.25 per 25-pack
• Matte photo prints: Snapfish.com; $0.09 per print

That about covers it, right? Whew! This seriously took months, but I feel like it was worth it.

Did you take on any projects that got way out of hand? Did you feel like it was worth all your time and effort, or did you wish you’d kept it simple?

(All personal photos)