Weddingbee Blog

I was very diligent about perfecting the technique for the “Save the Date Assembly Night.” A prototype was put together before I even sent the design to the printers so I was sure it wouldn’t fail.

Prototype on thin, cheap cardstock

I even decided to go with the good quality, heavy card stock in order for them to be sturdier. My supplies were carefully packed into separate Ziploc baggies and I had worked out the exact order of assembly for maximum efficiency. This was going to be a fail-proof breeze and we were gonna knock them out in no time flat. Go team! Right?

Wrong.

If any of you out there would ever want to make Save the Dates like these, you can learn from my trial and error here. It is also good to point out that one should always have extras printed in case of assemblage error. We got a lot done and had a blast, but I have to admit that I had a small freak-out moment when I momentarily thought all was lost. Here’s our tale and the lessons I learned in the process…

MOH Sweet Pea, Magical Alie and I met up at Alie’s house and I had all my gear in tow. A spread of amazing cheeses (I loves the cheese) and munchies were on the table. There was also wine…dun, dun, DUN (that’s supposed to be ominous foreshadowing music). After a good hour of chit chat, I gave the troops their marching orders and got to work. Even Cricket the cat tried to join in on the fun.

Assembly would be in two parts. On the first round, I would cut the slits for the twine to pass through, Sweet Pea folded and Alie cut twine.

Lesson #1 - Heavy card stock, while pretty and sturdy looking, is a beast to fold. It gets loads of wrinkles on the fold lines. Sweet Pea was a total rock star for folding 50 of them, which took her all night long.

We rocked along, giggled, gossiped and drank wine. Alie and I finished our first set of tasks fairly quickly and moved onto the next where she would punch holes in the date and place cards while I threaded the twine through the card. This is where it gets a little yucky.

With the prototype card, I put tape on the back of the slits to make it sturdier and insure no rippage. Now that I had heavier card stock I thought I could skip this step.

Lesson #2 - Do not skip steps! Do not trust the heavy card stock! Be super happy you printed extras.

Yucky step-skipping rippage

Cartoon Mr Waffle’s hand totally ripped out without the tape backing. So I totally had to go back and tape/re-slit all of the invites. Yuck-o! I had the mini “AHHHHHHH!” moment I spoke of earlier. The folds were wrinkly, the cards were ripping and I seriously considered stopping and going back to have them reprinted on the lighter paper. My girls helped me realize all was not lost and Alie took the busted cartoon Waffles to make finger puppets which made me laugh and soldier on. However, the finger puppets did lead to a boatload of silliness which threw me off my game.

Lesson #3 - (wine + crafts) x giggly girls = silly mistakes

Yep, there we are having a super awesome time! Yet this morning, as I was beginning to stuff these bad boys into envelopes, I discovered that my silliness lead to lack of attention to a tiny detail that makes a huge difference. Can you spot it?

The one on the top is laced so it will make a knot when pulled. The one on the bottom isn’t. I am so glad I caught this! Otherwise, I would have had a lot of confused people out there saying, “Um, Miss Waffle, mine doesn’t work.” Going back through all of them to find the improperly threaded ones, take the tags off and re-lace took forever, but it was worth it.

Even though I am an experienced crafter, I was reminded of the importance of not taking shortcuts. Stick with the original plans and maybe take it a little easy on the wine next time.

Any of you bees learn some crafting lessons lately?