Weddingbee boards

I've been threatening to post these for a little while - our RSVPs have been coming in so I figure it's ok to do it now!

So as not to flood the board with a ton of pictures, I posted them to my flickr account:

Go to my flickr

Pretty much everything was DIY - it was a TOTAL labor of love. And a lot of it was inspired of course by invitations that have been posted here on Weddingbee both in the blog and on the boards.

I mentioned this about our RSVPs before - we made them a perforated folded card so guests could tear off the response part and send them back in.

I'm happy to share tips and instructions if anyone wants any. Thanks for looking... Oh, and yes, there is a slight, teeny mistake that broke my heart when I found out. So if you notice it please don't tell me :) I know it's there and I don't want to be reminded!!     

wow those are amazing! i mean you even have FLOOR PLANS! very inspirational!

Those are awesome! How did you close your pocketfold? That's what I'm fighting with right now. I don't know how to close it and then after it's open, have it be able to close again.

And we're going to Banff on our honeymoon!  

Aw thanks for all the compliments! (I knew posting this was a *bit* self-serving :) )

I will totally answer your questions about designs, etc. soon. I have to make dinner first but feel free to keep them coming and I will reply later. 

I just added a solo picture of the liner that I made for the purple A7 envelopes, too.

very nice invitations.  i like the bird motiff, just like miss penguins.  GMTA! :)  

The MAPS insert (with the floorplans) was the one thing designed by my FI - he has much better spatial ability than I do!

The design (logo) is a photoshop image that I bought from istockphoto (and yes, the same one that Miss Penguin is using!). I edited it quite a bit, taking out many of the branches and changing some of the leaves and florals to look more 'star-like' to fit with our theme of stars and birds. Here's the original image, so you can see how much I changed it: istockphoto 

The double happiness symbol is just a little nod to our families/relatives - we are both chinese (well, FI is Taiwanese) but raised in very Canadian famillies, so we are not really incorporating any Asian traditions (no tea ceremony, etc.). So I just drew the symbol and slipped it in - I like how it looks like it's kind of naturally hanging off of the branch!

So misspinkberry, you could search around for an image of bamboo (should be pretty easy!) and a cute drawing of a panda, which might be a bit more difficult but doable. I drew a few things - like the carrot on the RSVP and some parts of the logo, so if you're artistic maybe you could try it yourself.

jma19 -to close the pocketfolds, I made those little label tags. They are multi-layered. The purple damask layer is two pieces of scrapbook paper (that I cut to 2.5 x 1.5 inches) adhered back-to-back. I ran one piece through my xyron with permanent adhesive and stuck it to the other one. The tag wiht our names on it is 1.25 x 2.25 inches, cut out of natural white linen cardstock (also what the invitation layer is made of). I designed them, printed them on our color laser printer, and then ran them through the permanent xyron as well. Once that was stuck to the 2-sided purple damask piece, I ran the whole thing through the xyron machine using NON-permanent (repositionable) adhesive so that it was tacky and sticky but wouldn't need to be torn to open the pocketfold. However, to make sure that the tag stuck to the top layer of the pocketfold, I put a piece of double sided tape down as well. So it's permanently stuck to the top layer, but only non-permanently stuck to the bottom layer (think post-it note type adhesive).

Let me know if that doesn't make enough sense! You will have a lovely honeymoon in Banff, it's so beautiful. We grew up in Calgary so it was our backyard!

Emily - I didn't have any problems with the gold ink/purple envelope combo. I brought a sample to the post office to figure out postage, and the woman who helped me didn't say anything - but I didn't want to ask! I think everyone's gotten their invitations, and none have been returned so I say go for it. I hand-wrote the guest addresses with gold calligraphy ink, and gocco'd the return address on the back flap in gold gocco ink. 

huskerlx - do you have any specific questions about the insert cards? I just designed them all in illustrator, first figuring out what the dimensions of each card should be. The whole pocketfold measured 5 x 7 closed and the pocket was 4 x 7", so the MAPS insert was just under 7x7 inches (7 x 3.5 folded), the INFO card was 6 x 3.5" and the RSVP was 5 x 7 (5 x 3.5 folded).

Let me know if you have other questions about anything that I didn't answer!

Puffy - I used a calligraphy pen with a fairly small nib. For some of them, I had to do the address on the fly so I just used a gold gel-pen and it worked well - better and much less fussy than the calligraphy pen, in fact. So I would recommend that (if you don't care too much about strokes and serifs)!

Tea - most of it was pretty clear, but I realized after I'd done all the printing that the font was thicker than I meant for it to be. In Illustrator, you can specify the color of both the "fill" and the "outline" of a letter. I accidentally had set both the fill and outline of the block lettering to be black - which effectively "bolded" the type. If I did it again I would make sure the outline was no-color, only the fill. The text was definitely legible, but on some prints it wasn't as clear as I would have liked.

Anyway, more relevant to your question, I think I've read that you can go as low as 6 or 7pt font (with a clear, block type font) and it will still be clear when you gocco. I wouldn't go below 9pt with a script font though. I would suggest you do a test run with a screen that has all different sizes/styles of the font(s) you intend to use, just to be sure. If you're using a program like Illustrator, also play around with the features in there, like space between letters, etc. to get the optimum font settings.

Sorry, I had to take things down for a bit so that I could blur out personal info (I'm a naive internet user, I guess :) ) but they should be back up and viewable now!

Amazing, amazing invites!! Love the RSVP perforated card, too.

Thanks everyone!

Estherkim - believe me, I've thought about doing this for a living :) 

tylacy - we don't live in Calgary anymore but both of our parents do. Good luck with your map!

Haselwand - I only gocco'd the invitation layer and the return address (not shown in pictures). The rest of it was done on a laser printer at my FI's work. Don't be afraid of your gocco! It's really easy and fun. Just try to do a practice run of something first, so you get a feel for the amount of ink, pressure, etc., without wasting invitation supplies.

Thanks briannie! People really like the perforated thing, and it was easy enough to do. I love that people are writing us notes on the back of the RSVP - it's especially nice that people who can't come can write a little something to congratulate us anyway. And we're getting some hilarious song requests!! (the latest was "any song from the Chipmunks movie" from our friends' kid...)

I forgot to take pics of different RSVP cards - we made 4 different ones, with 1, 2, 3 or 4 lines for guests... I think this will help cut down on some of the problems people are having with guests adding their own +1... 

Ahh... smart idea with the 1, 2, 3, 4 RSVP lines.  I was wondering... "What if a single guests gets an RSVP card with two lines??!?!?!?!" You thought of everything :)  

misspinkberry - yeah, i think the design would be fine if it was printed on a laser/inkjet printer, at home or at kinkos. Gocco just gives it a different quality, in my case a little bit more homemade, kind of craft-y look.

As for a budget breakdown, no problem. I can give you more detailed info if you'd like (e.g. I was able to make 4 pocketfolds from one large sheet of Stardream coverstock, and I bought 25 sheets for $45), but here is the price per each part of it.

Pocketfolds: $.45

Purple ribbon on pocketfold: $.07

Invitation layer (natural white linen cardstock): $.08

Striped invitation matting: $.03 Insert cards: approx. $.13 each

RSVP envelopes: $.24

Outer envelopes: $.24

Monogram labels: approx.  $.05

Adhesive - double sided 3M tape: $.04

Adhesive - tape runner: $.06

Adhesive - xyron cartridges: $.25

Calligraphy pen and Gold calligraphy ink: $.05

So, Total for one invitation =  about $1.69

not including shipping costs for supplies (probably adds a good $.50 to each invite), postage, laserjet printer toner, gocco ink (I used parts of orange and purple tubes), and cutting implements - I went through a couple of replacement blades with my cutterbug paper cutter, a couple of exacto knives, etc.) I got a lot of things on sale (I made good use of Joann 40% off coupons every week!) or through Ebay, and in some cases I got discounts (e.g. the light purple paper for the insert cards was discontinued and they didn't have enough at one place so she discounted what they did have). Not bad! If I had bought these professionally made, I think it would have cost quite a bit more!

Like I said, I'm happy to give more details on any of it, including specific product info, and where I bought everything. Just ask!

Hope that helps!      

Sfsundae - I have a little rotating perforator tool - like this one. I think I got mine at Joann. Once the cards were printed and cut, I just used that with a ruler and ran it along the center line. What are you thinking about for escort cards? I'm curious!

Snowflakebride - totally doable, but give yourself a LOT of time. Our invites went out in early February, but I started probably in October, doing a little bit at a time after work. And try to make sure you have extra supplies (paper, etc.) in case you make mistakes!