DIY Invitations Revealed

After spending a year oohing and ahhing over all of the gorgeous invitation suites I saw on Pinterest, we reached a point where we finally had to come up with our own. And as with everything else, to my fiancé's dismay, I needed it to be DIY. Let me briefly digress by saying that every line on my exhaustive (and exhausting) budget is a chance for a little competition. Hence the overkill on DIY projects.

Oh, hello budget. You think my invitations are going to cost $800? Well, think again!

Anyways, after several trips to Paper Source and FedEx Kinko's, and after a couple of crying fits in front of Photoshop, we finally finished our eco-friendly DIY invitations. Et voilà!

And here is the whole thing constructed and deconstructed...

 

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple." - Jack Kerouac

Remember the Kerouac quote on the envelope? It's one of our favorites, so we tied it into the invitation wording :)

And Kyle even drew custom maps for us!

 

I have to admit that even though I never wanted to look at another invitation in my entire life by the time we got these in the mail, I was quite eager to hear what people thought. I mean, I watercolored 199 pieces of paper and Kyle typed 106 custom RSVP cards and envelopes after all!

Here is what we did in summary: I designed the invitations on Photoshop using some cool free fonts, Kyle drew the maps by hand and we scanned them in, we bought all of the paper products from Paper Source (all at least 30% recycled!) including the vintage San Francisco postcards, bought eco-friendly hemp string and antique sailboat charms from etsy, found some great 1950s sports car stamps for the postcards on ebay, bought the rest of the stamps from the regular old Post Office, had everything printed and cut at FedEx Kinko's, glued the envelope liners into the envelopes, watercolored a bunch of things, tied figure 8 knots on all of the strings to attach the sailboat charms, typed the RSVP cards and envelopes on our 1920 Underwood typewriter, drank a bunch of wine, and finally put all 53 invites together. Phew!

ALL of this, all of the postage, paper, supplies, sticky tape, paint brushes, printing, etc cost $360. Well under my $800 budget. Take that budget!!

So, what do you think? I'm dying to hear!

Stamp of Approval

My current wedding project is invitations. After the amount of research, work and stress that has gone into them, I will NEVER look at a wedding invitation the same way again! I promise to reveal more about the invites in a future post, but thought I would share one thing I did to keep the costs of our invitations down. Our invitation vendor offers envelope printing for both guest addresses and return addresses, but they can only do the return address in letterpress and it’s not cheap! So to keep the cost down a bit, I ordered a stamp with our name and address and plan to hand stamp all of our envelopes with our return address. For about $30 (much cheaper than the cost of letterpressing the return address), I was able to get two different size stamps from TheStampMaker.com. And the best part is that I will be able to use them even after our wedding (I only used our first names, so when I change my last name, I can still use it!).

If you would rather not make your own stamp (maybe rely on the talents of those a little more creative!), Etsy is your friend! There are so many great stamp options to choose from. Here are a few I had my eye on.

Did you hand stamp your invites? What did you do to keep the cost of your invitations down?

Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Inspiration Evolution: The Invitations

We all share of a love paper goods and paper designs. Having a little tag, the right font, a cute logo, etc are the elements that go into the final product of the paper products. Overall, these elements make or break a wedding if you ask me!

So check out Liz's magic when it came to her invitions! She did every single part herself after countless hours, researching her style, refining the placement, and creating an extremely cohesive element that went with every other aspect of the wedding.

I love creating invitations and paper goods so it only seemed fitting that I do it myself for my wedding. I spent countless hours getting the invitation just right. I loved the style of bold unique fonts that just speak for themselves. I had a return address stamps and logo stamp made for the wedding which I incorporated into the invitations as well to add an even more personal touch. The invitations ended up coming out beautifully. Of course we decided to use kraft envelopes since we love natural colors.

So how did these DIY invitations come about??

It started with some basic inspiration....

Deciding on the style and the colors.....

Figuring out what fonts and layouts looked best....

Trying some of her own and really honing in on the style of the whole wedding.

Picking the perfect additions to work with the invitations...

Making a few final products...then changing them around again!

Again, here is the finished invitation which I think came out perfect! In the end, it matched the style of the event, incorporated the same details, and turned out to be the perfect glimpse into what was to be expected of her wedding :)

Any DIY invitation makers have some helpful hints???

Photo Credit: All from Liz's blog, Final invite pics by Jason + Anna Photography