Category — paper

Since most of the recipients have found these in their mailboxes, I am excited to show them to you! A quick funny side note: You will notice that my name is no where on the invite. It wasn’t photoshopped out, I just didn’t feel the need to have it on there. Neither is a phone number to RSVP, since everyone invited knows how to contact me.  However, I also decided last minute (a day later) not to put return address labels on them…  Which led to this facebook message: Did you send Cindy and I something in the mail? It looks like it could be from you but it doesn’t have a name on it. Lucky for me not many of our friends sew their invitations!  A few minutes later I had facebooked the entire guest list to let them know that yes, the invite to a birthday party? That was from me.

Anyways, on to the invites.  I first saw this idea for sewing two-toned ruffled crepe paper on a blog… but it was a while ago and I don’t remember where. I figured I would incorporate it with the invites and voila! I wish it were that easy. I went through 2 broken needles before deciding to just sew the crepe paper and glue it on. I was super disappointed, and still need to google “How to sew on paper,” but I went with it and produced something I was proud of.

We decided to go with a framed poster for our guestbook:

I bought the poster from etsy seller SparklePower, though I can’t seem to find her now! (Thanks Laura!) We bought the frame at Ikea and took the whole thing to Michael’s to get a custom matte made for $20.

We came to the conclusion that since we were on a budget, giving out favors was simply not necessary. We thought about making homemade cookies to package up for people to take with them, but decided against it as it would have had to been done in the few days before the wedding, and I really didn’t want to have to do anything on those days!  So what we decided on doing was to give away the flowers from the centerpieces.

I posted about making these bags here.

We also made little tags asking people to take the flowers but leave the jars, since they were part of our personal collection.

Going this route for the favors saved us a lot of time and money, and no one seemed to care. (Not that they would come up asking for their favor… but still!)

Images from Studio 7 Photography.

The kid’s table was a huge hit! By the end of the party there were untangled Slinkies, colored coloring books and devoured candy everywhere!

I included:
a craft paper table cloth (using this roll of paper from Ikea)
Slinkies (from the dollar bins at Target)
little wind mills (also from the dollar bins at Target)
crayons and colored pencils (placed in paper cups from Ikea and Target)
mixed candy (also placed in paper cups from Ikea and Target)
the Activity Books I made
paper napkins (from Ikea)

Kids were more than welcome at our wedding, and I wanted to provide them with something to do so that they could have fun too!  They were all old enough to be left alone by their parents at the table and to eat the food that the adults were eating.  They loved it, and I was so happy to see them all having a good time!

Images by  Studio 7 Photography

Okay, on to the paper!  I have had a lot of questions about fonts and such so I will go piece by piece with a short summary of each. If you have a detailed question please leave it in the comments and I will answer it the best I can!  I really did have so much fun designing and putting together all of this!  I hope to one day grow my design business and am currently working on a few different designs so that I can open an etsy shop soon!

The invite suite:

I probably went through 10 different design concepts before coming to this one. As a designer you have all these ideas in your head, all of them excellent (obviously!) and out of those you have to decide which one is ‘you’.  Eventually we decided that we wanted something clean, classic, and not too girly.  We chose grey and marigold as our colors. (I later added in shades of pink)  I use Adobe Illustrator for all of my designs.  The main font used is called Bodini Svty Two SC ITC TT Book. I am not sure where I got that font… but when I am in need of a font, whether it is super classic or super silly, I always hit up Dafont.  It is also a great resource for widgits, as is Briar Press.

Save the dates:

These were the only things, besides the napkins, that I gocco’d.  I really wanted the white on color look, and the only way I could DIY that was with the gocco.  And even though the white was not as bright as I wish it would have been, it was so easy to do and I really enjoyed the process. I would recommend a gocco to anyone and everyone, except I am pretty sure they are hard to come by these days. I am hoarding my supplies for new projects. I feel like Elaine, hoarding her sponges. Like, is this project gocco worthy? Ha oh man.

The invites and rsvp’s:

I bought all paper and envelopes from Paper Source. I bought the marigold yarn from this etsy seller (and we wrapped the bridesmaids bouquets in the grey) and I bought full page labels for the address labels. I used my Epson Stylus Photo R220 to print them all.  I love this printer because of the many borderless sizes it prints, but it is time to upgrade to an all in one. Any suggestions?

Rehearsal Invites:

I threw these together last minute, more as a fun thing to design than a necessary piece of information. I used Fortuna Dot for the pink font and Filosofia Regular for the grey.

Rehearsal Menu:

Shower Thank You’s:

These were a lot of fun to make. I am in love with the font, MA Sexy, it is just so girly and fun and worked perfectly for this project. The kitchen utensils are actually widgets, and the font name is DJ Kitchen.

Programs:

The programs went through a few looks before coming to these. I incorporated the circles from the little invitation seal, as well as the yarn.

Kids Activity Books:

The activity books were fun to make and proved to be a hit at the reception!  I honestly can’t remember all of the sources for the images, which is why I am not selling these at this time. I just googled anything related to Kids, Weddings and Coloring and took from here and borrowed from there. I then tweaked each thing using Illustrator to fit my needs and color scheme.

Reception Paper:

For the reception paper I gocco’d napkins as well as made cake descriptions and a bar menu. Again, it was all printed on my photo printer using paper from Paper Source.  The white frames were from Ikea and the napkins were from Party City.

Tips: If you enjoy designing things on the computer, then try doing your own invitations. If you don’t have a good printer, go to Kinkos.  You can save so much money doing these on your own. If you don’t enjoy designing, well, then hire me to do it for you!

But really, if you want to get more into it I would recommend finding a design program that works for you. Like I said, I use Adobe Illustrator, but you can use InDesign or even Photoshop if you had to. A good photo printer that can print borderless is key. My Epson has been good to me and I would recommend the brand to anyone.

Use sites like Dafont and Briar Press to your advantage. Just be careful not to steal anyones work (You will see the distinctions on the sites.)

And have fun with it! Look around at designers sites, find inspiration and play around with your ideas. If you have any questions that I did not answer, again, please leave them in the comments and I will get to them!

Q&A:

Nicole asked: “Could you elaborate on what benefits you have found in doing {borderless printing} over regular printing with a border.”
Answer: Borderless printing is excellent if you want a design to come all the way to the edge of the page.  Here are some examples:

This way you don’t have to trim off the sides to get that ‘printed to the edge’ look.
Nicole also asked: “How do you rate your Epson? Have you tried printing with it on different types of paper products?”
Answer: I love my Espon, although in it’s old age (5+ years) it is having a bit of difficulty feeding the paper though. I would definitely recommend the brand though. I would also recommend getting a printer that has 6 ink colors over 4. With 6 you can more accurately print the color you see on your screen.  As for printing on different types of paper products, I haven’t tested out too many things. I will say that, even before its old age, it has a little difficulty feeding through thicker, textured papers. It will do it, you just have to help each page feed, which can get tiring when you are printing 100+ invites!

Have any of you guys found a printer that you love? One that you hate? Help me out here with a recommendation!

The Program, Activity Books and Reception Paper images were all by Studio 7. The rest were by me.

I would like to send (and receive) mail this pretty…

By her, buy it here.

I am in love with this paper chain idea for asking your friends to be your maids. Super cute.

(Seen on Once Wed, DIY by Anna of Rifle Design)

update: ok, now it is fixed!

(update: apparently wordpress doesn’t like it when I title my posts with just numbers, which is why you haven’t been able to comment. It is all fixed now!)

All my to-do’s are done. I may make a ‘just married’ sign tonight, maybe.

2 days to go.

Here are the last few things to get done:

Putting the programs in their box. (And a few kids activity books for the really young kids)

A mock up of the kids table to show my florist turned set up person

Pen jar for the ‘guestbook’

Hair trial! She fixed the dark pieces (yay!) and did a gorgeous up-do!  However, I am very simple and wear my hair straight all of the time, so I said for the big day I would like it with a little less volume

Ok, now I am really going!  We aren’t leaving for our honeymoon until Monday, so I may post a teaser before that, but I am not making any promises!

well, again, it is late so it is pretty much only 8 days now. wooooohooooo.

Thanks for all of the comments regarding my hair!  When I go in for my updo trial she is going to lighten it for me Yay for wedding hair!

Also, we just picked up our ‘guestbook’ at Michael’s (a poster inside a frame) and it looks awesome!!!

I had a few questions regarding the font I used on our programs. It is called Bodoni Svty Two SC ITC TT Book. I am not sure if it came with my programs or if I downloaded it… there is one that is from the same font family here.  I really liked the font, and used it on everything from the invitation suite to the bar and cake cards and napkins to the programs to the rehearsal dinner menus.

Choosing just one font seemed impossible in the beginning.  As a graphic designer I had the world of fonts and flourishes at my fingertips, and settling on just one took a few months of redesign after redesign. In the end, I went with the classic font and a very structured layout, with almost everything matching up to make the fonts become rectangular.  I went a little, ok, a lot, out of this when I did the rehearsal invitations, mostly because I just wanted something fun. But for the menu I am bringing it back to the classic look.  Overall I love our entire paper suite, but I can’t wait for my next freelance job where I get to do something different!

Speaking of freelance design… I have taken a break from it over the last few months just because doing custom work takes time and planning my wedding needed to take precedent. I will probably get back into it in August, but part of me wants to wait and work on an actual line.  I like custom work but sometimes I feel like I am just copying other designers and I really want to do suites that are me. So anyways, we will all have to wait and see what happens with that I guess Wherever my path leads…

12 days left!

Here are our programs! I went through a few different design ideas and I still have 50 gocco’d covers that are going unused, but I love how these turned out!  Sorry that some of the pictures are blurry. I am crossing my fingers that our next place will have much more light!

I hope you all had a wonderful fourth of july weekend!  Mine consisted of a failed hair trial (I believe the wedding gods are tempting me… trying to pull out my inner bridezilla.  so far I have resisted.) (edit: i call it a failed hair trial because we never even got to the updo part. I combined my appointments for color and cut with my updo appointment. Thanks to some weird fluke, my hair color… didn’t come out right. I always get highlights and some low lights for that ‘natural’ blonde look. For some reason, this time the low lights came out dark dark brown.  Yikes. The streak look is not a good look on me. By the time my hairstylist used color remover and washed my hair a few more times, I had already been there for 2 hours and I had dinner plans so I said the trial would have to wait.  My hair color still isn’t right. However, I know that it was not my stylists fault. I have been going to her 3-4 times a year for almost 7 years and not once has this happened. Hence, the wedding gods must be after me.) followed by blueberry beer, The Proposal, bike riding at the beach, fireworks and the San Diego Zoo. All in all not a bad weekend!  I also worked on my programs!  Here is a little sneak peak:

Less than two weeks to go!