First up our Save the Dates. Remember them from this post?

Postcard front

STD:

• Printing of 100 post cards $16.57 (used a vistaprint 100 free offer with 2 uploaded images)
• Postage for 100 $28.00

Total  for STD’s $44.57 or .45 ea

Review: Vistaprint was fairly easy to use. I downloaded the Photoshop template they had and designed it right on that for both front and back then uploaded to the website. Shipping was super quick and the whole thing was painless….if you don’t count the actual design time.

Invites (need 75 but bought supplies for and made 100, priced for 100):

• Main pocket cardstock  (chocolate) $17.10
• Contrast pocket cardstock (purple) $6.50
• Insert and main invite panel stock  (ivory) $45.00
• Metal brads $5.98
• Ribbon $10.00
• RSVP envelopes $13.61
• Envelopes $20.50
• Postage $125.00 (estimate)

Total  for invites $243.69 or $2.44 each.

The envelopes and chocolate cardstock I bought from CutCardstock.Com and had no issues with them at all. They do have cardstock samples you can purchase, but I just went out on a limb and bought from descriptions, since it matched a sample name I had gotten from another company. I ordered 2 different times from them (cardstock and then envelopes) and both time the order was sent the same day and arrived in 2 days.

Purple cardstock, brads and ribbon all came from my most favorite place…. Michael’s. Enough said I think.

The ivory card stock came from Staples and their line of resume and business papers and is called  Southworth Linen Cover Stock. It’s 65lbs and was great because it is thicker than a good paper, but is lighter than regular cardstock for both pocket space and postage weight reasons so it made for great inserts. It has a very light linen texture that didn’t cause any problems in my printer but gave it a bit of a luxe look.

I did not include printer ink in the total but if I did that would add another $40ish bucks. In my case I didn’t even go through a whole set of ink cartridges to print all of my stuff. When designing I tried to make things as low ink using as possible to cut down on that cost. Since they are square and I am going to need rsvp postage the postage figure is a killer for the actual invites. But all total our invitation suite including std’s were only $2.89 each! Yeah for being under 3bucks! Next up for me…. How to address them, labels or by hand???

Did you have a invite budget that needed you to do some thinking to stay within? If so let us know in the comments how you worked it out. Give us a link to your handy work too so we can all marvel at what you were able to come up with!

Other posts in the Paper Trail series:

• Paper Trail: Our DIY Pocket Folds
• Paper Trail: Invite Insides
• Paper trail: Our invites… the prototype
• Paper trail: Save the Dates
• Paper trail: Our design motif
• Who knew fonts were stressful!

contrasting pocket and brads

Our finished size is 5 1/2″ square with a pocket depth of 2 1/2″. Our insert cards are 4 1/2″ tall and our main invite panel is 5 3/16″ tall and 4 1/2″ wide. This was a 3 day process for us with the 1st day being me cutting the needed accent strips. You’ll see what these are in a minute on the supply list and in the instructions.

To make this you are going to need:

• Paper cutter that will cut 12 x12 paper with both a cutting and scoring blade
• corner rounder (optional)
• mini brads, I used 1/16″ ones ( you will need 2 per pocket)
• 12 x 12 cardstock (you will get 2 pockets out of one sheet)
• Contrasting 12 x 12 carstock, cut into 2″ strips ( you will get 6 per sheet)
• a sheet of corrugated cardboard to protect your work surface
• a corkboard pin
• Tacky paper glue
• Bone folder
• Paper towels
• A spreading stick…we used a bamboo skewer

Ok now on to the instructions!

Step one

For dark color paper like mine lightly score a line acrossed your main cardstock  1″ from the edge on the back/non decorative side of the stock. This is going to be a helper mark. Make it heavy enough to see it on the back, but not heavy enough to see it from the front.  You may need to do a few test first to get it right so get a extra sheet to sacrifice for testing. If the back of your stock has a barcode then use that side for this part! ( See where I didn’t do that in the above pic on the left side!)

Step 2

Clear a lot of floor or table space before you start this step. You will be laying all of these out to dry after glueing so make sure to save enough room that you don’t have to move them for a while.  Spread glue on the 1″ section you scored then take your 2″ contrast strip and glue it face/good side down to the back of your main stock using the scored helper mark as your line up spot. It will now be hanging off the edge of you main card stock by 1″.

The Boy glueing while I score

We used very little glue since we didn’t want our stock to get the wave wet paper look that can happen if you over glue. The boy made a wavy line of glue, then spread it out with the skewer to get it thin and close to the score line and edges of the stock.  Allow to dry overnight or as long as it takes for you glue to completely dry. We did this part on day 2 of assembly.

Step 3 (or on to day 3)

Using your test sheet figure out which side of the sheet you need to score and how deep you need to score to get a a clean fold from your stock. For me it was on the back side with medium pressure but different stock weights mean different pressure. Then score a line 2.5″ from the edge you added with the contrasting stock, or 1.5″ from your main stock edge. Fold edge up carefully and press with the bone folder to get a crisp edge. Then using the scoring blade score a line parallel to the contrast side 5″ from the opposite end or 5.5″ from the first fold line, which ever is easier to do with your paper cutter. Only fold over the contrast stock end as shown below for the next step.

Scoring the "Pocket"

Step 4

Cut your folded stock from the folded edge down at 5 1/2″ to make 2 pcs 10 1/2″ long  x 5 1/2″ tall.

Optional Step 5

Round the corners of the contrast stock and the opposite end. I found that doing so helped to hide any folding imperfections that happened in later steps. You do not have to do it, I just like the way it worked and looked so I chose to.  If you chose to make sure to get a corner rounder that does not have ridges on the pressing part (see pic at top for what I mean) I didn’t listen to that advise and really regretted it when I was done rounding all the corners!

Rounded corners

Step 6

Make a template of the folded/contrast paper end of your your pocket.

folded end template

Mine is one that I botched the 3rd fold scoring pressure and went thru the cardstock. I rounded the corners then marked with a corkboard pin hole my brad spot 1/4″ over and 1/4″ down from the edges on both sides. Put the template over the folded end so it ends up on top and underneath the folded pocket end. Working on top of your corrugated cardboard poke a hole through the template and into your pocket on both sides. Remove the template and carefully fold up the last fold, flattening with your bone folder. Doing this before you put in the brads insures that you don’t end up with a brad imprint in your cover when you are flattening the fold.

Last fold complete!

Poke your brads thought the hole you made making sure you get though both the contrast color and back  layers. Bend the brad tabs in opposite directions on the back side. Get them as flat as you can, I used a butter knife as a pressure tool on stubborn ones.

Pocket brads

And TaDa you have pocket folds to fill with what ever you like! So what do you think? Not to hard…just a little putzy and you get something that looks really nice.  All told I think there is about 3 hours of slow work in the 75 we made, spread out over a 3 day period. So if you start early like we did it doesn’t seem so bad.

Do you have a DIY thing you are making that if done in steps is more manageable? If so give a shout out in the comments with your tutorial on it!!

Other posts in the Paper Trail series:

• Paper Trail: Invite Insides
• Paper trail: Our invites… the prototype
• Paper trail: Save the Dates
• Paper trail: Our design motif
• Who knew fonts were stressful!

Since our linens and faux silverwear had arrived we spent a bit of time one evening watching a movie and rolling them up. Once we were done we wrapped them in plastic wrap to protect them then boxed them up to add to the wedding stuff stack.

After that we had to restack the pile and ended up with what the picture show…. a stack that is taller than me! Since we live in a just less than 600sqft apartment it gets a little crowded with all the stuff that I am working on. Soon we will be taking part of the stack to Lil Sis to store since she is way closer than we are to our venue.

Do you have a area that is stuffed with wedding stuff? How are you keeping things from taking over your whole house?

Jess

holy purple flowers Batman!

I have approx 100 done and have started to put them into bq’s. This is one of those projects that I took on that I didn’t know if I would like it when it was done or not so I am really happy with the way things are looking. Sorry but I am not going to show the finished product till wedding pics come back…but I do have a picture of a test bq that was thrown together quick so I could get a idea on how it was looking.

Test Bq

I have mine, the 4 bm’s, and 2 mom’s bqs to make along with all of the bouts and corsages to make. Things are coming along well and I can’t wait to have this crossed off the list.

Do you have any DIY things that you are not sure if you are going to like enough to make it to the wedding when it is done? If so share what it is and why you are feeling that way!

Edit to fix pics…sorry don’t know what happened!

In other news…. I have decided that I am going to do a light purple organza mantilla veil. I have been in love with mantilla veils for forever and really wanted one but not at the price you can buy them for.  I am planning something like this…

(Click for source)

…but longer in the back so that it is very dramatic since it will only be worn for the ceremony and pictures. Also in the works is my tiara which I haven’t really been able to find a picture of what I am making so you will have to wait to see it till it’s done.

Is anyone planning to do a unconventional veil color? I know when I told my mom she was a  little slow in saying “that sounds cool” which tells me that it struck her as a little odd.  Post a comment if you are… I would love to see some more unconventional veil colors!

The boy looking all cute in his saftey glasses and dust mask

We chose to buy the Dremel workstation and were so glad we did. It helped to hold the Dremel while we cut all the tops off. We were able to then hold the bottle with both hands to get a more even line using a diamond cutting  wheel (aprox $15 ech) to cut them. After that, since I already owned it, I ground down the rough edge with a stained glass grinder to make things a little less sharp to work with. Then with Dremel #2 and a grinding stone attachment we smoothed out and slightly rounded the edges. The best instructions I found for the sanding part were in this instructable starting in step 4. Since we are only using ours as candle holders and they will all be wrapped in paper we only did the sanding with the grinding stone and not all the other sand papers.  We may still sand with some finer stuff, but after I have a few days to sit back and marvel at the 81 good ones we got out of the day!

Our 81 beauties

Now for our tips…..

1. Don’t try and use masking tape to draw a nice even line on your bottles. The tape gunks up the cutting blade and wears it out 3 times faster than doing it without. We only got 24 bottles of the final 81 out of our 1st bit because of the tape. The rest of them we got out of a 2nd blade after deciding not to use the tape.

2. Have way more bottles than you think you need. Bottle glass isn’t the best so you will have some that crack down the side or just to wrong to fix that you will have to pitch. We even had some crack after cutting when we touched the dremel to it to sand. I would say we lost about 1 in 7 or so.

3. Don’t try to do champagne bottles. The glass is waaaay too thick and it is very hard to sand if you do get one to cut well.

4. Make sure to do this outside since the glass cutting is stinky. Also make sure to wear safety glasses, a dust mask and long pant/shirt. You would not believe where you end up finding glass afterwards.

Anything you have a question on?  Then leave a comment and I will try and answer it!

BUT… We are only booking one hotel block. This is the one that The Boy’s immediate family and the bridal party will stay in. So if we do them it will be just for them. This makes it a small project in the grand scheme of things since there are only 10 rooms in the block. The possibility that more of his family will hear about it from another family member and join the already full of bridal party block is really not that far fetched. Since none of them can go more than a few days talking to each other the cat will be out of the bag rather quickly.

On the one hand it would be nice to have something to hand out to these hard working people who are coming to celebrate with us. On the other it is another chunk of change we don’t have budgeted into our tiny wedding budget.  Since we are planning on such little change we would have to steal it from another already budgeted thing and I feel bad stealing from another area that is for all our guest for just a handful of them.

I already know in my heart of hearts how this internal argument is going to go, but I can always hope, can’t I? What is your opinion on the OOT bag? yea or nay and why do you say that?

*For those not in the know OOT = Out Of Town

Well hi there! Yes I know….bad Blogger here. All I can say is that life snuck up on me this holiday season as a new floral department manager. That’s right, I finally got my permanent placement and took over my own shop in October. I came on board just in time to have to deal with decorating 350 Xmas wreaths that were delivered 2 weeks before thanksgiving. Add to that the H1N1 that both The Boy and I had and couldn’t kick and you can see how blogging came to be on a far away burner.

But I just wanted to say I’m back. I will tell you though I won’t promise to post more than once a week since we are now under the 6 month mark and new things to do and finish are popping up everyday!

To The Boy…if you are reading then please stop now so you don’t ruin your first look on the wedding day!

With out further adue….

You can’t tell it from the pictures, but the veil has small rhinestones scattered on it that I think will really pull the beading on the dress out. The shoes, as I have shown before, have the lovely pleating on the peep-toe and of course are the required purple. The jewelery has a touch of whimsy with the kissing birds and once again has my beloved purple. I am still waiting on the jewelery to get here but I love it already!

I still need to decided what I am going to do for a head piece since I will be taking the veil off after the ceremony. I also will have to transfer the veil to another comb since the one it is on is too wide for the hairstyle I am going to wear that day. When I do that I thing I will be adding a second teir so I can have a blusher. I quite possibly will make some part of the new combo veil a light purple!

So what do you think? Does this seem like a cohesive and pulled together look?