Things have been pretty quiet around this little blog of mine lately. But this time I have a good reason. Really, I do!
Oh, that’s right. Our Save the Dates are not only IN THE MAIL, they have all been delivered to our guests!
I had good intentions to document the making of these babies with photos, but yeah, that didn’t happen. I will say that every component of them is handmade. I didn’t do it just to say that I made them, but more so because I could get exactly what I wanted and for a very nice price.
These babies came out to $0.63 each. I know I could of had some very pretty cards printed up through a retailer for cheaper, but I wanted to have the picture included and add a bit of my own flair. I’d say I succeeded.
Without further ado, here it is:
I hate to admit it, but I originally got the idea long before we were engaged when I was reading Weddingbee when I shouldn’t have been. Mrs. Cherry Pie made a similar save the date and I just thought it was fantastic. Ever since I read that post (a good year and a half before we were engaged), I knew that I wanted to use that for our save the dates. And when I showed L and he concurred that he liked them, we were off.
Since we knew right away what we wanted to make, I started early. Like, November early. I spent a couple of days pricing all the components out on the internet to be sure I was going to get everything for as cheap as possible.
For starters, navy blue cardstock for the backing. I chose text weight paper in bulk from Paper Source in the color Night. I found some online shops that had less expensive paper, but once you added the shipping in, it was no longer the winner. Luckily a Paper Source store opened in Charlotte a little more than a year ago.
Next was the vellum. I got a pack of 50 sheets from AC Moore and used a 50% off coupon. Same deal with the cardstock in terms of price plus shipping.
I already had my Gocco which my mom bought me for a very early Christmas present in August and knew that’s how I would print them.
I purchased navy Gocco ink, but was unable to find a pink that was the right shade. So I chose to add glitter to it instead. I love glitter. A lot. No seriously.
And then I decided to add my other best friend. Her name is Swarovski. Yes indeed. The rhinestones on the bottom are genuine Swarovksi crystal. I purchased them from Rhinestoneguy.com. A great resource that I found in high school when we purchased from them to add rhinestones to our competitive dance costumes. I ordered 2 gross of the smaller size and one gross of the larger size. It came to about $20 for all of them.
Then there were the envelopes. I wanted hot pink envelopes. Paper Source sells exactly what I was looking for, but they were just too expensive. They came out to be about $0.48 an envelope and that was just too much. So, I decided to make them. Yes, that’s right. I made 96 envelopes from scratch. I purchased the template from Paper Source and made the envelopes out of Fuschia wrapping paper from Paper Source. Don’t get me wrong, I searched the internet thoroughly before beginning this daunting task, but I couldn’t find anything that was the right color for the right price. These came out to be about $0.11 each, which wasn’t much more than plain white ones I was finding Office Max and other stores.
And the wrap around mailing labels? I was going to use Martha Stewart’s free template, but it was plain white. And I was ok with that, but one last ditch search brought me to those babies. I wasn’t even searching for the colors, just for free templates. And low and behold, they were perfect. I have also received tons of compliments on them.
I used a super high tech design program to set up the text, it’s called Microsoft Word, are you familiar with it? L helped me to make the spacing perfect and some other edits. Unfortunately, the first one I made was too big for my Gocco. I thought I could print a 5×7 on it, but it turns out, I can only print a 4×6. We resized it so it would fit on the Gocco screen, but when I burned the screen, it turns out, it needs to be slightly smaller than that. Well crap, I wasted a screen and two bulbs (for anyone that Goccos, you know how depressing that is). One last shot and another edit and we got it right. So I Gocco’d away. But wait, I’m out of order.
So in November, I took a couple hours and cut all the 8.5 x 11 cardstock to 5×7 sizes. Then another night I started tracing the envelope templates onto the wrapping paper, cutting them out, trimming them, folding them and gluing them togehter – I used a double stick tape applicator which was fabulous (and cheap!). That took several days to finish. Then came another night cutting the vellum. Then it all sat quietly for several weeks. We needed a photo.
We looked at some photos we already had, but none of them were suitable. Or vertical. I really wanted it to be vertical, I just thought it would look best. So we were going to have a friend take a photo for us – then his wife had a baby and they were busy. So another friend offered to do it for us. He just got a super fancy camera and was excited to use it and do some editing. He took over 100 photos!
So once we had the photo chosen, then I used my Xyron to put adhesive on them and stick them to the backing. That’s when I found out my paper cutter didn’t cut straight and the backings were slightly crooked. I was disappointed at first, but figured no one else would notice since it was so slight. Then I went and got a new paper cutter that I love.
Next, I Gocco’d all the vellum. After I printed each one, I sprinkled it with glitter and set it to the side to dry so I could tap off the excess. That took several hours.
I took five hours one day to glue each rhinestone by hand.
L cut a roll of adhesive magnet into small strips and we stuck them to the back so they can be hung on the fridge if people desire. This should have been done last, because I place the strip where I needed to punch holes for the ribbon so some of the holes were off, but again, I don’t think anyone noticed. So I punched each one and cut the ribbon and threaded it through.
I printed all the mailing labels, Xyroned them, adhered them to the envelopes and stuffed them. Paper Source makes a great envelope glue that you can put on ahead of time, let dry and then moisten like a regular envelope.
And then. WE MAILED THEM. On January 27. Woohoo! We got lots of positive comments, and of course, we took photos! Because that’s what we do. Needless to say, we had ourselves a good little photoshoot while there. Good thing it was about 9pm on a Sunday.





























































