Addressing RSVPs

Wanting to be a perfectionist, because I seriously cannot do anything without it being perfect, I decided to learn how to do calligraphy JUST to do my invites. Seriously did. It took hours upon hours of practice and I managed to have a decent hand at some alphabets.

So what did I need next? A good calligraphy pen with a super fine nib. Insert massive failure here! I couldn't get a nib small enough and once I did it snapped with barely any pressure on the page! I was so mad. I then decided I would go the "cheating" route and do faux-lligraphy. Be prepared, because the tutorial is coming up....


NOW!

Amazing Faux-lligraphy

By Miss. Sunshine

The first step, of course is to find a font. I ended up stumbling across http://www.dafont.com and picked out three fonts I loved. The second step was to figure out how to install it when you have Word 2007! Thank goodness for the ease of this tutorial gem: http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/topic/195151-add-a-font-on-microsoft-word-2007/ it was very, very simple!

And so I managed to create this with my favourite three fonts...

So pretty!

The big problem here was how to get any of these onto a fricken invite! Most people use a light table or some sort of light/glass rig, but my envelopes are so thick this was not a possibility for me. Not even in the least. So after a day at work randomly thinking about it I got this "aha!" moment!

  

I'm such a genius! For those of you who have never used carbon paper before, it's that weird black paper that back in the good old days was used to make second and third copies of something. Before FedEx and Canada Post did everything electronically, you had to fill out forms on this and press hard-- reallllllllly hard. Anyways, I thought that this would be the best thing to used and it was amazing. 

My only tips:

1. Practice on a piece of paper first. Getting the pressure right is key. Since you don't want to see the lines really dark on the invite, you want to press softly. How softly you need to press will be dependent on the paper you use and how "used" it is.

2. Do NOT rub your fingers on this and then touch your invites. You will cry. I promise.

Anyways, to make it easy for positioning and such I then killed a few trees by printing off different spacing in boxes and font sizes until I came to the perfect combination.

Many trees were harmed in the making of this labeling system.

I then took the carbon paper and cut out a smallish piece, cut out one of my labels and grabbed an envelope. Tip number three-- there IS a top and bottom to an envelope. Make sure you check before you write.

I placed the carbon paper dark side down onto the envelope and positioned my label as perfectly centred as I could...

Then, I carefully and lightly (have I stressed that enough yet?) traced over my printout. I could not take a picture of the traced lines because they were that faint. Seriously. I mean, it could also be because I put gray onto gray but such is life!

My tracing skills are incredible!

As you can see, quite some time later I now have three done. Yep. Three out of 40. I think this is mostly because simply doing one involves cutting out a small paper, positioning it on carbon paper, carefully tracing it onto the invite, then taking it off and retracing it with a super fine (0.5mm) black gel ink pen, and finally putting it to dry without smudging. It will certainly be a long night!

Three done... of 40.

Any project conundrums you've solved? This has been my biggest "aha" so far, I believe, but I'm sure there will be more!

~Miss. Sunshine