Invitation Sneak Peak!

Okay, so I promised a sneak peak, and, frankly, I want to brag! These invitations have killed me. Every time I come to a new job I announce, "This is the WORST and most BORING thing EVER!" and then I find something worse. Thank god I am only making 40 of them!

As a DIY invitation journey, I will tell you that this all started when my sister, who is an amazing graphic designer, volunteered to do my cards. I figured I could do it for pretty cheap and make it all my own, so I jumped right on that. Hundreds of dollars in paper and crafting supplies later, and I am thinking I should have just ordered some stock invites from a designer. That being said, here is the journey...

First my sister and I sat down and designed them. Fairly simple since I knew what I wanted and she knew what looked good. This took about 3 hours for me, including editing, but much longer for her.

Secondly, I made mock ups of the invitations using paper I had laying around the house. For the record, this was long, boring and pointless. It didn't actually give any sort of representation of the beauty of the invites.

After this, we went to the big city to a paper shop I mentioned before called The Paper Place. I still love it! Anyways, my sister thought we could go to the printers to print the invites, so recommended purchasing large 20 x 30 sheets of quality cardstock, as well as backing and envelope liner paper. I also managed to get some great envelopes! Three hours later, I was outta there!

Finally, my sister put everything into "print mode" (don't ask me... not a G.D.). I took some old paper and went to my mom and dad's near my bedtime in a desperate hope that our home printer would work since the printers had quoted me over $25+tax PER PAGE! It worked and this meant "worst job ever" 1 came next...

Because I printed the sample on Tuesday and Friday was a holiday, I needed to now cut all the large sheets of paper we had purchased into 81/2" by 11" sheets so it would fit in the printer. Problem was that the only paper cutter I have access to is at work/school, and because of this, I needed to do it all before I went home on Thursday. I also had a meeting before school, at lunch and after school on Wednesday and on lunch on Thursday. As you can imagine, not much time. I also discovered that the best way to cut the paper to get the most for my money was to cut it lengthwise first (11" by 9"), then cut the 11 inch wide section into 3 sheets and the 9" section into 2 sheets. Because the paper cutter was not big enough to do this, I had to hand cut 30 sheets of paper in half before bringing them to the paper cutter, then had to recut all those sheets accurately at the small cutter. Four hours. Seriously.

Have I convinced you this is a bad idea yet? No? Let's keep going...

So I took that paper to my mom and dad's on Sunday and printed everything! I had to wait at the printer for each paper and move it away from the printer as soon as it was done so that the ink wouldn't smear. Gah!

Here's a picture of that, buy the way...

This printer printed out almost 150 sheets and only died on the last 15. RIP printer...

It looked great... but now I had to cut out each paper, again. I had purchased an awesome Friskar's paper cutter to do this, but because the cardstock is so heavy duty, about 1/2 way through the blade was dull. Being gung-ho, I actually cut with the dull blade and then trimmed the edges with scissors to make them cleanly cut. (Reading this back, I seem insane).

Now we come to today.

So I got up early and realized I was too early to head off to Michael's, so I decided to finish off the gems on my direction and RSVP cards. My sister and I had picked up some self-adhesive rhinestones and I figured it would be a quick task.

Crafting supplies from hell.

You might notice that there is E-6000 glue, toothpicks, tweezers and rhinestones in this picture. That is because these $10 adhesive rhinestones are not adhesive. I am pretty sure I threw a tempertantrum and jumped up and down when I realized that.

After two hours of putting glue on paper, picking up a rhinestone with tweezers, spreading glue on the rhinestone with a toothpick and letting it set on the card, I had 40 of these:

So sparkly and demanding that you send it back!

I swear...

So anyways, managed to go Michael's and grab some new blades for the paper cutter as well as some sealing wax. I came home, got into "let's do it!" mode and tada! One pocketfold created and one invitation is officially complete...

Ohhhh!!!! Ahhhh!!!!

And the cover of course...

The cover still needs to be glued onto backing paper, which is uncut and at my parents, but one thing at a time here!

 So hours and hours later, I have finished almost ONE invitation and I am so proud! It looks fantastic! I showed Mr. Sunshine who said "Umm... it's nice.", but he certainly didn't share my enthusiasm.

All in all, I would estimate that this invitation project will take me close to 20-25 hours to do the 40 invitations and another 3-4 to do the calligraphy on the envelopes.

Would you do it?

~Miss. Sunshine