A Very Productive Sick Day

As I mentioned previously, I took today off sick since I spent yesterday hunched over coughing and lost my voice. It was a VERY productive day, too!

One thing I was proud of is finishing most (almost all!) of my invites! I am only waiting on 5 addresses and they will be complete. Here is the sexy back of those suckers and the giant pile of "Yay! I'm done!" invites.

W for... well... our last name. And wickedly cool :)

I never thought I'd say this... BUT I HAD TO HAVE NICE STAMPS. Seriously. No one will even notice.

Also, I stumbled across this gem http://boards.weddingbee.com/topic/thank-you-gifts-vintage-inspired at the good old weddingbee! I never thought I would consider making a favour-- mostly because I couldn't find anything worth making, but then I saw this. At less than $0.50 a shot and with the cutest little idea ever, I couldn't pass it up. So, after begging for where she got them, I went out and purchased 11 packs of sparkles and beads from dollarama.

The ones on the right-- they are the microbeads and not the sparkles.

As a teacher I saw sparkles and went.. YES!!! SPARKLES!!! The microbeads, of course, came out of the package and left not a spot of residue. The sparkles required an hour of washing to get all the fricken sparkles out. I hate you sparkles.

And I bet I'll still have to wash most of them again...

But in the end, I am left with 66 micro-mini bottles that I will fill with seeds and add a cute tag to and I will get a cute favour. How small and adorable are these, you ask? Here is a comparison against my new favourite pen that I used to write my invitations and just about anything else wedding related.

Ahhhh! So cuteeeee!

Anything you've started last minute and fallen in love with? How much were your favours per person? Did you do favours? Change your mind at the last minute?

~Miss. Sunshine

The labour of love...

I keep hearing that saying about invitations. They are time consuming, but it is a labour of love! You want to show everyone how much you love them and you spend hours and hours perfecting their first real taste of your wedding.

Honestly, at this point I am stuck between "It's mostly done anyways", "What short cuts can I take" and "Why didn't I just go to Michael's and buy a DIY kit!?!"

I think I've already done an hour by hour recap of how long everything has taken, but minus faux-lligraphy and envelope liners, the completion of 33 invitations has probably taken around 35 hours, including silly things like spending three hours looking at paper. It's effing pathetic. I have 6 more pocket folds sans pocket or cover to complete, and a "completed" invite at my parents that is in need of some E-6000 to keep the pocket in place. Guessing that envelope liners for 40 RSVPs and 40 outer envelopes will likely take another 6 or so hours, another 2 hours to complete the remaining 7 invites, and likely close to 10 hours to faux-lligraphy on everything... and... well... it's depressing! I guess it could be worse. It could be 100 invites!

Tonight I am taking a break. Partially because Mr. Sunshine was wondering why I don't hang out with him since I've started tackling invitations, partially because I am tired as all heck from being up all night coughing with this cold, and partially because I ran out of glue tape, which was a great sign from above to put it down and take a day off.

So tomorrow, being another day and armed with glue, I am determined to finish the last six pocket folds, glue the covers together, and faux-lligraphy another 10 envelopes! I have finished 7, so only 33 more to go!

Anyone else feeling bridal burnout? Any other people taking the day off of preparing for something?

~Miss. Sunshine

DIY Fail Begins

Now, I have done many, many long DIY's for this wedding and virtually all of them have failed at some point. My veil, after hours of beading strands of fishing line and then painstakingly sewing it to my 9 ft veil, had the beads falling off. My table numbers had pencil lines showing through. And now my invitations are falling apart!

That's right-- falling apart. *scream*! And probably because I'm cheap.

The whole story here is that I wanted to save some money on these invitations that have ended up costing me about twice what I thought they would. To save money, I decided to use a glue roller from the dollar store instead of the $10 glue rollers from Michaels. From experience, I knew the quality was about the same. It sure has got the paper stuck to the invite, with no hopes of it every being ripped off! What I didn't count on is that the pocket folds would have a lot of pressure put on them from the inserts behind the pocket.

So two days ago I went to put a cover page on my invitation and the pocket fold I had loving glued in the day before fell right out of the card. I screamed. I threw it across the room. I put my head in my hands and tried not to cry. I regrouped, jumped online and saw that my sister was right-- I needed rubber cement.

Well, yesterday I had to run to a pet store at lunch to grab a screen for a tank in our classroom (we should be getting our caterpillars any day now and we don't want those suckers escaping!) and Michael's was next door. Perfect chance to get the right glue, especially since a co-worker of mine said their glue was buy one and get one half off and she needed rubber cement too!

Ha.

This particular Michael's was sold out of the small size and only have the fifteen dollar giant bottle left. I was so mad I decided I would wait until I got back to my hometown and look at the local Walmart.

Just for the record, they don't sell rubber cement. I will save you the trouble of being directed from the adhesive section to the paper area to the craft area and back to adhesives again.

Now, really, none of this should be a huge problem because rubber cement does exist and it is at a Michael's near my work. The problem for me is twofold:
1. I am cheap. There is no way I am buying glue at Michael's until it stops being on sale so I can use a 40% off coupon.
2. When I start a project, especially one that can easily be ruined by humidity, heat, moisture or liquids, I prefer to get it over with as soon as possible and whisk it to my parent's house where it will be safe. So far this has delayed me two days and likely will continue to delay me another 4-5. This is 4-5 days where, in my tiny house, myself, FI or two bouncy dogs might destroy hours of work and hundreds of dollars in the blink of an eye.

Anyone else have a DIY gone sour? If you are a DIY person... I know you have!

~Miss. Sunshine

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

DIY Wedding Invitations

Now, I have to tell you, before I start this post, that I originally envisioned a wedding with no more than 30 people, casually talking, vintage themed, no dancing, maybe only a cocktail hour and the invitations were certainly going to be either a box kit from Michael's or printed from vistaprint.

I must say, I think I must have been in my own world when I came up with this dream because my mom wants to show me off (see: lots of friends!), my sister is a graphic designer (see: only the best will do!) and of course everyone wants dancing!

Now back to wedding invitations. When I first set up a budget for this wedding I put a set amount in wedding invitations and I am desperately trying to stay there now. There are so many hidden costs that it is unbelievable! First was the quality paper from an amazing boutique in Toronto called The Paper Place (highly, highly recommend them!). Second was the small details to add on to the invitations like the ribbon slides, quality ribbon, swaroski crystal stick on gems, and envelopes. Finally there was the good quality paper cutter, the boning mat (I skipped out on that thank god!) and postage! I haven't even got to the parts where I was too cheap to buy it made.

Because I was so insistent that for 50 people I would not spend more than $300 on all my paper needs, I have had to take on a lot. And by a lot,  I mean "thank god I only have 50 people!". First was our discovery that pre-made pocket folds were going to be about $2 each including shipping, no matter where we got them from. Second was the discovery that where you order your pocket folds from you need to order your envelopes from because designer pocket folds that say 5" are actually closer to 5.75". Oh... and did I mention those envelopes are $2 as well? And of course, if you have one kind of envelope for the outside you will need the matching envelope for the RSVP, and possibly the inner envelope if you are doing that at another $2 each. Right there, without anything else, would have blown my budget so far out of the water that I would be a sinking ship.

So here comes today.

To save money (and possibly to warrant a visit to the nearest psychiatric hospital) I decided I would hand make my own pocket folds and envelope liners, and print our invitations at home. While this allowed us a savings of hundreds of dollars, it then meant I had to go buy the paper cutter. I love Michael's 50% coupon days! So today will be a day of printing and screaming and praying that everything goes right. If you hear vile language that would make a sailor blush somewhere near my parents, you know that is just my sister and I screwing up while printing or cutting and my mental math counting how much more money this will cost us.

When it comes down to it, my DIY invites will end up costing about $5 each. They are custom made, match our wedding to a tee and are better quality than those you would end up seeing at Michael's in their boxed cards.

Is it worth it? I'll reveal one later this week and you let me know...

~Miss. Sunshine