Our envelope placecards

So, yet again, I take on another DIY project for my wedding! This one. . . .the placecards.

So since Aaron and I got engaged at the top of the Eiffel Tower, we deicded to put a little Paris into our wedding reception, corny as it may sound. Each of our tables is named after a monument in Paris (or close to it): Tour Eiffel, Louvre, Musee D'Orsay, Champs Elysses, Arc de Triomphe, Versailles, Notre Dame, and Montmartre. So we went with a little "travel" inspiration in our placecards too. We decided to make our placecards old vintage envelopes complete with cool stamps, calligraphy, and a "worn-in" look. Here's how they came out:

The lettering may look a bit funky, but that's only because I edited the image so no last names were showing!

I was so please with how these came out, and they look SO cool when they are all sitting right next to each other. Since we're going with jewel tones, the stamps fit right now. So how did I do it?

Here's the supplies you'll need if you want this look:

*Size A-2 envelopes in ivory
*Brown stamp pad
*Make-up sponges
*Calligraphy pen
*Stamps
*Ink postage stamps

Now, where can you get the tricky stuff? For the ink postage stamps. . . these beauties. . .

I just found a set of four stamps in the rubber stamp aisle at Michaels. They're not super cheap. They run about $10 to $14 for the set of four stamps, but I used my 40% off handy coupon on it. If you're thinking about skipping this part, don't. Everytime I looked at the envelope before I stamped it, it just seemed empty. These stamps gave it that extra something.

For the stamps, I bought a lot of 100 around the world stamps on Etsy for a grade total of $5! The seller is artyparty, and she does a great job of categorizing various stamp collections. You can buy stamps by color or my country. You can peruse her shop on etsy here:

http://www.etsy.com/shop/artypharty?ref=seller_info

Now, if you've never done calligraphy before, test it out first. It's not too difficult if you have decent handwriting skills to begin with. I learned a bit of calligraphy when I was a kid, and I would not consider myself an expert by any means! But I think the names on my placecards look very nice! :-) Practice, practice, practice. . . .and if you're still not happy, get someone else to do it for you! Con some bridesmaid to do it!

So here's the process for make them. . . .

Step one: Bake the envelopes

Heat your oven to 325 degrees. Put the enveloped on a cookie sheet and bake for 10 to 15 minutes. Your enveloped will be a little warped when they come out, but they'll flatten a bit over a few weeks. However, I think that helps the "worn-in" look.

Step two: Age the corners

Take your stamp pad and make-up sponges. Sponge just the corners with a bit of the brown stamp pad. Experiment with how much you want on the corners. Here's what one of mine looks like:

I just put a piece of newspaper under the envelope and sponged lightly over the edges. Don't overwork it.

Step three: Apply the stamps, write the name, and use those ink postage stamps to finish it off!

I found the stamps needed a good glue stick to get them to really take hold. Another thing I did, since mine was a mixture of colors, I seperated the stamps out into different colors. This way, I  made sure the colors were evenly mixed. It was so much fun to decde who would get what country and what design!

That's it! Really easy and it turned out so wonderful! Can't wait for my guests to see them!

Our finished wedding invitations

It's been a while since I have posted here, and I have a lot to cover. First off though, is our finished wedding invitations.

I scoured the internet for the perfect wedding invitations, and I came to the conclusion I came to on many aspect of my wedding. . . .I'll just do it myself! That way, I'm happy with the product. First of all, we went with a pocketfold invitation. I mentioned in my previous post that I used the graphics fairy website for resources on designing them. That website has been a wonder to me and all the graphic design when it comes ot my wedding! I downloded a couple of fonts from various free font websites. The "cursive" looking font is called "Parisienne" and the block letter-looking font is call "Crushed." I thought they both played nicely against each other.

The way I edited the inviations was simply though Microsoft Word. I put the frame I wanted from graphics fairy on there and then made sure the frame went behind the text. I then used multiple text boxes to insert the wording on my invites. I made sure the text boxes did not have any fill to them or outline. I adjusted the colors on the font to match the frame as closely as possible. I found after I designed everything that I could fit two invites on one sheet of paper, two of the inserts on one sheet, and four of the RSVP cards.

After printing it all out, then came the fun (sarcastic here!) part of putting it all together. I had a on Complete Works of William Shakespeare around I was oksy with tearing to pieces. Let me back up one step here. I ordered all my supplied from www.cardsandpockets.com. Before I setteled on any colors, I ordered samples. This proved to be a very important step. I didn't like some of the colors I received originally, so I sent away for more options and finally find a combination I liked. When I ordered the samples, I also ordered a sample of an ivory envelope liner. So when it came time to assembling everything, I had a template to follow.

We decided to put the Shakespeare text in the envelope, the inside flap, and the pocket. This was SO much labor! Way more that I anticipated. However, it was worth it in the end. It was such a beautiful touch, and it made for very unique invitations!

All in all, it took three of us five hours to put together 50 invitations, and that's without addressing them. However, all that labor was worth it when I got so many wonderful compliments on how beautiful then invitations were!

Working on the wedding invitations

Here's a prototype for our wedding invites. I ordered a bunch of sample cardstock from cardsandpockets.com in all of our wedding colors. The pocketfold is blue, the matting under the invitation is purple, the reply by card is green, and envelope is red, and the various enclosures are a variety of colors. Cardsandpockets.com doesn't really have a good "teal" color. At least, not the teal I am going for, so I opted to have one of our enclosures be teal to incorporate that.

It's just a prototype picture, and I'll post the final product later, but here's what I found. . . .the green wasn't quite the green I wanted, it was hard to see the purple matting next to the blue pocketfold, and the red envelope was too "fire-truck" red. So I've ordered some new samples to see if some different colors will work. I'm trying to keep with the colors that are listed as "metallic" so they have a shine to them.

The lining of the envelopes with the Shakespeare pages is cute, and I think it will work well. We did decide though to line some of the interior of the pocketfold with Shakespeare text too. The inner left fold will have text on it, and when you take out all the encolsures to the right, text will be under that as well. It just makes it a bit cleaner and brings the theme throughout the invitation.

I had fun with the wording! The invitation doesn't have too much "Shakespearean wording" on it, but I had a good time with the reply card and the encolsure card.

On the reply card it says below where you should write in your name, "To be or not to be?" And then you check either "to be" or "not to be" to accept or decline. In enclosure card says at the top, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears." Then it lists a bunch of information. Above the parking directions it says, "How camest thou hither?" a quote from Romeo and Juliet, and I bring R&J back again by using "Parting is such sweet sarrow" before the information on hotels in the area.

At first when I made the prototype, I just had the text plain and simple and found it really needed a border or a fram. So I used my new favorite website "The Graphics Fairy" to find the frames around the text. I like to think of myself as a bit of a technical wizard, so I got it all to work! The graphics fairy is a blog that has all kind of fantastic vintage images. It's well worth it to book mark! The backdrop for this blog actually came from The Graphics Fairy! You can visit the blog here:

http://www.graphicsfairy.blogspot.com/

I'm excited to see the new colors and will have fun putting these together. I'm thinking it would make a good bridesmaid night.

Here's the prototype. More detailed pictures to come. . .

About us and what we're looking for in our wedding

On July 7th 2012, I will no longer have my hideously ugly last name! In fact, I think I'll scoff my old name and just start calling myself "Jennifer Zimny" from here on out! I'm excited to really get down to the nitty gritty of planning my wedding, since we're now under the 100 day mark. I plan to blog here my inspirations and my final results.

At this point I'm not stressed, but I'm not that kind of "bride," I guess. Nothing really shakes me. . . .perhaps it's because I'm a high school drama teacher. It's hard to shake you when you're constantly in that environment!

So here goes with my wedding ideas. . . .

First of all, our colors are jewel tones. I'm not going to for the matchy-matchy bridesmaids dresses. I've chose blue, red, green, purple, and teal for my bridesmaids to wear and to be a theme throughout our wedding. Also thoughout our wedding you'll find hints of Paris because we got engaged at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

So here goes with some inspiration points. . . .



This is the kind of thing I'm going for with the tables. Lots of colors, nothing really matching.



Love these chairs, but I've priced it out and doing every chair would be pretty expensive. So perhpas I might do every other chair or just the ones going down the aisle.



Love these flowers! My idea is for all the bridesmaids to have bouquets of white roses and for me to have all the colors in my bouquet. I think it will be really pretty in the contrast!

Finally, there's the invitations. We're DIYing them, so that will be my next post. We've decided to order some pocketfolds and enclosures and we'll be lining the envelopes are parts of the pockets folds with pages from my complete works of Shakespeare. Actually, my prototype is turning out very cute! We've incorporated all of the colors and have a wording theme of Shakespeare throughout. The next time I post, it will be all about that!

Until them. . . .

JZ