Invitations, take five

From the very beginning, and out of every detail that we're putting into our wedding, I am definitely most excited about our invitations.  Sure, I like flowers well enough.  Music, food, cake: they're all great... but I've always been a sucker for beautiful paper.

Engraving was out of the question due to the cost.  Gorgeous, yes, but we couldn't justify spending that  much for something that the majority of our guests won't notice and appreciate.  So I began searching the vast, weddingy part of the internet for affordable letterpress companies. 

Being the naive bride-to-be that I was, I was completely unaware of what customized letterpress would cost.  I searched etsy, google, tons of wedding blogs and wasn't able to find anyone that offered what I wanted with a number with which I was comfortable.  I even happened one local man who owned a small letterpress studio.  When I called him he seemed thrilled that someone from the area even knew what letterpress was!  (More about the difficulties of being a small-town-bride later) His rates were extremely reasonable.  For 150 invitations with RSVP enclosures and printed envelopes he was going to charge me $150 plus the cost of the paper.  Excited, I visited his shop to see examples of his work.  I was less than thrilled.  It just seemed like the quality of his work was lacking.

Though I am still tempted by beautiful letterpress suites, I've decided to make my invitations myself.  It's the only way I can get the look I want at a price I can afford.

I'm not Illustrator-literate at all, but I figured with a little trial and error and a lot of youtube tutorials, I would be able to create a design I was happy with.  Well, it took a lot of trial and error, but five entire suite designs later I've come up with something that I LOVE.

Thursday night I was lying in bed delaying sleep with wedding thoughts, as per usual, when I had an idea to incorporate buttons into the invitation.  And hey, it'd be cute if I sewed a little on there, too.  What's cuter than buttons and stitching on paper?

I found these at Cake + Milk Paperie

 

I love the sewn border on those notecards.  (Also, what a cute and easy DIY BM gift?) I imagined a cute little red button stuck up in the corner of these and I knew I had to do a mock-up.

My sewing machine died a few months back, so I ran to Walmart and picked up a few goodies:

 

Because really, even if I didn't like how the sewn invites came out everyone needs a sewing machine.  This little guy was on sale for $110, too!

I made up a simple design in Illustrator, printed them out on some cardstock I had lying around, sewed the border and the button and was thrilled with the result.  It's perfect, really.

 

Seriously.  Don't you just want to eat them they're so cute?  I borrowed the '*dancing shoes required' bit from Miss Cupcake over at Weddingbee.  In case you can't read it, the quote says, "You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams," and is by Dr. Seuss.  I loved it the first time I read it, and knew I wanted to work it in somehow.

The buttons are just a fill-in; they were the only ones Walmart had that sort of resembled what I wanted.  This morning I went on ebay and ordered these lovlies:

 

I'll only have 28 of them, though.  Whoever is the head of the button industry is making some serious cash because they are ridiculously expensive.  Two dollars for two buttons?  What the heck?  A dollar for less than a gram of plastic.  I don't get it.  I'll be searching ebay for the next few months for cute, cheap vintage red buttons.

So that's it!  I can't wait to get all the materials together to start making the actual invitations.  I'll be gocco'ing all of the lettering and embossing our names on Crane Lettra, beautiful cotton letterpress paper.  I was hesitant to share them so early, but they make me so happy I just couldn't resist.  There's still a lot to do with them to turn them into a suite, so stay tuned!

What part of planning are you most excited about?  Did you find that you had a hard time settling on any of your designs or ideas?

Comments

[Jenny]

Those are gorgeous! I came across your mention of these on Miss MJ's recent post and I had to check them out. I've been thinking about sewn invitations too, but my sewing machine is jammed at the mo, so no mockup attempts. :P Did you find it easy to sew on paper?

[Jenna]

Thank you so much! The sewing was actually much easier than I thought it would be. I made about six of them, and each took about three minutes to sew.

I had tried sewing paper a while back for an unrelated project and it wasn't sucessful... but my sewing machine was on it's last leg as it was. My new sewing machine worked perfectly and I really couldn't be happier with them.

[{ Joy } at Wedding Planning with Joy]

I'm so obsessed over sewing my invitations!!! it's so cool that you are doing something similar :)We share way more than just the K1 process lol

I love the way your trial looks!! Have you tried to make your own buttons? I haven done buttons but I have done plastic molding before, that way you could maybe have the exact design you want and really cheap ;)