Invitations Leaving the Station . . .

Is July 1st too soon?

It occurs to me that I've bitched, moaned, and complained about the invitations here . . .  but I haven't actually shown you the invitations.

Behold my genius in these crappy pictures.

All awesome photos are mine

So-our plan was to spend the least amount of money on these puppies as possible by using paper goods that we already owned and buying matching envelopes in paper bag from Papersource.  Neutral wrapper + colorful scrapbook paper insides = awesome.

That didn't happen.

Brainwave the first . . . I could make the envelopes out of our stockpile of actual paper grocery store bags!  Excellent in theory but I failed in execution.  I created a template but cut the flaps too short.  

Brainwave the second . . . We could make the envelopes out of the boatload of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper I amassed when I was kidding myself about actually getting into scrapbooking. 

This . . . was a winning plan.  I handed Wes the envelope template, a pile of paper, a stapler, some scissors and some glue and he got it done.  You can see our colorful assortment along the top of the first picture.

The other components include the invitation and textured card stock backing, a postcard RSVP card, and an information hang tag all bundled together with a raffia bow.  I also picked up some typewriter key stickers for the back flaps.

If anyone is interested I'll go into more detail about the actual materials and construction details.  Leave a comment and I'll hop right to it.

I am pretty proud of this project--we used a lot of the things we already had on hand and the new crafting supplies were minimal.  I positively love that we used up a lot of old material that might otherwise have gone to waste.

How about a little list action?

What we had on hand

• about half of the necessary postage
• textured card stock
• leftover expensive ass cotton paper that made printing my thesis cost a bloody fortune (still bitter)
• photo corners

What we purchased new

• fiskars deckle edge paper tearing guide--sounds ridiculous, is ridiculous, but it works 
• a glue pen
• extra card stock
• the rest of the postage
• stickers

In Which the USPS Cracks Me Up

We are thiiiiiiiis close to being ready to send out the invitations.  We devoted most of yesterday morning to printing and trimming and we assembled one complete invitation and headed on down to the post office to have it weighed.  This turned out to be a good move.

First, we assembled the postage we already have.  Fun fact about Wes . . . he has some kind of freaky sixth sense when it comes to finding spare change and yes, stamps, on the ground.  He's like some kind of weirdo things-with-monetary-value detector.

Personal Photo

We have some celebration stamps, some Liberty Bell stamps, a little American flag action, and assorted fruits and vegetables.  lI should probably mention here that I am not in any way invested in special wedding postage.  This might be because I have a somewhat adversarial relationship with the postal service and well . . . I like to pick my battles and postage ain't the field I'm willing to die on.

It's good that I feel that way because the postal service served us up this action.

Personal photo

That's right.  A little Washington, some Purple Hearts and a random assortment of flowering herbs.   Patriotic pastoral.

I find this combination strangely hilarious.  Partly because I did not immediately recognize the dude in the wig with all the blush and also because my failure to do so reminded me of something funny from my high school days. 

My friends and I were hanging out at my friend Eric's house one day.  His mother had a painting of Jesus hanging over the piano--as one generally does in that part of the south.  This Jesus was the long-haired, blonde, blue-eyed, dirty hippie version.  My mother's version, which happened to be similar to my other friend's mothers' versions, was the Morris Chestnut-y, dreadlocked, bare-chested, muscle-y variety.  Which is why LaConda looked at the painting and asked Eric, "Who is that white man?"

Eric looked--aghast.  "That's JESUS!"

Hilarious.

Dragging Ass on the Wedding Invitations

These invitations . . .

Envelopes to the left-along with my recent reading material

. . . might be the death of me.  We just are not super motivated to finish them although we do-finally-have all of the components ready to go.

Of course, the prep stage was pretty damn murderous as it involved making an envelope template, prepping and cutting out fifty envelopes from paper bags and realizing that they were too small to close properly.  Scrapping that plan and making envelopes out of scrapbook paper.  I couldn't find the cardstock weight I wanted to use for the RSVP postcards plus I figured we could save money on postage so we scrapped the whole postcard idea but now . . .  I kind of don't like how they look so maybe I will go back to it . . . you get the idea.  Figuring out how to print addresses on these envelopes is also turning out to be a monumental pain in the ass.  And . . . I might change my mind about that as well.

Un-Fancying It: Wedding Invitations

So it's May.  Officially.  It takes like, three days for that to happen for me.  And we have yet to send out the invitations.

I'm working on that though and hopefully we can make it happen by the end of the week.  Here's a little preview though.  Think RSVP responses, lol.