project: save the date cards ! (pt. 2)

it's been a long, long couple of weeks. the bronchitis is finally gone, however my hacking cough seems to want to linger a little longer. my mom is visiting from the bay area this weekend to go dress shopping with me, i have been talking with a great dj, we have our "ceremony musician" confirmed, and our save the date cards went out last week (although all six that were sent to friends in our own zip code got returned and had to be hand delivered this week)!

here they are, in all of their home-made diy glory:

actual card
(this one is a bit crooked, but i took pictures after i sent out all of the good ones)

back of envelope (showing off our wee little moo sticker!)

when i first set out to make these cards i made several costly mistakes:

- if i had more time i would have ordered cheaper paper and envelopes online. i probably would have made them regular sized instead of square which would have saved me $12 in postage (not a huge difference but with the paper and such it does add up!)

- i originally planned on only using two gocoo screens, but the first one i printed was blurry, so i had to redo. then my second design (a fern for the envelopes) didn't burn fully when a lightbulb didn't go off, so i had to redo that. that wasted $20 worth of gocco products.

-the place we ordered magnets from only sold them in 50, 100 or 250 sets. we needed 60. so we had to order 100. i know if i had searched around some more online i could have found a source that would make me 60. i just didn't have time!

all in all if i had more time and had successfully used the gocco on the first try, this project could have cost about $100, which is a pretty reasonable $1.66 per card. unfortunately, it was about double that. i am glad i did this trial run of sorts, before the actual invitations go out in a few months. i know i need to start planning those out soon. i spent a few hours yesterday with my wedding invitation helper and the design looks amazing so far!

(early) project: paperstuff

i am officially calling anything that will be printed-on, written-upon, folded-up, cut-up or stamped-on "paperstuff."

a dear friend (and former employer, and mother of my adorable ring bearer) is going to help design these things for us. this is a great, great relief to me, since i am absolutely horrible at design. i can come up with the ideas, have a picture in my head of what i would like, but no idea how to put it onto paper (or a computer program).

our gocco arrived yesterday. i went back and forth on buying one for a few weeks, since they are no longer making supplies for printing. i finally found a great deal on ebay and went for it. i am excited to practice with the screen printer, but i don't want to waste my precious screens and flashbulbs.

our first project will be save the date cards and magnets. we might go the postcard route, we might do a simple card with the magnet inside. my gocco deal came with 100 recycled brown cards and envelopes, and i would love to be able to use them for something!