Invite Sneakpeek

This is all you get....

Just an update

I love my dress. They really do wonderful work at Amy Kuschel and have just been awesome. My lovely girl Jade took a zillion pictures and it was obvious to everyone there at the store that she is a pro photographer - they were loving her pictures. There was even an exchange of business cards - too funny. Anyway, Jade helped us out so much in so many ways. She is in arts and crafts pro herself and was great to have my friend by my side. Thanks so much Jade - YOU are the best.

It is just paper!

After we got engaged, and I got immersed into all things wedding, I drooled over the pretty invitations that people had. It is just paper, I know. But invitations have come a long way since I was a flower girl. Look at these pretties...

(credit)

(credit)

(credit)

The cost of pro invites has also astronomically increased over the years. And to make matter worse, the cost of recycled paper invites is astounding!!! So this is something I thought that I would DIY from the get-go. Sure, Target, Michaels, et al have print your own invites in a box, but I had hoped that we would have some more unique, recycled invitations.

I obtained my gocco (that Ralph renamed the go go) before I was even engaged and so I pretty much knew that we would screenprint our invites with them.

I did a cost analysis a long time ago for DIY paper supplies at the famed Paper Source and found that if we did the traditional invite suite (an invite card, an RSVP card and envelope, within an inner envelope, all encased in an outer envelope), it really doesn't save us any money and uses up alot of unnecessary paper.

So, we decided to pare back and just include an invite card and envelope. I was able to get pretty recycled paper envelopes for a very reasonable cost and heavyweight cardstock to elimate the need of layering pieces of paper upon paper. We decided to forgo the RSVP cards altogether and just do online RSVP from our wedding website. Even the elders on my side of the family are internet savvy. No inner envelope either - yeah we are just bucking tradition :-)

Anyway, this really allowed us to save a ton on them, in terms of materials cost, printing cost, and in postage. One of the little tricks I learned is to NOT buy pre-cut cardstock, it is overpriced. Instead we bought all our paper in 8.5*11" sheets and then got it professionally cut by Kinkos. All the extra paper could then be used for other project and crafts.

So in the end, our unique invitations will cost around the same as super simple invites from a place like Costco, except we also were able to also have Christmas cards, thank you cards, and still have enough really cool paper for other a bunch of new projects that I dream up when I go through wedding withdrawl.

Then again, they haven't been made yet. If the design doesn't work out on Saturday, Costco here I come!

Looking forward to some fun stuff

Which is good since I am not in the best spirits. See, after the holidays and all the fun visiting family and friends, I always get a wee bit depressed to come back out to California. Ralph, has just now witnessed this for the first time. But, on Friday my good friend is coming out all the way from New York to come with me to my second fitting and to help make the invitations with my gocco. I am so excited!

Peep show

I have to say that I love my gocco, now that I have gotten the hang of it. I just wish that the supplies weren't vanishing away. They have stopped manufacturing many of the supplies and most of the last of which have been bought up by a Australian company.

But I digress... I love printing with this thing.

A better sneak peek...


With this latest project, I am ready to tackle the invitations come January. This is the actual cardstock we are using for our invites. It is slightly textured which is a bit tricky to deal with, but I think I got it down. The envelope above is the same style envelopes we will use for our thank you cards. Yes, I gocco-ed the return addresses on all those envelopes already. Ralph pretty much freaked at my preparedness.

Next up are the actual invite envelopes. My mom is flying in tonight, so maybe I can convince her to gocco the return addresses on all of them during her visit.

Speaking of her visit, we are heading to the BCBG outlet tomorrow to look at that dress. So exciting!!!

More craftiness!

I can't show too much here, but here is a sneakpeek of what I worked on this evening. After printing another 60 or so pieces of paper, I think I can safely say that I am now ready to gocco our invitations.


Ralph has finally broken his silence and expressed his displeasure with the state of our home from my craft weekend (of course, in a kind, gentle sort of way).

Invitation Inspiration Nation

I found these the beautiful invitations the other day and thought they were just about the most perfect invites for us. They are letterpress invitations from Milkmaid Press. I love the tropical foliage and waterlilies, as I am a sucker for botanical prints and tropical plants. Perhaps, if I could change anything to them, it might be to lose the dragonflies, and hey, while I am at it, add a frog to one of the lilypads. Of course that would be a nod to our chosen career paths, as I study aquatic plants and the fiance studies frogs.

They are good inspirations for sure, but there is no way we could get the detailed line drawing to print well on the Gocco, my trusty tabletop screenprinter. But that is one of the benefits of letterpress, in addition to that lovely texture on the paper. Alas, you pay for awesomeness of letterpress - and I mean a lot. But talk about great inspiration for designing your own. Are you designing your invitations? If not, who is?

Progress on the DIY train

I am enjoying planning this wedding. Ok - sure sometimes I don't. But for the most part, I do. One of the most enjoyable aspects of throwing this big party has been unleashing my creative side. I don't think I am a terribly creative or crafty person, but I have my moments. I plan on making, or D.oing I.t mY.self, a few things to make this partee more personal and cost effective (hello budget anyone).

Luckily, I am one of the last of my buddies to get married, and have thus learned tons about the wedding biz. I decided that we would make our own invitations. Sounds a bit crazy, I know. But, the reality of it all is that we want to cut back on the amount of paper we use (for obvious reasons) and use recycled paper. I can't even begin to tell you how much "green" wedding invites cost. It seems as though that really bump that price up just for being able to say "environmentally friendly". Anyway, I don't really care for many cookie cutter invites, so why not make our own using recycled cardstock that we buy in bulk?

To do this, I bought a nifty little thing called a gocco. It is sort of like a table top screenprinter.


They no longer manufacture it in Japan and it is pretty hard to come by in the US. I found a used discontinued model from Japan on Ebay, and I just had to get it. Well, a few days ago, I whipped it out and got to work. It was fun, but also a learning experience. The machine and the process has some limitations (namely size-wise). Regardless, I am still very happy with the results. Here is a bit of the partial finished product:

You can see where I got stingy with ink.

I know with a little more practice I will be ready to tackle our invitations and be able to print them in lovely colors. I can't wait to get started on my next Gocco project!