You're Invited (Part 3)

Once you open my invite, this is what you'll see:

The Invite is the part I won from the contest on weddingbee from HelloLucky! The design is Shangri-La one of the new Joel Dewberry designs that I waited for what seemed like forever to come out. I had them change the colors and I think they came out fabulous. HelloLucky was great to work with and I would suggest to anyone who's looking for some fabulous invites. The quality was fantastic. This is where the butterfly theme started emerging.

I made the inserts in the pocket fold on my own. Here is a closer look:


The rsvp card on the right was also won from HelloLucky!


Anyone else make more work for themselves by using pocketfolds?

You're Invited (Part Two)

I'm going to reveal my invites. I'm pretty sure everyone has gotten them, and I've gotten such good feedback from those who have received them which makes me feel like all the obsessing was worth it.

Remember a few posts ago when I said I printed my envelopes and just didn't care anymore? Well, my grandmother thought I had written them all out in calligraphy, so I guess they did what they were supposed to. Fooled everyone, and it's my little secret that they were printed and not had written.

Since You've already seen the envelopes a few times, I'm going to start by showing you what everyone saw when they opened those up.

Here is my pretty Turquoise pocketfold :

the front


The back


I had a craft weekend back over the winter when the man went Wild Boar hunting with his friends. I created the little tag with our names on my Gocco. I used some scraps of Pearlescent white cardstock left over from our Save the Dates that I had cut down (I saved the scraps for this very reason) After Goccoing the design, (which was a little harer than I thought would be to line up) and after letting it dry, I used a pair of tweezers to pick up those little 5mm swarovski flatbacks (left over from my cake topper project) to glue them on.

I wrapped some pink ribbon around the outside to hold it shut (I used a little double sided tape right under the little card with out names) to hold the ribbon on and then I used a glue dot to hold the little 1" name piece on.

I love how my invites turned out.

Up next, the inside contents....


Have you obsessed over a project only to discover it was totally worth it in the end?

You're Invited (part one)

I have been getting a lot of compliments today from people who have received the invites in the mail. Yay. I'm not sure if everyone has gotten theirs yet, and I'm sure they haven't since it's only 2 days after I mailed them, but I so want to share...............................

so here is a sneak peak of the invite when it was in rough form. This is not the final project, but a sneak preview of part of it. Hope you all enjoy, the best is yet to come.

Some girls have all the luck

My invites are out so I feel comfortable enough to share my little secret with you.

I was ALWAYS planning on making our invites. After all, I had dreams of making them with a Gocco and even went as far as purchasing a gocco for the invites off ebay. In early December, when I had some extra money and I saw some paper items on sale that I wanted, so I went ahead and I purchased all my paper supplies to make the invites. I bought all my paper from paperandmore and I will purchase from them again because I think they have great product.

I ended up purchasing some pearlescent white cardstock already cut into 5x7 pieces at 11.00/per pack of 100 (it was normally 16.00/pack) and I got some pearlescent turquoise pocketfolds(on sale for $40/pack from $50). I also got the matching pearlescent turquoise envelopes, and the 4bar envelopes for the RSVP card in the pearlescent Azela (so pretty). I was ready to get going on my invites, but I hadn't quite decided on a design.

I knew I would purchase a design from istockphoto to adorn the invites, but I was so overwhelmed with all the choices and I was in my "I can't make a decision" phase. In december I hadn't quite developed our butterfly theme either, that came later, much later. So there I was with paper, but no design. And since I didn't have a design and I had a lot of time, I was putting off making of the invites.

and here is where my little secret comes in.

don't hate.

One day while I was perusing weddingbee while I should have been working, I came across this contest hosted by weddingbee for a bride to win 50 digitally printed invitations and RSVP's from HelloLucky!'s new digitally printed line, all you had to do was go to hellolucky!'s site and droool over their beautiful invites while secretly plotting how to get some invites from them and then leave a comment on weddingbee on which design you liked the best. And since I always enter contests and never win, I went to hellolucky!'s site fell in love with all of their pretty pretty invites (they do letterpress too). The invites were definately out of my budget, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to enter the contest because winning stuff is cool.

A few days later I got an email from "Bee Kim" saying that I had won the contest. I almost s**t my pants. Serisouly, I don't win stuff, ever.

How did I choose 1 design from their fabulous fabulous line? I'm not sure, but after browsing thier designs and then stalking their blog, I saw they were comming out with some new designs and they gave a preview of a few in their blog. I found the "one" on their blog in thier new line that hadn't come out yet. I patiently waited for the new line to arrive. Okay, who am I kidding, I didn't wait patiently at all. I think I emailed them to find out when those would be available. Since I still had a little time and they could print them in 5 days, I wasn't completely worried. However, their new designs took a little longer to arrive on their website than anticipated. But I have to say, what I got was well worth the wait.

I decided since I couldn't afford more invites (since I had already bought a gocco and all my invite paper) I would make the remaining ones. I was supposed to recieve 50 of the digitally printed invites (which are so so pretty and totally worth getting if you are looking at purchasing invites), but they ended up sending me 62 (yay for extras) and 65 of the rsvp's and since I only needed 8 more, I made the rest.

I hate to keep you in suspense but I can't show you just yet. Once I know the guest have recieved, I'll gladly share with you my labor of love (although not as labor intesive as it would have been).

Just breathe

Finally, I got my shizat together and sent my invites out in the mail today. Since I wasn't allowed to hand cancel(I asked yesterday), my mama brought my big box o invites to the Post Office and dropped them off.

Off they go.

Once people start getting them, I'll share them with you.

I also just finished my rehearsal dinner invites and can't wait to share those either, but I will, at least until I send them out.....

now, time to breathe a sigh of relief.

Who's behind this great idea?

When you spend so much time on your invitations and on the addressing of the envelopes it's kind of hard to stop obsessing and to not care what stamp gets put on there. Now, I know that most people wouldn't notice the stamp, but in my mind it is the first thing they are going to notice since it's on the outside of the envelope.

I knew my invites were somewhat heavy but was super excited when I weighed them at work and realized I could get away with the 61 cent stamp. Can I mention how cute the new 61 cent wedding cake stamp is? I've been wanting it since it came out. And, now I think I can get it.


but I was a little worried that there may be a catch to getting what I wanted. So I headed over to the Post Office on my lunch break with 1 invite in tow and had it weighed. She agreed that the 61 cent stamp would do the trick. I'll take the cake please.

easy. easy. easy, right? Wrong. The catch was that my invites were "hard" or non bendy so they won't go through the machine (which I didn't want anyway) so I had to pay the 20 cent surcharge for it to be hand stamped/because it couldn't go through the machine. Fine with me. Well, okay, more like annoying but I'll do it because I have to.

I kindly asked her if they had any cool wedding-y 20 cent stamps only to get the answer that they don't exactly "have" 20 cent stamps.

My options were as follows: I could get a 17 cent Billy Goat and 3 (1) cent Necklaces(which I personally HATE) and add those to my pretty pretty cake stamps. Ugh-okay, not my first choice to have 3 ugly stamps and 1 cool one on the envelope I so obsessed over forever. So I asked if there was any other options and she told me there was one......

The 26 cent cat. U-g-l-y, yes. More than I needed to pay, yes.

So my question is, who's idea was the 20 cent surcharge if you don't make a 20 cent stamp? And most likely the 20 cent surcharge is mostly for wedding invites so why isn't there a more wedding friendly stamp in the 20 cent range? Why the ugly animals?
seriously.

So which one did I chose? I chose the lesser of two evils.... the 26 cent cat. Yes, it was more than I needed to pay, yes, it's not quite what I thought would be adorning my envelopes, but it sure beats having 4 stamps on the outside and most likely no one will even notice the stamp.

Who am I kidding, it sticks out like a sore thumb-but what can you do?