Showcase Wednesday: Our (Finished) Save the Dates!
Written by Sara on February 24, 2010 – 9:00 am -
Happy Wednesday, readers! I always love it when the middle of the week arrives … it means we’re all closer to the weekend, which means that I’m closer to seeing Jordan! We’re living and working in separate cities right now, so I’m always grateful whenever Jordan comes home on the weekend.
Today I am pleased to bring you the fruits of our labor – our DIY bingo-inspired Save the Date cards!
Aren’t they cute!?
Jordan and I worked closely together on these cards, which proved to be a valuable lesson in Marriage 101: Patience is an absolutely necessary part of taking on any project, from DIY stationery to life itself.
As you may recall from this post, crafting the bingo card design came easily. It was the steps thereafter that proved to be more of a challenge.
First was the question of how to design the wrap-around vellum band. Jordan and I began concepting an asymmetrical design, but we quickly decided that we wanted to mirror the symmetry of the bingo card design on the vellum band. So, after a few long hours full of meticulous edits, we finally came to a consensus – we loved the design featuring our engagement pictures, courtesy of Creative Kindling!
After finalizing the design, I set out to find yellow vellum paper. Well, yellow vellum paper wasn’t in my future, I soon found out, which actually ended up for the better; my resourceful mother took a yellow crayon and colored on top of the clear vellum paper we found, and when she placed the vellum over the bingo card, it looked HIDEOUS! I feel very fortunate that I didn’t waste any money on yellow vellum paper.
Once the bingo cards and the vellum wraps were printed and trimmed, I spent one evening seated at my kitchen table with my Mom and two of my best gal pals (my maid of honor Kristen and my bridesmaid Serena), and we folded and glued, folded and glued. Kristen, whose super-fun handwriting is making its debut on the envelopes holding these Save the Date lovelies, spent a good portion of the evening addressing envelopes for us.
Here’s a glimpse of the front of the card:
There were two final parts to the design, the first of which is one of my favorites. The vellum paper wrapped around the back of the bingo card design, and where the two edges of the vellum paper met, my bridesmaid and gluer-extraordinaire Serena attached a button.
One note about the buttons, however: I didn’t know this prior to crafting our Save the Date cards, but the buttons cost us an extra $0.20 cents each in postage, since they needed to be hand-stamped instead of running through a postage machine. I’m sure glad that none of our other stationery projects will utilize buttons, but at the same time, I love this feature on our Save the Date cards.
The second (and final) design element involved stamping a circle shape around the “July 17″ square on the front of the bingo card. While this should have been one of the easiest parts of the entire process, the company from which we ordered the stamp happened to be experiencing a high order volume, which therefore delayed the order significantly. However, all was well in the end, as the stamp arrived just in the knick of time!
Overall, I’m more than satisfied with our Save the Date cards. I would like to make one recommendation for you readers: when Jordan and I were stuffing and sealing the envelopes that I had lined with decorative paper, we had trouble securing a proper seal, due to the fact that the decorative paper had covered up the waxy seal (the part of an envelope that you lick to seal it shut). So, we stuck a piece of double-stick tape to secure the envelope shut, and added a sticker seal on top of that. In the future, I will try to be more creative when lining envelopes, so that I don’t cover up the waxy seal.
I estimate the total cost of this project, including postage, to be right around $60.00. Most of the cost stems from purchasing the vellum paper.
What do you think of our Save the Date cards?
Tags: Creative Kindling, DIY bingo-inspired Save the Date, DIY Save the Date, paper-lined envelopes, vellum paper
Posted in Budget Weddings, DIY, Inspiration & Insight, Our Wedding, Stationery | 7 Comments »