Sparkles, stamps, and labels - oh my!

Since I finally (finally) decided on a Save the Date and had them printed, I've still wanted to spruce them up somehow. Add some pizazz. Some sparkle. Some.. magnetism, perhaps.

I considered envelope liners, but I think I'd rather save that extra touch for the invites if I so choose. Then I considered putting the card onto a backing of some sort to give it a border, but Foxy quickly called me nuts and asked if I could "fathom the amount of hours that would be spent on a silly Save the Date" if I did that.

Psh. Men. Of course I knew. At least 1. (Or 20, with my {lack of} cutting skills.)

Then I thought about the practicality and likely display of our little cards. In a perfect world, guests would jump for joy upon receiving these little pieces of cardstock and frame them and love them and never throw them away. In reality, it'll probably end up in a pile of mail somewhere. I think a nice compromise would be to display it on the fridge, dontcha think??

But then I fretted that people may not have magnets! Or think to put it on the fridge! (I'm sure they do and they would, but just go with it.)

My solution? Michael's. Because that man knows his arts and crafts.

I traipsed around the store for a good hour before deciding on a few key items.

Numero uno: heavy glitter cardstock. Because you can't go wrong with sparkles. Ever.

Numero dos: a heart punch, a la Martha Stewart.

Numero tres: magnet tape. The person who invented this is pure genius.

Add a punch, a snip, a stick.. and viola! Little sparkly heart magnets to hang up our STD with!

They aren't the strongest magnets in the world (I mean, what do you expect when a big ol' roll of magnet tape only costs a dollar), but they do the trick. Well, more or less.. MOH Copper texted me a picture of the only way hers would stay on the fridge..

Poor Foxy. ;)

A bonus was that these little magnets were small enough and light enough that they fit super nicely into an envelope with the STD cards without requiring extra postage. Plus it makes it look pretty shnazzy on the fridge, if I do say so myself. (And I do.)


As for said envelope, I tried to get creative with a combination of label paper, my printer, and a return address stamp that I got from emililies' shop on Etsy.

This stamp went on the fold of the back..

((I promise it looks better without the blurring!))

..and the labels went on the front, with my awesome Love Garden Forever stamps!

After some tedious assembling (these may have been basic, but they definitely took up time!)...

..they were ready to be mailed out!!

We already got some great feedback about them, which made me a happy Bee. :))

What are your thoughts on the whole magnet Save the Date trend right now? I'm clearly a sucker for it!

Return of the STD

::insert (in)appropriate joke here::

So you know how some people are two dress brides? Well I'm not that (yet).

I'm....

...ready?...

...a two Save the Date bride.

Yea, that happened. I told you I was indecisive. Here's the deal:

I've posted a whole bunch (way to much) about how much I was (over)thinking about the STD's. I really appreciated all your suggestions (particularly on this post); it seemed the winner was option number 1, but I started getting self-conscious about how many pictures of myself and Foxy were on there. I mean sure, we're dreamboats, but I didn't want it to be overkill. So I finally decided on a combination of two previously shown designs, and it looked something like this:

I ordered them from this wonderful website called CatPrint for super cheap, and a few days later I had a nice little stack of 3.5x5 cards.

At this point, I should have just stuffed the envelopes and have been done with it. But the more I looked at them, the more.. irked? unsettled?.. I became. For starters, I had designed the cards to be cropped at the edge of the photos, but for whatever reason, CatPrint wasn't able to do that. The image as a whole was smaller than I wanted it to be, and I just wasn't loving the design in general. Too busy, almost. Plus, I think they were screen printed and I could see all the little color dots that made up the pictures and text, and it wasn't attractive in my eyes.

Well then Foxy and I went on a little date night a few days later and I snapped a picture with Hipstamatic on my iPhone (love that app!). And it was adorable. And ten minutes after we got home, I had a design whipped up on the computer with that picture that I liked approximately 4739827398 times more than the other STD mockups I already had.

So.. for real this time.. our official Save the Date (minus the blurring, of course)!!

It's more basic, sure, but it gets the point across, is printed on glossy paper instead of matte (and hence, you can't see the screen print dots), and.. foreshadowing!.. has some of the same text as our invite! Love me some cohesiveness.

But of course I couldn't stop there.. I just had to spice it up a little more with accessories and packaging.. stay tuned!

Did you/have you had a big change of heart about anything wedding related? Dress? STDs? The groom? TOTALLY KIDDING about that last one!!

Date: saved.

Somebody got a package in the mail the other day.

I wonder who it's from..?

Is that.. CatPrint? Did.. did I actually make a decision on something wedding related?

Holy moose, I did!

Folks, let me present to you.. version 1 of my Save the Date's!

As you can see, I didn't pick any of the options I previously threw out to you. Naturally.

In the end, I really liked the font on the postcard STD, but loved the concept of the block letter/photo STD. I was initially going to make the photos into a removable magnet photo strip, but that was too much work for my lazy butt. So I kind of mashed together a couple different ideas into one, and viola! A Save the Date card.

Now I did run into a few issues along the way.

First off - I checked, double checked, and triple checked the cards to make sure all the information was right and there were no typos. I reviewed my order on CatPrint before I clicked "submit", and made sure to order a hard copy proof of the card before they produced and sent the full order.

Literally no more than 10 minutes passed before I realized that I entered the wrong card size when ordering. I intended for them to be 5" wide by 3.5" tall so they would be a perfect fit for an 4 bar envelope (5.125" wide by 3.625" high). Being the ditz that I am, I ordered them to be 5" wide by 3" tall. 

I really can be an idiot sometimes. So I emailed the company right away and asked if they could change the size before they sent the proof. I received a quick reply saying that they would make the changes, but that the actual PDF I sent needed to be adjusted as well. Apparently, since I selected a full-bleed print, some of the words and pictures were being cut off. I needed to send another PDF with a larger canvas size in order to leave a white border around the image so that information wouldn't be cut off. About ten emails later, I thought I finally had it right.

I got the first hard proof copy a few days later.

Now I'm sure most people wouldn't even notice or care, but they never changed the card size, leaving the pictures and the text to be stretched out. You can tell more when you put the right sized card next to the wrong sized one.

See how the bottom one is all stretched out due to the card being a half inch shorter? (Say yes.) Once again, I promptly emailed CatPrint and they sent me a new, appropriate sized card, free of charge. Huzzah!

However.

See how in all the pictures of the cards that there's a white border around the whole thing?

I didn't want that. I wanted the edges of the card to be flush with the sides of the photos, and just skimming the "Save" and website parts, like so:

For a reason unbeknownst to me, CatPrint wasn't able to trim it that way. In the end, it's absolutely fine, it just means that me and my paper cutter need to make amends before I go cropping all 85 of these bad boys down to size. More work and such.

So.. all in all.. what do you think?! Minus the blurring for obvious reasons, I don't think they come out half bad! Now to cut, assemble, address the envelopes, and possibly add a little sumthin' sumthin' extra...

muahahahaha

What do cats and paper have in common?

I've made random comments about our invites here and there, but have been holding out on you for the most part. Which I will still be doing a lot of today. Cue the boo's.

Way back at the beginning of mine and Scot's engagement, I had every intention of completely DIY'ing our invites - from the design, to the printing, to the assembling. I quickly realized I would be much better off having my good friend and amazing graphic designer, Michelle, do at least the design aspect of it. From there, I could still print and assemble.

Heh. Can you tell where this is going? After the design was pretty much completed, I tried to print it out on our inkjet.

Yeah, it was a fail.

Part of the invite is a really vibrant (but not obnoxious) orange - or so it appears on the computer screen. When I printed it out, it ended up looking like a really dirty burnt sienna color. So very much not what I wanted.

So, in true Steph fashion, I freaked a little bit and started looking for local, affordable printers who could also cut the invites down to size (it's kind of amusing how terrible I am with a paper cutter). One place that kept popping up on my search was CatPrint - not necessarily local, but you send them your jpeg or pdf file online, and they mail you the finished product a la VistaPrint.

So why have I ultimately decided on using them to print out both my STD's and invites in the near future? For one, they are super affordable. They also send you a draft hard copy before your entire order is put through to make sure your product is exactly what you wanted. They have tons of different paper styles and options, and their online uploader/designer is very detailed and user-friendly.

I've been holding off on ordering my invites until the "appropriate" time to do so (according to the master wedding checklist), but you know what? Screw it. I'm ordering those babies within the next few weeks. One more thing I can check off the list!

Now I just need to figure out how I'm assembling and packaging them. Still have no clue about that one. Obvs.

And again.

We've already established that I'm officially THE MOST indecisive person ever.

Yes,  I'm referring to our Save the Date's. Again.

When we last left off,  I thought I came up with something that could definitely work.

Then I changed my mind. And I changed it again.

And again.

I was left with a new set of options, all of which I created, based on examples I had seen around the interwebs. Foxy was about ready to kill me and my waffely behavior. I mean, who's really going to care about these besides me? Here I am, wanting it to be fun and spunky and different, when really? A nice postcard would do. And I needed to accept that.

But onto the goods. The newer set of STD options.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

The first two would just be cards, put in an envelope and mailed out. The last one would be a 5x7 postcard (hence requiring one of my awesome forever stamps), and printed on metallic card stock. I would have loved for it to have rounded corners, but apparently you can't have rounded corners on postcards..?!

Or I thought I could just go back to square one and do a different version of that fun magnet photo booth style thing I came up with.

I really just needed to make up my mind. But I'm just so bad at it!

Our date needs some saving (again)

When I decided that I actually needed to get my act together with the whole save the date STD thing (yeaa, we're just gonna go that route), I totally hated all the old ideas I had. I mean, they were ok, but I just kept seeing so many other fun, cute, unique ideas and my originals just felt.. lame. Or generic. But let's be real.. in all actuality, anything I do will likely have been done before.

::letting it go::

I was also feeling very uninspired. I'm sure I mentioned this before, but my creativity got thrown out the window when I threw my high school graduation cap up in the air.

Poof. Gone.

I knew the natural solution would be to have someone else create the STD's, or just use a template. But I really wanted to at least try to be creative. I originally wanted to design the invite suite myself as well, but I quickly learned that that would not be happening and we'd be using a friendor instead. So I at least wanted to take hold of these STD cards.

That being said, I had been browsing the interwebs for inspiration a while back and realized that I very much loved a lot of the pre-made STD designs on Minted.

Some of my favorites:

All images via Minted

Aren't they all just super cute and super fun? The only not cute thing about them is the price - I wasn't so much a fan of spending $180 (+ tax, + S&H) for 100 postcards. So I decided to fiddle around on my comper, hoping to make my own version of some of the samples up there.. and one of them actually came out pretty decent!! Mr. Foxy also happened to be a fan of my original artwork.. we may very well have finally found an STD to give to everyone! That's what she said.

It may not be the most unique or fancy or artsy thing anybody has ever seen, but I'm ok with that.

Some foreshadowing: don't be too surprised if/when I scratch this idea as well. ;)


Did you have a hard time finding an STD or was it an easy-peasy decision for you?

Ess Tee Dee's

That's the most creative I can be with a title for the first of what I'm sure will be 473982 posts about save the date's, or as us bee's like to refer to them, STD's. And yes, like most people, that still cracks me up. They really need to give you a manual before you start delving into the whole online wedding world.. I was severely confused with all the acronyms here on Weddingbee for a good two weeks when I first started reading.

Anyway, you should all know by now that I'm a planner. When I first started seriously thinking about the save the date's, we still had 18 months until the wedding, at which point we also already had a venue, invites, preliminary guest list, dj, possible photog, and my dress. #overachiever

I quickly came to the conclusion that we MUST have save the date's, 1. because I like making pretty things, and 2. because 99% of our guests are out-of-towners, coming from Philly and various parts of New York. And I was determined for them to be a DIY.

At first I was thinking about doing something with a Scrabble board:

sorry about the blurring!

It's cute in theory but it just looks a little all over the place in reality, at least in my eyes. It would be more in depth than what the picture shows and on the classic board, of course, but still. I'm vain and want our picture on it somewhere. And while we bust out Scrabble weekly and it's definitely "us", it just doesn't fit with what I'm envisioning.

So.. scratch the Scrabble.

Then I thought maybe I could do something with our engagement photos..

...and I quickly realized that I was doing a terrible job at designing them. Don't laugh at how bad these are. They're also kind of boring, and I want something more FUN. Granted I was just messing around for a few minutes to see what I could whip up, but I really want something more us.

So my current (genius) idea is inspired by photo strips.. you know the ones you can get at the mall or some restaurants that are (usually) black and white and you have four vertical frames to fill with shenanigans?

I've seen other couples do something like this for their STD's. I think it's so much fun! I would set up my Mac and take a couple pictures of us, most likely holding hand-made signs saying "save" "the" "date" "6.xx.2012", using one for each frame. After printing, I'd adhere them to some magnet tape and cut them out, so everyone would get a photo strip magnet!!

I don't know why this excites me so much, but it does. Mr. Foxy and I had a mini photo shoot a few months ago using said method of picture taking, so here's a basic idea (sans hand-made signs) of where my mind is off to:

Sorry about the faces. Still not sure why we felt compelled to take a bunch of crazy pictures of ourselves. But you get the idea.

So.. thoughts? What did you do or what are your plans for STD's?