La Invitation, Part Trois

One little expense that I failed to mentioned is my new HP Photosmart C5580 All-in-One Printer. I had an old HP that I had purchased ink for recently at a $75 price tag. When I went to Office Max to get more ink to print the invites (the printer just seemed to suck up ink like nobody's business), I saw that the dough I was shelling out for ink was nearly the price of a new, very cool printer. So I bought it. Now, many of you would add the cost of the printer into your budget. I will not. I needed the damn thing and if I had needed ink to print anything else (I did) I still would have made the same decision to buy a new printer. It's bad-ass. It can print on CD's, a cool favor idea.

To print I had several practice runs as I tested different fonts, sizes, colors, etc. The final call was made to use the Brock Script (size 16) and the Adobe Caslon Pro (size 10) using a brown ink (RGB 96,42,0).

I printed each invite one by one, not stacking them in the feeder. This was time consuming, but I got a perfect print every time. I also printed the response envelopes with our address even though all sources told me the printer could not do it. Yes, it could. I printed the response cards too so they are all ready to assemble.

Printing in Progress

Pocketfold Envelope

Response card and response envelope slid into pocket.

Invitation set in pocketfold and response set inserted into pocket.

Over the next few days, I took all my goodies with me to the post office and weighed all the pieces to figure out the postage. The rate will be $.61 each after May 11th when the rates go up (you can buy Forever stamps now for RSVP cards, but they really are ugly). The post-office guy noticed the ribbon in my stack-o-invite stuff and told me that if I tied a bow around my invite that the lump in the envelope would cost me another $.20 per invite! WHAT?!? Oh, so lame. I'm not big into bows anyway, so I started thinking of other options.

I went back to Michaels (armed with coupons a-plenty) and started seriously browsing their aisles for ideas. I have joined (proudly, I might add) the ranks of crafty lunch-time Michaels dwellers, but I digress. Instead of tying a bow around the invite, I have decided to lay the ribbon flat with a small area of cross over I'll secure with a glue dot. I'm using the BRIDES Collection floral confetti and some removable glue dots to cover the seam (or I could put the seam in the back) and center the flower in the middle of the ribbon. I mentioned in my last post that I bought envelope seals. The kit came with them, but I didn't really dig them. The seals I bought have a printing template from Gartner Studios that I will put our initials on - sort of like it was sealed with an embosser, but DIY style. I'm spending a little extra cash, but adding a more personal feel to it.

Need I say more?

Floral Confetti

Loosely assembled!

The general idea.

I'm going to print these with our initials and seal the pocket fold.

I also bought 4 spools of 3mm ivory ribbon ($.50 ea, 25% off all!) to replace the brown ribbon on the ceremony programs. I just wasn't loving the brown on brown and it was a cheap fix.

Four-tiered ceremony programs.

Replacement Ribbon

The other goodies I bought but haven't done anything with yet (it's just not time!).

Printable table cards. I might also invest in more and use them as menus. Not sure yet. The menus might be another fun and different project.

You can never have too many!

Printable place cards.

So really the only part left to do is assemble and I'm a little afraid to start. I don't know why either! I feel it might be too early (they'll go out at the end of August), but since I'll be overseas the entire month of June, it might not be. Hm. Once I get further along, I'll post more about that process.