DIY Wedding Invitations

I thought that making my business card was one of the most labor intensive things I had ever created. My wedding invites blew that right out of the bucket.

I knew that I wanted to incorporate die cut elements, as an homage to my work with Silhouette. I ordered samples of paper from cardsandpockets.com. I chose them because they had the most unique templates that I could find to use as my base. I decided to go with this style:

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I also ordered a swatch book to help me decide on the other colors I needed, white, black, and gold. Here is my little buddy helping me pick the colors.

I used the measurements from the pocketframe card and started die cutting my "white gold" paper, at this point I would literally have both of my Silhouette machines going at the same time, this was the most tedious step.

Once I got all the pieces all cut out, I started to Gocco my gold designs onto the papers. I am so obsessed with my Gocco machines it's not even funny, I would do anything to figure out a way to revive this dead art.

This is my setup: I had to find that HP printer in the background especially for Gocco-ing. That printer is one of the few that prints with carbon ink, which barely exists anymore. Every once in a while you will see some old carbon ink cartridges pop up on ebay, and those are usually snatched up by me :)

I couldn't really take pics of the printing process bc once you get going you really shouldn't stop. Here are some finished cards hanging up-

 running out of space!

Meanwhile, I was agonizing about my die cut portion of the invitation. This is how it finally came out after SO MUCH trial and error that I was beginning to think it couldn't be done!

Then I got the envelopes back from the calligrapher! I wish I had the talent to be able to write like that, my handwriting is so terrible that I might as well be a doctor.

Just a few more steps to go! I ordered both the round and square gold double mat straight from Cards & Pockets, so that saved me some steps. I sent the white paper through my Silhouette to get that double rounded edge on all the cards. I also ordered the envelope liners straight from Cards & Pockets as well, which saved a ton of time and energy.

Laying everything out to see how well everything is fitting together so far.

At this point I had Gocco-ed both my gold background and the text on most of the cards.

Organizing stamps. I went a little cray.  But seriously how cute are those vintage stamps?!

 Now came the finishing touches, like adding wax seals and lace to tie the whole card together. I had a ton of antique french lace laying around from my mom, so I finally got to use it for something!

The lace ending up matching with my bouquets. :)

 All addressed and ready to go!

The first round, all ready to be mailed out! I had to have them hand cancelled at the post office, I don't think I have ever had a harder time leaving something behind before. Trusting the USPS with this was terrifying!!

 But despite my worrying they arrived, and made their way around social media! :)

All finished!! Has anyone else ever attempted something like this before? Please tell me I am not the only crazy one, haha...

Hope this inspires you! :)

xoxo, Soph

DIY Wedding

It finally happened! My wedding finally came to fruition after so much planning. Here is a link to my wedding pics if you're curious!
http://sophiewedding.blogspot.com/
 There were so many parts of this wedding that were D.I.Y. that I'm not sure where to even start. I knew right away that I wanted to incorporate this amazing sequin wall that I found on this tutorial:

http://ohhappyday.com/2011/12/sequin-photobooth-diy/

I fell in love with it and knew I had to have it. Here is the finished product:

It came out great!! Here is the process I went through. All in all it took about 2 weekends to finish, the longest part was waiting for the packages to arrive to build it.

 The sequins have arrived!

  Here are my foam core boards that I got from my local art shop. They were both 42"x80".

Giant sequins.

Getting them wrapped in gold wrapping paper.

Making my guide.

Measuring out where to put the pins.

After testing a few rows to make sure the sequins lined up, I started a movie and zoned out.

Almost finished with the first one.

So many pins!!

Looking good and lining up well!

Testing out patches to make sure everything lines up.

All done and time for fun!

The final result!! Not exactly sure if I would do it again, but I love the way it came out. One problem I did run into though was that the tutorial called for 600 sequins, and although that sounds like a lot, I still needed more just FYI. Happy crafting!! :)