.::. DIY Invitations .::.

I finally got my invitation cards ready to be sent out!

My little sister who's really good at design helped me to design them in photoshop.  I gave her a rough direction like the size of the card, the color theme and what I want to be written on it while she worked on a draft.  I made her change the fonts and alignment so many times, and she extracted the lines of the map to fit my theme.  The whole process took about a week or so.  I think we could think of making these for a living.  =p

I'm really happy how it turned out!

The idea behind the invitations is to make it similar to a movie ticket since we are holding our solemnization at the screening room.  It evolved to what it is, though it did not actually turn out to be a movie ticket.  

We made 3 invitations fit into an A4 size for easy printing, but it has to be cut.  I bought shiny cream paper to print on.  I trimmed all the sides to paste it on a card stock, so that I can fit it in

to a DL envelope.  I actually spent the whole morning cutting the pieces up.  

I have got to say that a good cutter is the best DIY tool.  I could easily measure and slice the paper up neatly.  It was one of my first scrapbooking tool 5 years ago, and it's the most used and most needed tool for anyone who likes to DIY stuff.  My CARL cutter was pretty expensive, at about $59.90 then, but I've seen less sturdy cutters for $39.90.  Invest in a good one that could last!

So after all that cutting and trimming, I measured and cut the card stock before sticking the front and back.  It's pretty tiring and time-consuming though nothing difficult.  I guess DIY takes some effort and you need to enjoy doing it and envision how you want your project to turn out.  Personally, I enjoy seeing the my vision materialize.  I got my craft glue Spotlight, it can glue practically everything such as paper and fabric and dries clear and quickly.  I'm intending to use this to glue up my buntings so that I don't have to sew them!  Squeezing the glue bottle takes quite abit of strength!

And after a good whole morning of trimming and pasting, I got to Popular to get cream-coloured envelopes to hold my beautiful invitations.  I put them into envelopes on the train to the city to make full use of my time!

After a long day out, we finally sat down for food and coffee as we addressed the envelopes to our dear family and friends.

I went to get extra card stock and came back home to finish up on the other invitations.  It was another good hour of trimming and pasting.

All and all, I'm really happy how it turned out.

I went to calculate how much my DIY invitation cost me:

Paper: $0.30

Printing: FREE

Envelopes: $0.30

Design fee: FREE

Cardstock: $0.40

An invitation came up to about $1 each and I am preparing about 40 of them.  I spent about $50 on everything, excluding quite a few hours of my time of course.

As much as I love DIY, I don't think I can make my own invitations for my traditional wedding if we were to invite like 400 people.  40 invites are alight, but making hundreds of invites?  I'm still undecided on it.