Tuesday, March 3, 2009

The Save the Dates are in the Mail

My Save-the-Dates are in the mail and I am sooooooo excited. There has been a ton of drama around these babies. I had a little freak out, the printer had issues, I ordered something late . . . hassle, hassle, hassle!! Anyway . . . here is the finished product (with fake addresses!!) - although the return address looks a little different on the real ones because I actually used a stamp which I embossed the same as the olive branch - but oh well!!

I ordered the actual Save-the-Dates (magnets), from VistaPrint. If any of you are looking for an inexpensive place to get things printed this is it. They do a pretty good job for really cheap. I got 100 magnets for around $65!! And I think they turned out cute! I added a fun little detail, that I stole from Classic Bride, little stickers on the back that say "Hang me on the Fridge." You can't really tell, but they have my little olive branch design in the background (at least I know its there). I bought the moss colored envelopes from Paper-Source, along with the Olive Branch rubber stamp. I stamped and embossed each envelope and I think they look really cute!! I also got some printable business cards, just to explain that there was information on our website about accommodations and whatnot. Then last but not least I topped them off with custom postage stamps from Stamps.com (again they have my cute olive branch design from Chris - love it!!). Here are the details:

The freak out:

I was going to order cards that went with the save the dates that just had some extra info about Accommodations and whatnot. They were cramped and had way too much info and I decided I didn't love them, so I dropped that idea fast! I did run to Office Depot and bought some printable Avery business cards that are shown above. Anyway, then I started playing with how to make the envelopes look good. I punched out all these cute little olive branches to attach as stickers . . . then decided I didn't like that either . . . but look at the fun pics I took!!

The printer issues:

I have ok handwriting, but not beautiful handwriting, so I decided to print all the addresses on my printer. I found a cute font and started printing . . . well I had issues. I don't know if maybe the envelope was too thick, or maybe my printer just sucked, but I kept getting these blue lines of ink along the bottom of the envelope. See the icky marks??

Well, I came up with a pretty creative solution (if I do say so myself)!!! I put blue painters tape on the bottom of the envelopes where the smudges were showing up. When I printed again, the smudges were on the tape (and not my envelope), so I could just peal them right off!! No more problem!! Yay.

I ordered something late:

So, I was having a similar problem printing my return address on the back of the envelope as I was with the front, but the smudges were showing up all over the envelope. So, I gave up trying to come up with a solution for that one and ordered a stamp with my return address from RubberStamps.net. It was like $18, but it fixed my problem, and now everything is finished and I am so happy!!

Well, I hope you guys like them . . . oh, and one more thing . . . am I the only one who thinks its funny to cover my entire fridge in my save the dates??

(All Images by Me)

2 comments:

elle said...

What stamp did you order to do the return address? I'm thinking of doing the same thing. Did the ink last well for all the envelopes? I'll have about 350 to do.

Cat said...

I bought an art mounted stamp, not a self inking stamp, so I was using an ink pad . . . and it of course lasted for all the envelopes.