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Wanna know what's behind this awesome vellum wedding invitation envelope? Yes, I said “vellum envelope.” How else was Staceyjo going to show off the patterned inner envelope as much as possible? And it's awesome, because the inner envelope is SO freaking cool. And I know this first hand, because Stacey was nice enough to send me one to check out in person.
The inner envelope is fabric that was sewn into pouches. Let me tell you, even though I knew it was coming, I was still so surprised and tickled by the pouch. I'm definitely saving it and re-using it for something.
Sliding the invite out of the pocket brings this gorgeous invitation with a Rob Ryan quote that made me all warm and fuzzy.
I opened up the invite and was greeted by one of the most neatly organized wedding invitations I've ever seen. The cards on the right were bound with a paper band and the invitation itself was printed on heavier cardstock, and attached with double stick tape to give it a little dimension.
Stacey explains the rest:
Here are all of the pieces so you can see what info I included. The little teal square is a sticker that I made for people to put on their calendars. It was just printed and cut out then run through a sticker machine and cut out again. It is attached with a glue dot. This is probably the one thing I have gotten the most comments about.I was really excited about the QR code that is revealed when the info cards are taken out of the photo corner holders. It takes guests to a mobile version of our website where they can RSVP, request songs, find links for accommodations, and more.
I'm still in shock that these were DIYd invites — the quality is amazing. I'm glad I could share them with you like Stacey shared it with me. Now, anyone have any ideas on how I can re-use that AWESOME fabric pouch?
About the Author: Megan Finley Horowitz
When Megan's not writing, traveling, and sleeping, she's eating like the fate of the world depends on it. (You're welcome, world!) You can snoop into her personal life over on her website The Dash and Dine!
I totally NEED more info on how these were made – they look unbelievable!
I’ll gladly share more info! I’m on my honeymoon right now with hardly any cell service and no computer! Aah! What timing. I’ll post as soon as I can!
I love the sticker idea! Now I need to find a sticker machine lol
LOVE!
Love the sticker, love the bar code! Love the pouch! It’s all fantastic!!
I’m just an OBB fan – still waiting on the mister to produce the ring… but this one will be mentally filed away for the future
Absolutely incredible. I am suddenly MORE inspired to design my own invitations. Totally worth the time.
@Staceyjo-could you include costs when you post more info? Have a great honeymoon!
Wow! This is spectacular. I am in awe! Well done! 😉 I too, would love more info on how this was made!
We are just starting to look into invitations! I have been putting it off for a while now- but these are great. My partner in fun wants to do scrolls but I’m worried about the mailing part and them getting crushed. I think these would be great to mail to our out of town guests!!!
More information please if you don’t mind sharing!!
I thought about scrolls, but I was worried about shipping costs. I really had to keep to my budget. They do have little tubes that you can mail, but I think the price to ship goes up pretty quickly because they are an odd shape. Could you maybe use a scroll design on flat paper?
Hi everyone. Back from the honeymoon, and we had a blast. Sorry for making people wait for more info about these invitations.
I started off looking everywhere online at invitations. I pulled pictures of what I liked and I had probably 60 images that I printed out (several on a page) so I could look at them next to each other. I really recommend that if you want something that is really you. Mine didn’t turn out like what I thought I wanted when I started looking. Then I picked the things I like the most from all of the different invitations. I wanted it to be interactive, pretty, have all of the information right there and lead to more information if people wanted it. The parts I liked best from other invitations were the multiple pieces, photo corners, floral boarder, a sweet quote and a fabric pocket. I saw a fabric pouch that was stamped very late in my searching process and I knew I needed to incorporate it because I do a lot of sewing.
In my searching for awesome invitations and inspiration, I happened across the artist Rob Ryan. I loved his stuff. So the floral border and the quote were inspired by his art. There was one piece I really loved of his so I re-drew the border on his piece but not a full of leaves and changed the dimensions to fit my card. I drew the border in pencil then filled it in with black ink and scanned it. Then I opened it in photoshop, cleaned up the smudges, selected just the black, and colored over it with the airbrush tool in my shade of blue. I didn’t hit everything, I wanted colors to blend. Then I repeated airbrushing with green and gray, then touched it up with the blue again. There was a lot of trial and error here until I got it to look the way I had in mind. For the text, I typed out the quote in Nelly Script ($30 from Tart Workshop) and played with line breaks. I decided it looked too sharp, even though it is a handwritten font, so I printed it out, drew over the text, changed some of the flourishes, scanned it, and replaced the cleaner font.
For the inside of the invitation, I scanned the fabric that I used for the pouch and changed it to greyscale to use as a background. I just typed everything up and laid it into place using InDesign. I set up each separate piece in its own file so it was easy to work with. The sizes are all based on the velum envelope. It is an A7 envelope and I made the fabric pocket slightly smaller to fit in it. The fabric was cut to twice the width of the envelope and slightly shorter, then folder in half and sewn up two sides. then the sides were trimmed close to the sewing line and on the open end with pinking shears.
The main piece of the invitation was then made slightly smaller to fit just inside the fabric pouch. It was set up on a letter size (8.5×11) sheet of paper, was printed double sided on a piece of 8- pound card stock, cut down on all 4 sides so the print went all the way to the edges, scored and folded in half. The inside panel with our names and date and stuff is a separate piece printed 2 per sheet on 110 pound cardstock, then cut out and attached with double stick tape. Each of the info cards were printed on the 80 pound card stock as many as would fit per sheet, some were 3, some were 4. Those were also all cut out by hand with an exacto and a ruler, bundled with a paper band that I just cut out as 1×7 inch strips from blue paper and wrapped around the info cards and secured with double stick tape on the back of the band.
The sticker was printed on regular copy paper and I fit a bunch on each sheet, probably 30, I can’t remember off hand. The sticker is just under 1 inch square. I set them up next to each other so that when I cut in a grid, all of them would fall apart into a bunch of stickers. Then I ran all of the little pieces through a xyron sticker machine. I just lined them up across the roller and turned a little, then put some more in trying to waste as little as possible. I think this method was easier then running the whole sheet through the sticker machine then cutting, because it is really hard to get the backing off of the sticker if you cut after you run it through, but the way I did it did leave a little bit of sticker residue along the edges of the sticker that I had to rub off. Also, the way I did it meant that the sticker sat on the paper with a little border so it was easy for people to get the sticker off the backing. And I had to cut out all of those stickers a second time. After I had all of those little stickers, I stuck it to the info card with a glue dot next to instructions for people to place the sticker on their calendar. One thing I would have added is the time to the sticker. I did get a couple of comments that people put the sticker on their calendar but couldn’t remember what time the wedding was and had to go back and look. I probably got the most comments about that little sticker. People loved it! Even the guys liked it and one joked about putting it on his google calendar then had to figure out how to get it off of his monitor.
The qr code was another thing that got comments. That was super easy. I googled qr code generator, copied the link for our wedding website, plugged it in to the generator, and it popped out a code. I saved that image then placed it into the file for the inside of the folded part of the invitation. I didn’t want that to show at first because I was going for a more traditional look with surprises. That is where the photo corners came in. With the 3 info cards bundled with a paper band, I stuck one photo corner on opposite corners of the packet, then eyeballed center of the left panel making sure I covered up the text, and stuck it down. That way I didn’t have to make sure I was getting the photo corners in the right place and lined up each time. The info card packet then could pop right out of the corners holding them on and the band could slide off to separate each of the cards.
Everything in this invitation package was hand cut with and exacto or scissors because after I put all of that time into designing and setting up, I became pretty anal about it all coming out perfectly and I didn’t want to turn it over to someone at a copy shop to use the automatic slicer. I do recommend scoring any of the card stock that folds as it makes a much cleaner fold.
As for the cost, I spent $45 for a ream of 110 pound card stock, and I think $32 for the 80 pound cards stock from my local paper store, Xpedx. It sells to the public as well as professional printers, so it was a decent price. I would consider myself a paper snob, so I bought paper that was a little more expensive than I could have gone with. I would shop around. Papersource has pretty paper, but I think it is too pricy and you can find nicer stuff other places for less. I bought the fabric from JoAnn’s with a 40% off coupon and spent less than $30 on that. My measurements were a little off at first, so I did have to go back and get some more. I think I ended up using around 3 and a half yards for 80 pouches. If you want to know exactly, I’ll have to go back and verify that though. I am lucky enough to have an in with a printer, so I paid hardly anything for printing, but you could have it done at a print shop for through an online printer for not too much. FedEx Office (Kinko’s) was running a sale for 30 cent color copies and I ran around 300 sheets all together I think. Maybe 350. You can also run these through your home inkjet printer for the cost of ink. I actually printed these all myself on my printer friend’s digital laser printer. The envelopes were $6 per pack of 25 also from Xpedx. Including postage, I spent right around $200 for 80 invitations. These are fairly heavy, so I did have to use 85 cent postage. I think I estimated these to cost around $1.25 each before postage. Pretty darn good, if you ask me. My now hubby was wondering why I was putting so much effort into these things and then he saw a mock up and thought I could sell them for $5 a piece. That’s why I put so much effort and time into them. I have a customized, personal invitation for way less than I could have paid someone else for them. I did spend a lot of time on these. I think I spent most evenings for a week designing and drawing, then probably 3 evenings just cutting everything out. It only took about 2 hours of 3 people assembling to put them together though.
If I haven’t covered something that you want to know about, feel free to ask and I’ll answer. I wrote this from memory so I could get this posted sooner, so I didn’t look up measurements or any specifics. I’m happy to answer questions though! Thank yo all for you kind comments and I hope you end up with invitations you love no matter what you decide to go with.
Are the only “standard” paper size you use the envelope, and everything else was trimmed?
Yes, everything was printed on standard letter size paper and trimmed down. If you would like the dimensions, I can get them for you.
I have a quick question about the stickers. I’m a huge crafter, but have honestly never heard of a “sticker machine!” I’ve since looked them up, and found it, but what I don’t understand is this: what is between the sticker and the glue dot? Is there some kind of special sticker backing that I’ll need to acquire? From what I can figure out from the Xyron info, it just comes out sticky, like a sticker, and I know you mention the next step is cutting them out again.
Help! What’s the super-magic sticker backing to keep the sticker from sticking to the invite, and allow it to be removeable and put on a calendar!?!
When you feed the small paper that you have cut through the xyron “sticker machine” your paper ends up between a shiny piece of paper on the back and a clear plastic film. The machine works with 2 rolls. One roll is sticky stuff on the shiny paper and the other roll is the plastic film. When you put your paper in the machine, it rolls the 2 rolls together and the film sticks to the sticky stuff on the shiny paper except where your paper is. Your paper (in this case the little piece that you cut out that you are making into a sticker) sticks to the shiny paper roll and keeps the film from sticking. So, when your little paper comes out, you peel the film off and the sticky stuff sticks to the film and you throw it away. Your little paper is still stuck to the shiny paper that originally had the sticky coating. That is what you cut out the second time. Cut a little wider than your little piece that you cut out once, sort of leave a border. If you peel the shiny paper off of you little piece (which is now a sticker), it will reveal the sticky side of the sticker you just made. Essentially, when you roll it through the machine, it leaves the backing on the sticker so it doesn’t stick to the first thing it touches. I cut out a border for my little stickers so they were easy to peel. Put your glue dot the back of the sticker backing so your guests can pull the whole thing off the invitation then peel the back off the sticker to put where they want. I hope that makes sense.
By the way, I recently saw tiny xyron sticker machines at Hobby Lobby for about $15 and the come pre-loaded with sticker making rolls. I want to say it was 2 inches wide. You’d have to do each of your stickers individually, but the big xyron machines are pretty expensive. They have various sizes, but that one was the least expensive I have seen. And it doesn’t take up any space.
I’m wondering if you’d like to sell or share the PDF version of your invitation. It is really amazing!!!