READY FOR HALLOWEEN DAY 11: Have you sent out invitations yet?

You're all having Halloween parties, aren't you? I won't. I'll be living it up, celebrating the anniversary (1 year -- WHOO-HOO!), not stressing over pulling a party together. Saving that fun for next year. ;)

But, I know most of you are not slackers like me. Therefore, I have found a project for you. Nifty, pretty, superstitious invites from Chica and Jo.

Originally intended for a Friday the 13th birthday party, but they would be great re-purposed as the notice to attend a frightful evening of superstition and scares.

Dia De Los Wedding

The title of this post makes no damned sense. :)

Who cares? Look at these invites from Royal Steamline. They are so sleek and stylish and (my favorite part) black and white.

So beautiful!

And if you want some further Day of the Dead Hallowedding inspiration, do check out Marcy and Danny's Big Day. I don't know them, but anyone who gets married on Halloween to a skully theme is someone I want to be on a first name basis with.

Cheers, friends!

Happy Halloween! More On Faux Wax Seals

I was really happy with how my invitation seals turned out; I shared over at Halloweddings -- where a lovely Halloween bride shared her own faux wax seal project, which also got rave reviews from family and friends!

Check this out:

Honestly I can say that the green envy virus is sneaking through my system after seeing how good these look; they sprayed them black and just highlighted them in silver -- I love it. They look like antiqued metal. So gorgeous!! Mine were wonderful and I love them, but these tickle my toes! If I had seen these I might have done mine differently.

Her emblem was purchased at wax-works.com. It is a little pricey, but using hot glue rather than real wax already buys you some budget (if you want to look at it that way).

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! toe tag invite

Toe tags; I've posted fun stuff with them before.

I cannot, however, get enough toe taggage - so here's a super invite printable from Adventures in Renovating a Brooklyn Limestone.

Faux Wax Seals

What a fantastic weekend for accomplishing wedding things! (but not in the craft room, which is still trying to dry out and smells all musty).

Also, a fantastic weekend for breaking things. I'm such a butterfingers: 1 wine bottle, 1 plate, and then I forgot about the wine bottle and went around barefoot - yep, that was the smallest glass shard I never saw. I added really realistic blood to the craftroom. Yay! (that last part was dripping with sarcasm - it's hard to hear over the internet *smile*).

Anyway, projects started on Saturday:

• Bridesmaid gift boxes - roughly 25% complete
• Halloween pennant banner - DONE LIKE A TURKEY
• Invitation faux-wax seal tests - 65 in-progress, 9 (the tests) done, out of a total 200 needed
• stair decoration - FINITO
  

w00t!

For now, I'll tell you about the seals. 'Cause I'm pleased with the way they are going to look.

I guess everyone knows that you can buy hot glue that is kind of like wax? And use it instead of real wax seals? Well, anyway - you can. But it's not in my local craft store and I didn't want to order it, so here's a fairly easy way to DIY your own faux wax letter seals in the color of your choosing. Mine are silver (the ones below haven't be affixed to anything):

You need:

• Hot glue gun
• Hot glue refills
• a wax seal stamp
  
• a bowl of ice or an ice pack
  
• a cotton ball or rag soaked in a little bit of olive oil
• a rag
• a sheet of wax paper
• spray paint - color of your choice
  

You will:

1. Cool the stamper in the ice - get that metal cold!
2. Put a spot of hot glue on the wax paper (it doesn't take much, definitely not as much as you think - play around with this) - let sit 10-15 seconds
   
3. rub some olive oil on the stamper
4. stamp as you would do with wax - the colder the stamper is the less time you'll have to leave it in the glue, but 5-10 seconds is pretty safe.

All these steps can be found in better detail here. To get the wax seals in your dream color choice - peel them off the wax paper (they likely won't come off clean), wipe them down to get olive oil off (if you don't they may never dry), go somewhere well ventilated, and spray paint them. I'm using just good ol' cheapy silver spray paint, but there are plastic paints that would probably work much better. I'm just doing with what I have around the house.

Once they are dry, affix them with a little extra dab of hot glue. Yay! Imitation wax seals.

Want your own custom stamper for a party? Here's a good how-to.

Invitation Preview

Our invitations have to reflect two very different people - my fiance, who is all about clean/neat/moderately traditional (or, as he himself put it, 'boring') and me (I think we all know what I like/am like).

The one and only Frog Queen has been helping me with these wonderful, simple and elegant invites ('helping' is the understatement du jour). I'm in love with them, as every bride should be. All of the individual cards will probably go into this cards and pockets holder.

main invite (there is a spider missing, hanging down from the "C")

information card - front (obviously, there won't be black blocks on the final invite - I'm just making it hard on the party crashers *wink*)

information card - back

RSVP - front

RSVP - back


Photoshop illustration of what it might look like, all put together.

Progress, already?

I might be a little stressed out, knowing that I'm up against self-imposed deadlines for several wedding-related things without actually having made any decisions. Like the invitations post of last night. You can tell, can't you? :)

Ah, well. I'm just very worried about letting people down by not getting things done (while they are hard at work making my wedding awesome).

When Husband-to-Be got home last night, we went out for all-night Chick-fil-A (yum) to help me unwind and discussed our invitations. His one request when asked out we could make them more "us"? Keep them plain and simple, to match his personality too.

We are night and day, this boy and I. "Plain" and "simple" are words I struggle to comprehend. Anyway, I told him I could do fairly plain and traditional as long as I could include spiderwebs and perhaps print white or silver ink on black paper (that last part he's okay with, the former he wants to see). Check out my quickie photoshop mock-up:

I couldn't help the tatting across the top, I'm sorry. It was naked up there. Anyway, imagine a cards and pockets-style invitation (examples here and here, layout open for negotiation), with a gray or silver matting (represented by the gray border in the picture above), with a black invitation printed in silver or white.

It could be good: I like the idea and I think it's reflective of me while still in the spirit of what He wants, but I'm open to options as we start pricing stuff out. Like stand-alone invite rather than the cards-and-pockets thing (Husband-to-Be is neat and orderly by nature and is really smitten with how organized they look, though... who'd have guessed?).

Okay. I've thought on this enough for awhile. I think I'm going to take Ghoul Friday's suggestion of earlier and have a sip of vodka.

p.s. Yes, my name will be dripping with spiderwebs and sport a little dangling spider-bit.

The Crushing Weight of Paper

That faint wheezing sound you hear is me, wiggling in a desperate attempt to break free from more wedding invitation websites. Dag blast it all, I don't want to spend half my life's savings picking stupid wedding invites, neither do I want to lock myself in a room for two weeks bleeding all over some DIY project... and mostly, dammit, I'm too f'ing artsy to just order some pre-made something off of someone else's site.


YARRRRRRRRRRR. ;) Wedding invitation hell is upon me, and I'm on a deadline of "asap" to make a decision on what they'll look like.

Do any of you wonderful kids know anything about professional printing on cardstock? Even better, how to do it cheaply or printing light ink on dark paper? I really want to design my own, then have someone else do the messy part.

I'm looking all over to find out as much as I can about printing, print shops in Atlanta (do these people just not think it important to be listed in the yellowpages or have websites??), places to order cardstock and have it cut, and even about screen printing.

Full bleed print. Light on dark. My head is spinning in circles.

Also, for no good reason whatsoever ('cause let's face it, it's ungraciously expensive to buy supplies for) - I really want a yudu.

Will someone please take the internet away from me now? I think my brain is broken.

Dead Tree Invitations

As always, I can't recommend a vendor I haven't bought from - but I thought this design was worth sharing. Personally, I love the dead tree look.

I think rouxbee had quite a nice, nontraditional aesthetic sense for wedding invitations. They are a bit under-designed, but that's kind of what I like about them. They are very traditional, but with the twisting flower vines replaced with dead trees of the delicate scroll work slightly splattered in a grunge effect.

She and I must have the same design hobbies and internet browsing habits, because I recognize both the tree and the font in the pictured design as belonging to freeware sets I downloaded ages ago:

• I believe the tree belongs to a free photoshop brush kit available on deviantart.
• The font is (I'm pretty sure) one I got earlier this year (while looking for vintage fonts for my wedding) from dafont.com, called Nite Club

By sharing this, I'm definitely *not* encouraging anyone to steal the design. I just kind of found it funny - I knew most of the fonts and brushes she used for her the work posted in her shop.

Her aesthetic sense plays out differently than mine would, but how interesting that we frequent the same sites and pick all the same fonts and brushes.

Wedding Invite - Humorous and Adorable

I'm starting to think about my wedding invitation (omg it's getting so close!!!), and ran across this today. I love the style and the humor, not that I would want it.

Click here to actually be able to read it (gosh blogger stinks for sizing images once uploaded... pain. in. the. neck.)

I *heart* These (Anatomical Heart Cards)

Sheila posted the most awesome thing over at Cheeky Magpie - you've really got to see this:

I swear to all that is good in the world, if I wasn't sending out so many wedding invitations... man, my hands hurt just thinking about cutting that many hearts out!

There is a .jpg template for this at the magpie blog. Go get it. Now already, before it disappears (the way things sometimes do on the web)! Save it and hold it dear.

Stationary

I stole the little piece of art I liked so much in the Danse Macabre post.

And made it blank so it can be easily relabeled.


It might make nice Halloween stationary, but that would require resizing. I'm sick and just don't have the energy to resize and make it look nice. :( I'm sorry. I probably shouldn't be editing it in the first place.

Gosh, I really don't feel good today.

The Happiest Day of my Wedding Planning Life

It's so beautiful; I might cry. Thank you, Obscure Hollow, for sharing the knowledge of the lovely picture (screen right).

I have been angrily mulling over the unfairness that specialty stamps are issued, they live a short life, and they are gone -- thus keeping me from the Monster Movie stamps I so coveted for my wedding invitations.

But I did not curse the heavens for my woes, and yea they have provided me with something even more fitting.

The most morbidly romantic man on earth is 200-years-old as of Monday, and his reward for a troubled life is a legacy of enviable work and his portrait on a specialty stamp. A stamp that I want to grace the invitations to my wedding.

Oh please, please, please fate: let me convince the husband-to-be and the mother-of-the-bride that this is a worthy and necessary purchase before something terrible happens and they are no longer available.