Maids and Men Cards: How to

While the cards may have seemed almost self-explanatory for other crafters out there...I thought it would be fun to break down the steps, and cost, of the cards from asking our Maids and Men.

First up was the card itself:

After much deliberation on what colors and types of cards to do, {and Austin pleading desperately with me to go to any other store besides Hobby Lobby and Michaels -sidenote: have you ever noticed there is no apostrophe in Michaels? So is it plural Michaels? rando. sorry} I decided that crisp white cards would be the best to build on from there.

I bought one of those Value Packs of cards and envelopes from Michaels for a whopping $5.99 for 50. We would only need 16...by far the most cost effective way to do a card, in my opinion, since I did not have to buy envelopes separately and all of the card stock was pre-cut. I bought the navy cardstock and vellum on the other hand at "The Lobby" as it is affectionately called around our house, for about $5.

After coming home with cards in tow, I measured them and figured I would leave about a 1/4 inch border of white, then do a 1/4 inch border of the blue, and then 1/4 inch in from that would be the photo and vellum.

It is important to remember though, if you are doing something like this with the ribbon at the top, do every other step first, before adhering anything to the card, or you will have to punch through to the inside of the card...and unless you have a long handled puncher you are in for some creative solutions...

So, we took the photo ourselves {camera with a self timer is imperative} and then I imported it to my computer where I used Picasa 3 to edit it.

If you have not heard of it, Picasa is powered by Google and is a free downloadable photo editing program. It is pretty basic, but I love it for quick fixes and it helps keep things really organized on your hard drive. It also interfaces really easily with Blogspot and Their Online Web Albums.

So, I cropped and sepia toned the photo to look copper-ish and then imported it into one of my favorite programs, Microsoft Publisher.

I know, I know, it is not fancy. But, I am of the personal opinion that with a few other small tools Microsoft Publisher and PowerPoint are some of the most easily usable design programs out there, and let's face it...most of us already have it. So I use them a lot.

I created a few pages in Publisher {it helps with my organization to be able to have multiple pages and save all aspects of a program in one file}. The first was the photo, and the next was a box with the wording for the vellum overlay.

I printed and trimmed both to the same size and then used an adhesive roller to attach the photo to the navy card stock. I used some removable glue dots that I had lying around to position the vellum on top of the photo, and then used your everyday hole punch to punch the ribbon holes.

I used white grosgrain ribbon that I found at The Lobby for 99 cents for a roll. I then tied a simple square knot and cut the edges and adhered the whole shebang to the front of the white card.

Card Cost Breakdown:

Cards and Envelopes...........................................$1.92 (for 16)
Cardstock and Vellum (8 Sheets of each)....................$5.00
Ribbon...................................................................$0.99
Total.....................................................................$7.91
Total per card........................................................$0.49

Not too shabby for 16 cute cards and the envelopes! Of course I did not factor in ink, adhesives, or regular computer paper, as I had them all already, but still pretty durn cost effective.

::whew:: That was a long explanation, but it is a relatively simple project, I swear. Next up, easy breezy envelope liners!

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Thank you Macy's

for finally making our wedding registry visible online.


As some of you noticed it was not visible when we first registered...so we sent an email.

and then another.

and then went to talk to someone at Macy's.

and then called the person we were supposed to call from that interaction.

and then followed up with an email that that person recommended we email.


and now? our registry is visible. Yay!


The whole time we were dealing with this, the Macy's reps kept reiterating, "This is so weird, we can totally see that you are in the system and the visibility is on!" yet...we were invisible.

I guess that it is just one of those things that you don't anticipate taking much more energy to take care of than you had planned. Like most things in life, right? :)

Nonetheless...the switch has been flipped and I heart Macy's again...just in time for friends and family discounts.

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Maids and Men

Though I haven't heard from a couple of them yet, I am going to go ahead and reveal how we asked our bridal party to join us! {I will wait for introductions to the party as a whole until we hear from everyone, but a tutorial will be coming soon too! :) }

We deliberated for a long time on how to do this...and then we decided, hey, why not DIY it?

Remember that Sneak Peek I gave you a couple weeks ago??? Well that was a peek at our "Will you be our..." cards!

Here are some better photos:

The "suite" as a whole

We used the same card for bridesmaids, groomsmen, MOH and Best Man.
The ladies got the bottle of champagne {plus some poppers!} and the men got the cigars*

Here is a closeup of the front of the card, and the self-made envelope liners

The inside said:

"but there is nothing that we would love more

than to have you celebrating with us at the finish line.

Will you be our {blank}?"

{Yes, those are really our feet, and please, please, ignore the grammar mistake on the front if you noticed it...the comma just did not look right with the change in font.}

The card in the envelope, as shown before

and a quick seal I whipped up...thanks Xyron!

A closeup of the champagne bottle label...thanks again trusty Xyron

The label is the same image of our feet, washed out, and a definition of the word "celebrate"...we had originally intended on making cigar labels that looked similar for the men, but ultimately decided not to...as the boys would probably not care :)

*I had a couple of ladies out of town, and found out that you cannot mail alcohol, whoops. So then I thought, "Hey! I will just send the poppers, good idea!" Just Kidding. Those are also illegal to mail. In the end I sent them a champagne glass, with a picture of their champagne bottle that is awaiting them the next time we see each other.

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Dear Kate,

I love you.

 

  

  

  

{from here} 

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and 7 days later...

Wow! It has been a whole week since my last post. I apologize profusely to my devoted readers :)

I will blame this lack of posting on a vacation where cable internet was unreachable and also on my general frustration with DSL...but do not fret, for there are plenty of things to talk about and reveal this week!

First and foremost I would just like to say that the wedding is officially real. Now that we have seen so many friends and family and been able to talk about and reflect on what this means for us, it is so much more, well, real - for lack of a better word.

We were so blessed to have spent time with people that we love over the last week and are amazed at how willing, and excited even, they all are at coming to be with us in Wisconsin, of all places. As we sat in traffic for hours and hours and hours yesterday {more on that later} we were able to really wonder at how we have been so fortunate to have such amazing people come into our lives.

So, thanks. To all of you.

Get excited for much information to come!

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Off they go!

Our Save the Dates are off today! All 120ish of them. {minus 5, or so, because we are still unaware of significant others last names, etc...who knew?}

Here is what a stack of 120ish labeled and stamped postcards look like

{courtesy of a man who loves me enough to pose for this picture while only rolling his eyes twice}

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Purchase!

I bought this lantern today at TJ Maxx for a whopping $20!

{It's pretty big. That is the largest candle that I had in the house!}

Right now I am planning on using it as decor on the Escort Card table...our guest list just passed 250 {out.of.control.i.know.believe.me.i.know.} so there won't be much room for anything besides cards, but I think this might do nicely with a bigger candle and maybe some greenery at the base?

The table itself will be sitting inside the entry, in front of this fireplace {sans furniture, of course}

{sorry for the blurriness...taken on the run}

I hate to block the pretty fireplace, but what you see off to either side is the entry into the main room, so there aren't many other options. I am planning on throwing some other things up on the mantle, possibly some initial letters reminiscent of these lovelies by Martha...

Once the escort cards have all been taken, this same table will become the favor display for departing guests...more on our super fun favors later, but in the mean time...what do y'all think of the ideas so far for escort card display? Any awesome ideas for a mantle/entryway/escort card table out there?

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