DIY Wedding Invitations

I decided to make our wedding invitations because I thought it would be a money-saver and, as usual, I love to impose projects on myself where I grossly underestimate the time and effort that would be required. Time and effort aside, there is something just so alluring about doing something completely myself so that I can be in control of every personal touch of my project.  In retrospect, now three years later, I laugh at how much time I put into these invitations--what do people do with invitations anyway?  Don't they usually just end up in the trash?

For our invitations, I don't think I did anything particularly innovative or cool--what I really came to appreciate was the usefulness of Martha Stewart's line of paper punches.  I thought the punched out flowers were exactly what I was looking for for my invitations, and I was super excited to find them.  This also led to my discovery of Glue Dots--which are like little circles of double sided tape.  By putting a Glue Dot on each punched-out flowers, they basically turn into permanent stickers.

So I don't think it's worth actually writing a "how-to" for the invitations (as I said, they are nothing really that special), but here are some tips:

• Cardstock: Using a textured cardstock instantly improves the perceived quality of your invitations.  You can find cardstock suppliers online (much cheaper than buying by the sheet at the craft store).  Order a few sample sheets so you can experiment and play around with them before committing to a large order.
• Vellum: There is something very wedding-y about vellum paper.  You can buy it in packs and print on them at home.  When I printed the text on my vellum at home, I also printed very faint gray lines to mark the corners of the size I wanted my invitation to be.  That made it much easier later to cut down to size using my Exact-o knife and ruler.  (I suppose it would just have been easier if I had a paper cutter....)
• Ribbon:  I actually also dangled a shell bead in the center of the ribbon (to go along with our "elegant-beach-themed" wedding), but I probably wouldn't do it again because the little bump the ribbon bow made ended up costing us extra in postage!  Just something to think about.
• Scorer: You can buy an actual scorer, or use the blunt edge of a butter knife.  Score your paper by running over fold lines with a hard edge and a ruler.  This will make your folds clean and straight, especially when using stockier paper.

Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to complete your invitations, and have fun!