On Saturday, Michelle and Krystal began to work on a sample invitation layout. Krystal had brought many of the items for the invites up to her house and we set up our work area in the dining room. We had already figured out what type of wording she wanted for the invite earlier that week with the help of mom and dad. What type of font to use was the hardest because Krystal stumbled upon a site, this consumed many hours, called www.dafont.com . There are so many fonts available for download and easy installation, that it was difficult to finally decide on which to use. She chose Parma Petit and Special Type for our invitations.
We printed off several of these invitations, and began to experiment with the stamps that Krystal picked up from Michaels. She really wanted to include the tree on the invite, but with limited space available we decided to experiment with some of the other stamps that came with the set. We chose to use a curly leaf design for the corners of the invite. At first, we only stamped it using the paprika ink (Versa Color #155) that we had gotten back at Rachel’s Store earlier that day. Even though, this looked great it still was lacking the ‘wow’ feature. We thought maybe a pumpkin the lower corner would work; however, it was an immediate decision that that was not exactly what we were looking for. Then Michelle came up with the idea of creating a shadow of the paprika design using the sand ink (Versa Color #151) on the same stamp. We did this, and it was a definite winner. A decision was made!! These stamps will be used at the top left hand corner and the lower right hand corner on a diagonal.
Now the dilemma of where to put the tree was the issue. Krystal really wanted the tree to be used, and really only bought the stamp set because of the tree. We debated on whether or not to include it on the front of the pocket or to use it somehow on the outside of the invite. We chose to use it on the outside on a brown piece of card stock (Recollections 83916-2010-02) and attach it to the invite by using orange ribbon.
On Sunday, it was off to Michael’s to buy more supplies for the invites. Grandmother went along and was excited to be a part of picking out the color of cardstock for the tree background and the ribbon. I believe by the time this wedding is over, they will know Krystal by name there!
On Monday night, we began the process of choosing what shape the cardstock on the front of the invite should be. All I can say is thank goodness for the Cricut machine. Well, at first I didn’t complete understand how to use it, and required significant assistance from mom. After a few minutes of frustration, which turned out to be operator (me) error, we chose to use a shape from the storybook cartridge called a marquee and set it at 4 inches. About an hour later, we had 100 of these shapes cut out stacked neatly in piles of 10.
On Tuesday, we began to experiment with different colors of ink and embossing powder on the tree stamp. There were many that Krystal liked and a few that she really didn’t like. The final choice for our tree was using walnut Ink It Up ink (walnut #STP 1069) from A.C. Moore and the Pear Lustre Peridot embossing powder( EP-221) from Michaels. That night Krystal learned several things about embossing and stamping in general. 1) The ink dries out quickly if the cover is left off of it for too long. 2) Wash off the stamp periodically for better stamping quality. 3) Move the heating tool instead of holding it still too long because it will burn your paper. 4) There’s always a back side to the cards incase a mistake happens. She also found out that she definitely can be a little too picky about how the trees looked. (Krystal’s words) So much so, that at one point mom stuck her tongue out at me when I mentioned that I didn’t think that there was enough embossing powder on the trees. I have to admit, I’m not the scrapbooking card making person like my mother is, and I am learning a lot by trial and error and listening to my mother’s advice. She does have good ideas.
Tonight, we finished stamping and embossing the 100 trees. Krystal went back through the stack, looking at each and redoing them if necessary. She’s a little obsessive compulsive about them, but only because they are the face of their wedding. These are the first impressions that guests will have that will set the tone for their wedding along with giving them a hint of the color scheme. They don’t need to be perfect, but they must represent our style appropriately.
Up next, attaching our trees to the invites…
