Reading

Londonstani - Gautam Malkani

Lost unanswered questions

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the Lost finale, but it did leave me with more than a few questions. I appreciate the inherent mystery that exists in order for Lost to be a good show, but really....they could have given us a bit more to work with. This video is painstakingly accurate with regards to the feelings of millions of viewers like myself. I only know the answer to the very last question, and the answer...is a resounding NO!

Birdcage card holder

DIY Wedding Project: Birdcage card holder

We found this white birdcage at Home Outfitters this weekend. I've actually been searching for a birdcage for months now, and this one fit the bill perfectly. It's large enough to fit cards from guests, small enough that it's not gawdy, an easy-to-open lid, vintage feel, part wood/part metal, and plain enough to decorate without looking too busy....

I stuck with the theme from our wedding invitations and printed a simple design on our invitation cardstock, embossed the strips on the side, lined it with ribbon and mounted it on silver cardstock. I used double sided tape to line the birdcage itself with two strips of ribbon.

These are my favourite kind of DIY Projects- they tie together the theme of your wedding decor, they're dead easy and they add a great personal touch from the couple. 

DIY Wedding Invitations Phase 2

DIY Wedding Project: Invitations

We're about half-way through printing all of our invitations- we ended up buying a new printer that could print with a full bleed because nobody in the lower mainland seems to have the simple capability of doing so, despite their big, fancy printing equipment. It's been a long, stressful, frustrating process, but I'm really pleased with the results.

After printing the card, we rounded all four corners.

Next was the most finicky part: running the card through the embossing machine.

I loved adding texture to the invitations...probably my favourite feature.

We used ribbon to tie in the eggplant colour because I wanted the print design to be mostly silver and black.

Once the ribbon was secure, we mounted the card on a piece of heavy, silver cardstock.

There is a lot of labour that goes into each invitation, but seeing our stack grow higher is incredibly satisfying.

We also have two 3.5"x5" cards: the RSVP card and the reception card. We haven't even started to think about printing those, and we're hoping that it will be simpler than the invitations.

Bon voyage, mes amis!

Last night we spent the evening with our best buds who are heading off to Europe for 5 weeks. We're going to miss them dearly, but I was so excited to hear that they're starting a travel blog! Kate just got a new DSLR camera (very jealous!) so I'm looking forward to seeing their amazing photos. They wanted me to make a banner for the new site, and I was more than happy to oblige:

Sleepy meerkats

We've been watching BBC's new series called "Life", which I just think of as "Planet Earth" 2.0. The best segment so far has been on meerkats. Check out this video of meerkats falling asleep standing up when they're supposed to be on the watch for predators. Too cute. Too. Damn. Cute.

DIY Wedding Invitations Phase 1

DIY Wedding Project: Invitations

We've dedicated this weekend to finally getting our invitations done. We sent out our save-the-dates last September, and we also did those ourselves. They were pretty low-key though; the design wasn't a full bleed and there was no ribbon/embossing/tricky printing involved. And one envelope. We made sticker address labels and sticker seals for the back of the save-the-date envelopes. They were easy to print, easy to apply. The save-the-dates were a cake walk.

The invitation design, however, is a full bleed. And our printer, it turns out, is a worthless piece of junk. They've printed out sideways, crooked, half on the page, blurred...and then at one point the invitation printed out and all it said was: Screw you Kristen. From, your shitty printer.

The envelopes this time are acting as the proverbial monkey on my back. Partially my own fault. Rather than print address label stickers, I wanted to print the design directly on the envelopes as we printed the address of the guest. It won't print the return address though, not without being cut off every single time. We've tried InDesign, jpegs, pdfs and even bloody Microsoft Word. It might be the thick envelopes that are throwing off the printer. I eventually gave up and decided to use the reject address labels that I didn't like for the save-the-dates. The back of the envelopes look cute, though.

We used our custom-made stamp that I designed back in February rather than an envelope seal like we used for the STDs. I like the look, but mostly I was just excited to use the stamp for the first time on something! Printing the RSVP mini-envelopes was relatively problem-free, so that was a nice surprise.

So we currently have roughly 170 envelopes and nothing to put inside. I don't want to post any photos of the actual invitations until we have the printer issues figured out. Right now all I have to show are some poorly assembled mock-ups and an InDesign file that looks pretty bland without the embossing, ribbon and silver cardstock-backing that make the invitation complete.

Listening to

Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros