Monday, May 9, 2011

Enveloper Pusher

Last week, M and I mailed the invites to our Countdown Party.  It was my first foray into the wonderful world of stationary and design and a good crash course for DIYing our save the dates and actual wedding invites.  I designed the invitation, then outsourced the printing to VistaPrint because I had a $50 for $10 Living Social deal I wanted to use.  We went with flat cards with a glossy, color front and matte black/white back.  But I'll reveal those to you on Wednesday, when hopefully all our guests have gotten them!

Today we're talking envelopes.  Who knew that such a little package could yield such fun (and anguish)?  I used the default white paper envelopes that VistaPrint gave us for free, mostly because the cards were such a weird size I didn't want to try and match envelopes.  It made me sad that they weren't more colorful, but luckily I solved the problem myself by accident...

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About halfway through printing we started running out of ink, and my printer produced some awesome color effects!  Addresses printed in purple and fuchsia – and one lucky guest who got a rainbow-effect with multiple colors!  Eventually we had to give up and buy more ink because the addresses became illegible, but I think about 30% of our guests got a cool color for their address.

Clearly I didn't mind the color change, and buying more ink only set us back a day and maybe 3 envelopes that got ruined.  All in all, no big deal, but definitely a cautionary tale for when we print our invites.  I have a feeling I'll be a lot more picky about color, and will be sure to give the task plenty of time.  Another thing to keep in mind is always ordering more envelopes than needed!  Luckily we had extra invites and envelopes, because it took me about 6 tries (on 2 envelopes) to get the text aligned properly, and another 6 or so envelopes messed up when the printer fed wrong.  Again, no big deal because we had the extras.

My favorite part of the whole invite, though, is the stamps.  As soon as I knew we were having a Disney themed e-party, I started searching for stamps.  Unfortunately, the post office doesn't have any current Disney stamps (though they're coming out with an awesome Pixar collection later this summer... so jealous!)


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Instead I turned to eBay, and found quite a few options.  I settled on the Disney Romance sheet for obvious reasons, which sold at just a little higher than face value once you added in shipping.  Since they're only 39¢, I found these vintage Walt Disney stamps from 1968 to get up to current letter postage.  Don't they look sweet together?  

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 Has anyone else become stamp-obsessed once you started sending (or receiving) invites?  Would you buy vintage stamps off eBay?  

1 comment:

  1. All those stamps are so cute! I think the Disney love stamps work perfect with the Walt Disney. I love how it all works together!

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