Look what I did!
Posted
Sunday, March 02, 2008 12:51 PM
Well, it took me over a month, but I've finished my STD's! I am so proud of how they turned out! My Bridezilla moment: I called my fiance the minute I had the first one assembled and told him to rush home right now to see them. Luckily, he was already on his way home!
So, as some of you remember, I printed the magnets without the date on them. To fix that, I attached a clear return address label with our date on it. It looks amazing!
Notice the date on the bottom left. The letter size is a bit bigger than the rest. Unless you look really close, you can't tell the date is added on. I actually took these to the bar the other night to work on them. I got like 80 of them done sitting there drinking beers. I was determined to get these done on time!
Then, I bought Reception/Reply cards from Office Max and printed all of our travel and lodging info on them. Of course, all the fonts and colors match! I used a snowflake punch to punch out a million blue, sparkly snowflakes, which I painstakingly glued onto the front.
On the inside, I attached our magnet using photocorners. I really like these, they make the whole thing look very professional. Although they are a pain to put together.
On the outside, I put return address labels with snowflakes on them. I got these cheap from Oriental Trading Company. I felt so OCD trying to print these out. Seriously, it took me like an hour and 20 tries to get them all lined up straight. I guess it was worth it, but I think I like either pre-printed address labels, or Avery, since my computer is already set-up to print Avery.
Then I added cute snowflake stickers to the back, and ta-da! My beautiful, DIY STD's! I debated about printing envelopes with the addresses, or hand-addressing them myself. I decided to see how my own hand was, and I like it. Plus, it's easier and quicker than struggling with my printer to get everything perfect. I've been doing enough of that lately anyway.
So, altogether, my STD's cost more than I thought they would, but I'm still pretty budget-friendly. Here's the breakdown: (Yes, I record every wedding purchase to keep an accurate budget breakdown and total of our wedding. I know, I'm a dork)
Vistaprint Magnets: $30 (incl shipping and handling)
Snowflake Address Labels from OTC: $4
Cards and Envelopes from Office Max: $45 (very nice quality, BTW)
Snowflake Stickers: $4 (for 200)
Snowflake Punch from Michaels $10 (Will be using for other projects)
Blue Sparkly Paper (to cut snowflakes from) $3
Photocorners $4 (500 count)
Clear Labels from Wal-Mart $9 (If I put the date on right, I wouldn't need these)
Blue Sharpies $4 (Bought to write date on magnet, using for addresses instead)
Grand total, not including postage, for 100 magnets and cards: $115
Not bad! We'll hand deliver as many as we can to save on postage. Luckily, Matt has some family in town this week-end, and we'll be driving to Sacramento soon, so that will save on postage too.
Sometimes, I amaze myself!
So now, I'm keeping busy glueing 300 snowflakes on 100 cards, attaching 400 photocorners to 100 magnets, assembling, addressing, and stickering envelopes! This is the part of wedding planning that I was most looking forward to: all the busy work!