Tag Archives: Handmade Wedding

How We Made our Wedding Invitations (and how you can too)

Posted on June 9, 2013 by | Comments Off on How We Made our Wedding Invitations (and how you can too)

Our wedding invitations all went out this week–which means a week ago Brock and I spent a lot of time putting them together. We’re throwing this wedding on a super tight budget, so every bit of money saved is a good thing. We discussed what we wanted to do a little bit, and spent a lot of time browsing etsy debating whether we should buy a downloadable, printable package or find a local artist to design them for us. We even debated making them completely from scratch ourselves. In the end we compromised a little bit. I was able to score the base of the invitations themselves in a clearance at Michael’s. Finding them was complete serendipity, but I was able to get all the stationary and stickers for the whole shebang in one day for a fraction of what you would pay a printer. Plus, we were able to include some very specific information for our guests regarding the pot-luck dinner and food allergies with no added costs.

The outside of the invitation, which, I think, was meant to be a birthday invitation, is fun and kind of quirky. The bright yellow envelop sets a cheerful mood and the elephant balancing on a ball is the perfect metaphor for putting on a wedding, but in a fun way, because he’s wearing a party hat! Plus, Circus. The inside, however, was completely blank. Stark white invitations are no fun at all, so I gathered my supplies and with a little design help from Brock, we were able to put the invitations together in one afternoon and evening.

makingtheinvitations

A little colored paper, a glue stick, some free fonts, a little time writing, and some funky scissors were all we used.

Here’s the whole experience from start to finish, just imagine the detritus of making them isn’t there.

weddinginvitationenvelope

weddinginvitations

invitation open

weddinginvitation

We glued the actual invitation into the card and included three inserts: a note concerning gifts and explaining why the wedding is gluten free, the call to action with the URL for RSVPs, and a label for whatever food dish they choose to bring listing common food allergens outside gluten so there’s no guessing and no accidental sickness.

My favorite part was probably going through the sticker book that matched the stationary. There are some creepy stickers in there.

creepy mustache sticker
What’s that all about?

So here’s what you really want to know, how much did all this cost and can you do it yourself? The cost breakdown is below and you can absolutely do this yourself.

Stationary: $15.00 (for 10 sets of 6)
Stickers: $3.00
Ticket-Edge Scissors: $1.99
Colored Paper: $15.00
Shipping Labels: $2.00 (estimate because I purchased a giant package of printable shipping labels ages ago)
Stamps: $20.70 (About 1/3 of our invitations have been hand delivered)
Fonts: Free (from here)
Design and Labor: Time

Total: $57.69*

All that, and the invitations are exactly how I want them to look. It’s pretty brilliant.

*I did not include the cost of ink in my accounting, because we have a laser printer, and the toner it takes for a job like this is negligible. However, if you are doing a project that involves color, please do not disregard the cost of printer ink.

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Handmade Wedding Update

Posted on May 7, 2013 by | Comments Off on Handmade Wedding Update

With just three over three months to go til the wedding, I am not nearly as far along as I would like to be. Part of the trouble has been that Brock is in his final semester at school, and has been completely swamped with course work. He graduates on Saturday, and then he will be a documented Physicist, so that’s pretty cool. Then we can take, I hope, more trips out to the farm to get the major whosits and whatsits and cleanups done over the next couple of months.

For now, we are trying to workout the finer details of the (very spare, very non-traditional) ceremony. And I am attempting to suss out the schedule so I can write the invitations and make all the inserts.

What I do have is this:
boxoweddingstuff
This is my wedding box. So far, it has favors, invitations, thank you notes, and table decorations. For all of that I am $200 in. I hit a killer sale at Michael’s one day (while I was shopping for work–shh! don’t tell). I just turned around and there was all this wonderfully terrifying circus themed stuff in the $1-$2 range. Needless to say, I stocked up. You can easily see the table decorations in the box. The base for the invitations are the yellow things with the elephants. My favorite, perhaps are the really silly mask fans.

terrifyingyetawesome
They are the most terrifying of all.

But I also think they lend themselves to silliness. And I really, really want this shindig to be fun.

Next time, I’ll show you the handmade part of the invitations.

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A Garden Party Under the Big Top?

Posted on February 10, 2013 by | Comments Off on A Garden Party Under the Big Top?

People keep asking me about wedding colors, and me, being me, immediately don’t know how to communicate all of the things that go through my head upon bringing up these thoughts. I usually end up saying something lame, “You know, summer wedding in Kansas, so Sunflower, which I guess means yellow?” Finally, someone read my mind and put it all into a neat little graphic on pinterest.

It encompasses the garden party aesthetic I am envisioning closer than anything else I have seen–possibly because it wasn’t originally meant for a wedding. And while it involves sea foam, it is not just yellow and sea foam, which frankly, resembles vomit in my head (I can’t explain why), and for some reason seems to be the thing at the moment–at least according to Pinterest. And if Pinterest doesn’t have the pulse of the nation, I don’t know what does.

The thing is, most people ask about wedding colors, and I get the feeling they mean bridesmaids dresses and cummerbunds. Since we’re going informalish, and having no wedding party, there will be very little of all of that. “The colors” I am thinking about are more to set a mood for the day. That I want things to be a little whimsical, a little romantic, a little self-deprecating, and a lot of fun. For instance, I stumbled across this invitation on etsy, which is a little circusy, but also pretty hilarious. Let’s be honest, the only thing that could make this invitation better was if dude had a monocle. (Bonus, the artist is from Lawrence, so local!)

Then, I found this dress.
weddingdress
Which yes, is from Old Navy, and yes, is white, two things I would not have expected for me to want in a wedding dress, but it’s kind of perfect.

So things seem to be coming together rather nicely at the moment. I am gathering ideas and finding some sources of inspiration. I have a great surprise for wedding favors up my sleeve, but I’m not quite ready to share just yet.

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Drive By Update on All the Things

Posted on February 3, 2013 by | Comments Off on Drive By Update on All the Things

First, an update on the hand-made wedding thing.

marla1

Here’s our save the date postcard, photographed by Brock’s sister, Lori Locke. She’s an amazing photographer and artist. (The font in the photo is original by her.) If you live in Northeast Kansas or the KC Metro area, give her site a look! The picture was taken in front of the old barn (at the farm where the wedding will take place) over Thanksgiving. (True story, Lori was just taking pictures for fun. She didn’t know we were getting married yet when the photo was taken. I am really grateful to her for letting us use it!)

Next, here’s a quick picture of what went out in the January Shipment of the RAWR sock club.

rawrjanuary

The inaugural yarn was, of course, hot pink, could it be anything else? Also, the special gift this time was a hand-printed greeting card featuring hipster Tiny Dino. This was my first shot at block printing, and I think it turned out pretty well. Brock drew the dinosaur and helped a bit cutting the linoleum. I really like how the cards came out. I am toying with using this technique for the wedding invitations.

rawrcard
Card in detial

I finished my abigail cardigan and have been wearing it for a couple of weeks. Not one person has asked me if I knit it myself, which tells me I did a good job with the construction, so I am pleased. The yarn is pilling a lot in the underarms, but nothing a sweater stone can’t handle.

I am now hard at work on the Call Him Ishmael sweater I am making for Brock out of Nikol Lohr’s Literary Knits book. I am knitting it out of plain ole wool yarn that I dyed a nice masculine red, somewhere between brick and wine. I am nearly done with the yoke and love the pattern. It’s the perfect ration of mindless stockinette to shaping and cabling. Of course, it’s been in time out for the last three days because I twisted half the cables backwards on the last cable round and didn’t notice until I was four rounds up. I have become rather adept at dropping down and re-twisting the cables (the trick is to use double pointed needles on just the part you need to work on), but couldn’t face actually doing it quite yet. I will tackle it this afternoon so I have something to do during the Superbowl, as I am neither a big fan of football or beer and junk food.

Speaking of beer and junk food, I have been hibernating in the losing weight arena, possibly eating too many gluten free bread-like products and not enough vegetables. I have, however, been working out more regularly, and am making a commitment to do something active every day this month. So far so good. I hope to give weekly check-in updates about my progress in this arena. I have been gluten-free for 10 months now. I feel like after almost a year, I should have made more progress. I do try to remind myself that it has been a stressful year full of new jobs and changing birth controls and stuff that generally makes it difficult to lose weight. But then again, what year isn’t, you know? All I know, is I want to be stronger and buy fewer yards of yarn to make myself a sweater. Two, very simple goals.

And last, but certainly not least, I have been very distracted the last couple of weeks. Our apartment complex changed it’s pet policy at the beginning of the year, which made my goal of eventually living in a place where I could have a pet and a garden in the ground slightly more attainable. We decided to adopt a kitten from the local shelter. Since then, I have been reading about taking care of cats, reviewing cat products and foods (and trying to find an affordable grain-free cat food.) Basically, I haven’t been thinking about much else other than making our home right for our new addition. It’s very similar to how I was when preparing for Athrun, though much less intense.

minerva
Meet Minerva Pigwidgeon Cheeseburger III, I am sure she will be a recurring character.

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Building My Handmade Weddding; Step One: Admitting it’s Happening

Posted on December 6, 2012 by | Comments Off on Building My Handmade Weddding; Step One: Admitting it’s Happening


A pretty picture of some wool because I don’t have anything else to share at the moment.

Last Tuesday, I woke up with a plan. I was going to whip the apartment into shape, make a schedule for the Christmas knitting, take photos of the hand knit goods I have for sale but not up on etsy yet, and finally finish my blog plans and business mapping that I always seems to be half-finished with. I was actually making good headway into getting there too. I sketched out a knitting schedule over my lunch break (that I have since misplaced and have not followed in the slightest), and my mind was working overtime on developing new projects and new promotions. I was going to take over the world with yarn.

Then I unexpectedly had to work Tuesday evening. By the time I left the Museum Tuesday night, I was sick. I had a raging headache, clogged sinuses, and that really horrible fuzzyhead that makes you stupid when you have a cold. It came out of nowhere and I was down. I could focus on nothing more strenuous than silly novels. (I am not complaining. The best part about being sick is that it is a perfect excuse to read as many silly novels as you can.) My plans for world-domination-with-yarn were washed away just as quickly as they had flooded in.

Sort of. I still have plans, and I have a lot I want to do, but I feel like I have been playing catch up for an entire week. I try to put an equal amount of time into Tiny Dino Studios as I do into my day job and last week that just didn’t happen. I am recovering my energy and mental clarity, and I have SO MUCH I want to talk to you guys about, but I’m about a week behind, so please bear with me if I bombard the blog a little bit over the next couple of days. For now, I will lay the ground work for something I have been dying to unburden.

Weddings…..blah
If you were paying attention a couple of posts ago, you probably noticed that I dropped a little announcement in at the bottom of a picture post. Now that it’s had a few days to simmer, I feel like addressing it more substantially.

I am getting married in August 2013. I am giddy about it. I can’t wait. I want to throw a big party for everybody and dance to Roxy Music (and maybe that song that Luke and Lorelai dance together to for the first time at the end of season 4–because I am a huge sap) and tell the world how much I love this man. Now, keeping all of this in mind, I have to confess that most aspects to weddings make me want to vomit in a Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life sort of way.

Anything that says “Mr. and Mrs.” or has cartoon birds kissing or anything that otherwise boils two complicated people who are also part of a nuanced relationship down to little more than the symbols on the door of public restrooms I generally abhor. I can’t eat cake, so there’s no fun in looking at them and Bridal magazines make me want to withdraw from society when they proclaim “Dream Wedding on a Budget: Under $10,000″

I think I choked when I read that. $10,000?! You have got to be effing joking! I was thinking closer to $1000, not including rings. If I can make that include the rings, I will be happy. I am cheap and not ashamed of it.

Now, I am not putting down anyone who has spent $10,000 on their nuptials, nor anyone who had one of those Save the Date cards that had a Mr. and Mrs. banner. You did the wedding you wanted, your way (I hope). I just know that these things aren’t representative of who I am, or who Brock (I have the impulse to start calling him The Professor on the blog, just for the hell of it. That might start now) and I are as a couple.

We are simple, build it yourself kind of people with big dreams. Both a little shy sometimes, but we make each other laugh. And we dance together all jerky and uncoordinated like because it’s fun. He makes Mr. Darcy jokes, because he is the perfect man. We are not above being sappy and romantic.

So, here I am, thinking about how to plan this wedding, not being inspired by just about anything I see on websites or Etsy or at the craft store. I did start a board on Pinterest which basically just reinforces that I like yellow and flowers–something that we all already knew. But nothing has struck a chord in me just yet.

By now, if you are still reading, I am sure you are wondering where I am going with this little rant of mine. I’ll tell you.

I want a simple, pretty, handmade wedding.

Here’s what I’ve got so far:
The wedding will be at Brock’s The Professor’s family farm.
The wedding will take place in August, in Kansas, in the country. That means there should be *fingers crossed* no shortage of sunflowers.
I will make decorations and favors myself, as well as whatever necessary gifts will be given.
The affair will be fairly informal.

Now, here’s the fun part: I am taking you along with me on the journey of figuring out all the niggling little details of this great big party. And I need ideas. I will be searching out and sharing what I find over the next 8ish months on the way to making this thing a reality, because I have no idea where to begin. And if you have any tips or tricks, I would love to hear them.

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Super Fast Fiber Fun Time

Posted on November 25, 2012 by | Comments Off on Super Fast Fiber Fun Time

I am running late for my spinning group, but I wanted to check in with a bit of fiber and fun.

First, the obligatory photo of the current sock in progress.

Then I show off all the new handspun I just added to the Tiny Dino Studios etsy store

And then I sneak in the part where I kind of officially announce that I am getting married in August.

See, fun, right?

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