Has anyone else seen the new Pottery Barn catalog for Fall 2009? I’m loving all the vintage looking inspiration (even through it doesn’t fit the “look” of our house). Something that really caught my eye was this recycled wine bottle light fixture. It reminds me of the cute wine bottle vases and candle holders some of those crafty ‘bees whipped up. Wouldn’t this but fun hanging at a vineyard wedding? or on my back deck…ok it’s a bit pricey so maybe not but it’s seriously fun.
After a few hours fighting with Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to get the look I wanted, I started dropping graphics and text into a post card template I had created in InDesign. I create two documents; one for the front of the cards and another set to landscape for the backs. I then created a 3rd document with the accommodations instructions that the wedding party would receive in addition to the Save the Date cards.
By this time I was running out of time, and patience so I saved both files as PDF files. We ran these down to the local big Office Supply store and had them printed on heavy ivory cardstock which gave them a bit “older” look. While these were being completed for us, I ran home and printed out the accommodations cards on some gray cardstock, cut the page into 4 cards and rounded the corners to make them look a bit more finished. We used corresponding gray Paper-Source envelopes which I lined with Amy Butler print scrapbook paper. Printing and cutting were our biggest expense but the whole project for 100 cards cost around $65 (including postage). They were pretty far from where we started, but we were both happy with how they turned out.
I didn’t create detailed instructions because I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested. I will be glad to email you the InDesign template, or answer any other questions about creating DIY postcards if you send me a message.
My first task was to find a postcard template that looked vintage, or make one. Oh how I wish this wonderful resource from Blah, Blah, Blahg existed several months ago.
I set out to draw my own. That didn’t go so well. Then I tried finding a stamp online, but nothing really said “vintage” to me. By now we are 2 weeks past the “should have” sent date. I wondered if I could buy a vintage post card and copy it…then it hit me. I HAD some vintage postcards. Earlier this year while helping clean out my grandmother’s house I had picked up a handful of unused Christmas postcards. Now I just had to find them…..
Here are a few of them. Aren’t they fun?
Isn’t that just perfect? So I scanned it in, saved it as a graphic and got started on the front of the card.
When we started thinking about Save the Dates (STD’s) we weren’t really sure we needed them. After all our venue was an hour from our house…so really wasn’t the invite and wedsite enough? However it was also cross country for some of our guests and even across “the pond” from other, that meant that our guests might need more time to plan to join us than we had originally thought. So what’s a girl to do in that situation…google “DIY save the dates” of course.
We realized that we both gravitated to vintage looking postcards that would give the date and our wedding website. That decided the next catch was where to find them. The first place I turned was my crafty friend etsy!
I really liked this one…but I agree it’s not quite “vintage”
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I also liked this one….again not exactly vintage looking
And there was this one…not a postcard at all….but we loved the simple style. Do you notice we are drifting from our original idea.
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Then we saw these thank you cards courtesy of Martha…they were really, really close.
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Then all of a sudden….there they were. B & I were on the same wavelength, this was it. Even the date on the photo was our wedding date…it was meant to be. The birds sang and all the world was happy.
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….until I read the pricing/timelines. They weren’t out of the budget but by the time we decided we liked them it was already a week past the date they “should” have gone into the mail. The future-hubby wondered why I didn’t just do them myself since that’s what we had originally talked about. I knew there was no way I could recreate these beauties, so I decided to cut my losses and just attempt something with the vintage look of the text on the back of the card.
That would be simple right?
