Techniques 1 - Cutting

What, cutting?  Really?  You are going to devote a whole blog to tips on how to cut bits of paper?  Is that even a technique?

Sure, it is.  Years of experience have taught me that, as with most things, there are ways of cutting paper and card that achieve better results than you might first get.  And yes, it doesn't seem like the most scintillating of subjects, but it's kind of important to producing good quality wedding stationery and it seems like a good place to start thinking about the basics.

First, and most important to the discussion, is what are you going to cut with?  Four tools spring to mind: Scissors, craft knife, paper trimmer or guillotine.  You'll need at least one of these and probably a combination of at least two, but if you happen to have all four then you are well and truly sorted.

Now, I can't really imagine a household without a pair of scissors in it, but they'll need to have a decent blade length ( 4inches or more), be clean and above all sharp.  Sharp goes for anything you are cutting with...believe me, when you have hundreds of  pieces to cut there is nothing more frustrating than a blunt blade, in whatever form.  Now, skill with scissors is a personal thing...some people have it and some people don't.  Personally, I wouldn't recommend them for cutting anything other than ribbons, adhesive tape and other bits and bobs.  Small bladed pairs can be used to cut out more intricate shapes if it's this and not a straight line you are after.

A craft knife (looks a bit like a scalpel) has interchangeable blades for when the one that you are using gets blunted.  New blades are fantastically sharp and so every care should be taken to avoid injuring yourself.  Use a craft knife with a steel or steel edge ruler and you can get a lovely straight edge.  Use them freehand, if you are confident enough and you can cut curved and more intricate shapes fairly easily.  You'll get better with practice.

A paper trimmer is great for cutting.  They come with either a fixed or rotary blade, there are a vast array of brands available and they don't cost an arm and a leg.  Most of the trimmers I have used have been better for lighter weight papers than card, but that's not to say they won't cut a good heavy weight.  Most come with a few handy measures already on them so if you know you are cutting A5 pieces you can just follow the guides easily enough.  Often these types of trimmer come with a selection of blades; cutting, scoring and perforating for instance.  Much as I find these trimmers easy and reliable enough to use, I don't actually use one for business.

My preferred tools for straight cuts is a guillotine.  The reason I prefer these over trimmers, is speed of use.  I personally just find it faster when I am cutting  a large number of base cards or mats to use a guillotine.  As with paper trimmers they come with a base board of varying size, pre marked with measures usually in mm and inches.  You can get them with finger guards, but the one's I use don't have them.  It's not that I am reckless, or a natural risk taker, it is simply easier to see exactly where you are cutting and faster to change to the next piece of card.  It also allows for cutting multiple sheets at once, but I avoid this as it can lead to inaccurate cutting.

Tips:

• Keep a small bottle of white or methylated spirits nearby if you are using scissors to cut double sided adhesive tape.  The adhesive builds up your blades and renders them practically useless for anything else.  Use a cotton wool pad with a few drops of liquid and they will clean up and be good as new.

• If you are using a craft knife, consider using a glass cutting mat rather than a self healing mat.  I find I get a better, easier cut and my blades stay sharper for longer.

• Always apply pressure in towards the ruler when using a craft knife for straight cuts.  That way you are less likely to wander off your cut line.  Likewise, keep your ruler on the inside line of your work.

• Change the blade of your craft knife as soon as it starts to become dulled.  Cutting card is much harder with a dull blade and you are much more likely to make errors and waste costly materials.

• When buying a paper trimmer or guillotine go for the biggest base board you can justify.  It's tempting to go for the smaller, space saving options (they often have pull out extension bars after all) but they make cutting base cards or mats larger (longer/wider) than the base board difficult and frustrating.  In the early days of GettingHitched I had one of these and you should have seen what I had rig up to cut anything longer than 14cm!  My advise, do what I eventually had to and buy at least an A4 size, if not A3.

• When using a guillotine always check the accuracy of the measures that are marked on the board by measuring from the cutting edge with a ruler.  If the guillotine is spot on accurate that's great, if not you know you will need to adjust for the discrepancy.

• When you want to cut 50 pieces of card to the exact same measurements, use some repositionable adhesive to stick a flat ruler down to the base board along the line of your measurement.  This makes a straight 'fence' at 90 degrees to the top line of the guillotine that you can butt each piece of card up to.  In this way you are not measuring each piece of card by eye, you are just cutting the card to the measurement set by the fence.  Even if you mismeasured your fence placement by a few mm, each card will still be exactly the same size.

Styles that never go out of fashion

Trends come, trends go.  That's what makes them trends.  There are two styles however that are never not 'on trend' and so are always popular.  Part of this popularity stems from their versatility.  Fashion proof stationery can suit any wedding, regardless of budget or scheme, whether it be traditional, contemporary or somewhere in between.

The simplest of this timeless stationery is the flat printed invitation.  Usually rectangular or square in shape and printed in an elegant font on white or ivory card, this style of invitation is a cool classic whilst being completely modern at the same time.  Whatever your colour scheme, or wedding theme, the venue or the scale of the event, this style of invitation will suit because it simply goes with everything.   There is still an endless number of variations that can make the invitations unique, from adding monograms or embellishments to font and colour options.  If you look at the invitation for the most recent royal wedding you probably won't be surprised that this is the style of invitation used.  Simple, understated, elegance.

The second trend proof type of invitation is the wallet fold.  This is a larger invitation which unfolds to reveal the invitation text and usually an rsvp card.  These days this style of invitation has so many variations that it can turn out to be a product of it's time, however if you again keep it simple, stick to white or ivory card and a minimum of embellishment it's a style that can enhance any wedding.  These invitations are particularly good if you have more information to give to your guests as additional cards can be made to fit perfectly inside. Done well, the wallet fold oozes grace and charm and will impress any guest whilst also being a practical option.

For both these styles of invitation you can have matching on the day stationery made but the beauty of this style of invitation is that you don't have to.  These invitation styles, kept simple and clean, will complement an entirely different on the day stationery design.  This is great for those couples who haven't pinned down the exact details of their event at the time they are sending their invitations out.  By sticking to the timeless elegance of these invitation
, and keeping your colour palette limited, you also keep your options open when it comes to the design of your other stationery items.

Do-it-yourself wedding stationery - Keeping it simple

There are literally zillions of different ways to create your own unique wedding invitations and stationery.  Which of these give the best results?  Well, that's a question of personal taste really, but what I would say is that some designs are definitely less time consuming to achieve so if in doubt keeping it simple might prove the most stress free decision you can make.

Simple doesn't have to mean boring, or plain.  Simple, to me, means that there are no terribly complex or overly repeated processes involved in the creation of the invitations and that the design is very easily reproducible.  This is an important point, often overlooked by the enthusiastic amateur.  Unlike one-off projects, invitations and stationery need to be produced over and over again, in to the hundreds sometimes.  I'm not saying that every invitation has to be identical.  If you are hand stamping, or painting, or creating hand made papers or background effects then there is of course going to be some variation and this does not mean your original design is not reproducible.  If however one invitation takes you an hour to make, I would suggest that the design is not as easily reproducible as it might be and there is a great danger that you will get rather fed up halfway through and either abandon the idea (costly and not great for your self-esteem) or stick it out but hate every second.  Neither of these is a very happy outcome.

To avoid this happening, think your design through carefully.  Make sure you test in advance how long things take you to do.  Make a sample and then make another to match it.  Are you happy with the results?  How long did it take?  Could you make another 50 to 100 if you need to without wanting to poke your own eyes out? 

If you answered no, or it took far too long to produce, take another look at your invitation design, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water.  Consider each element carefully and try and work out if you could do things more efficiently whilst achieving the same overall effect.  Am I asking you to cut corners?  No, of course not!  Certainly not in terms of the quality of the finish you are going for.  But if your design calls for 20 individual Swarovski flat backed crystals to be added, could they be reduced to say 5?  If you are hand stamping and colouring, could you consider doing one original image and then scanning and printing it?  Could you print any text elements as opposed to using peel and stick greetings?  It will of course depend on the type of design you are doing what you can tweak to make the process of production more simple.

When you make that first sample invitation, count the number of processes involved.  Count each cut you make, each embellishment added, each layer of card or paper you add.  Can anything be combined into one process?  Take layering (called mat and layer in the card craft world).  This is where you take, say an image, in this case let's take the example of a monogram, and print it out onto a piece of card/paper.  Let's say this monogram is going to be the central image on the front of our invitation.  To mat and layer, we would cut a second piece of card/paper just slightly bigger than our monogrammed piece and layer them together.  This gives a nice border to the central image and 'lifts' it.  The mats can be of the same, complementary or contrasting colours.  This process can be repeated as may times as you wish.  It gives a lovely effect, no doubt, but it is time consuming, costly in terms of materials and makes your invitation heavier with every added layer. Particularly if we are going to go on and add further embellishments, perhaps a nice ribbon trim and ribbon buckle, then I would suggest that this mat and layer process is one that could be replaced by simply printing borders in the right places around you original image.  You could even print this directly onto your base card, saving yet another process.  This way, you achieve the same result (aesthetically) but save yourself hours of time, and possibly stress trying to get all your mats straight and level with one another!  Now for the die-hard card crafter, this option may not appeal at all, but...these are not one off card projects, they are invitations...for your wedding...for which you have to organise a whole load of other things yet. Spending all your days and nights on mats and layers may not in the scheme of things turn out to be the best use of you time.

Your wedding invitations should be exactly the way you want them to be.  I am all for that, and I am all for people making their own if it's something that will bring them a little pleasure and some happy memories.  However, when you are all caught up in the excitement of trying out colour schemes and ribbon trims and trying your hand at making 3D paper flowers remember that keeping it as simple can be as important as getting the end result you love.

Making your own Wedding Invitations - What will I need?

Part of the decision about making your own wedding invitations and stationery should be about what tools and materials you will need to do the job.  That, of course, will be highly dependent on the design of the invitations themselves, but I think there are certainly some things in common with all invitations.

The first is a pretty basic requirement; card and/or paper.  There is a vast, and I mean vast array of card stock available to choose from and it's important that you do a little research from the beginning so that you choose the one that suits your particular project the best.  Card stocks come in different weights and are usually measured in gsm (grams per square metre).  80gsm is a paper weight and I would class 170 gsm as a heavy paper weight with card weight starting at 200gsm.

You may of course wonder what on earth these gsm measures actually mean in terms of card thickness and which do you need?  For the base card of a folded invitation I would suggest you need between 250gsm and 300gsm.  This weight allows for precision folding and has a lovely quality feel in the hand.  For a flat invitation (that requires no fold) I prefer to work with 300gsm to 450gsm as it maintains its shape well without warping or curling up.  You may it find it more difficult to find 450gsm card stock, especially in small quantities, but if done very carefully and precisely it is possible to attach two layers of card of lesser weight together (called laminating) to end up with a base card of a heavier weight.  Any inserts you add onto or into your card can be a paper weight, but I would suggest going for  between 100 and 170 gsm as these have they better quality feel to them.

Card stock also comes in a range of finishes.  There is smooth, super smooth, hammered, linen, textured, pearlescent, metallic and the list goes on...  Card also comes in almost every colour you could ever imagine, however...and it's a fairly big however...you may not get all the weight variations in coloured card stock.  Often, they are only offered in the low to medium weight ranges and you may not find it easy to source the colour card you require in a 300 - 400gsm range.  White and Ivory is usually available in all the weight ranges however. 

The next most basic element that all invitations require is printing (assuming of course that you are not going to be doing hand calligraphy for all your text elements).  Now, I can talk all day about printers, printing techniques, ink etc., and I have every intention of covering all these things in detail in future blogs, but for this post I am just going to talk about the basics.  If you are going to buy a new printer for doing your invitations, this is not as costly as it might seem.  There are some very good desktop printers out there that will do a brilliant job for very little outlay.  I can personally recommend Canon printers.  I have several and I find them to be reliable and give excellent quality prints.  I should point out that I do not work for or on behalf of Canon at all, and there are many other good quality brands that will also work well for you, it's just that I have over the years used many and I personally  always come back to my Canons.  (My favourite desktop printer is the IP4700 but I think you would only be able to get this second-hand now probably)

If you are going to buy a printer, check the technical specification.  You want a printer with a manual or rear feed as well as tray feed, you want a maximum weight that it will take through the printer to be as high as possible (300gsm ideally although you wont find many saying they will manage this.  My Canon IP4700 takes 450gsm from the rear feed absolutely no problem, but I have had many a printer that has balked at 300gsm) and also check the minimum and maximum size of media it will take. (If you are printing rsvp's it's handy to have a printer that will print on nice small pre cut pieces etc.)  Other than that, try not to spend too much money on it because in my experience more money does not necessarily buy you a better or less stressful result.

A third absolutely essential element you will need is adhesive.  The exception to this is if you are printing directly onto you base card and adding no embellishments.  If your design however is to join a printed insert to a card, flat or folded, or to add ribbon, gems, feather etc. then you will need something to stick it on with.  Arm yourself with are good flat glue such as pva.  There are hundreds of different brands out there, just avoid those that are too wet (like decorators pva) as this can tend to warp paper and card.  Also get some double sided tape, again available all over the internet and in craft and stationery shops.  Tape is great for adhering paper to card stock, and as it is dry it doesn't get absorbed by either and so wont lead to warping of the fibres.  Tape pens (double sided adhesive dispensers) are great for saving time as there is no backing paper to remove, however they can be costly if you have a lot of sticking to do and the adhesion is not as strong as most double sided tapes.  A good dimensional glue, such as Pinflair Glue Gel (highly recommend it) is fantastic for adding on tricky bulky embellishments like feathers, flowers, etc. or for adding height or 'decoupage' (I'll get into what that is at a later date).

 

The final essential adhesive item you will need is a glue pen with a fine(ish) tip.  These are great for gluing inserts into the spines of your folded invitations or Order of Service Booklets.

The last basic tool that I think all invitation designs will need is cutting equipment.  Scissors, of course will be needed.  Possibly a craft knife and ruler if you are confident with them.  Definitely a guillotine or paper trimmer will be invaluable.  There are again, many brands on the market.  Be sure to get one that is suited to the weight and size of the card and paper that you are using, and if this is the only thing that you will be using it for, don't spend too much (i.e. more than £50) because it won't be worth it when you can get something for half that, that does the job just as well and then will get consigned to the cupboard for the rest of it's life.



A few tips:

• Ivory is not the same colour from different suppliers, or even from the same supplier but a different weight.  Get samples first to check.

• White is also not the same colour from different suppliers, or manufacturers.  White can range from bluish grey through to brilliant white.  The bluish grey variety may look white right up until you put something that is actually white with it...then it just looks rubbish!  Get samples first if possible, from your supplier/s, of all the different brands of white they do in a particular weight before you place your entire order.

• If you are printing directly onto card stock and you are going to use a printer that you already have, then this will determine the maximum weight of card you can use as each printer will have it's own limit on what it can take through the paper feed.  If yours is not taking your card through, make sure to try any manual feed option you have first and be prepared to give the card a little nudge if you need to.  If it still wont take your card weight and you do not wish to compromise on this weight, see if a friend has a printer that will take it first and swap printers for the time it takes to make your invitations.

• When using double sided tape, take your time placing things down as generally you get one chance only to get things straight! If you find this too difficult resort to a wet glue that gives you a bit more 'wiggle' room. 

• There are so many tips about cutting and guillotines that I am going to devote an entire blog just to that subject.  Woo hoo, bet you can't wait!

Bespoke wedding invitations - What should they say?

An important aspect of your wedding invitations is what they actually say; the text, or wording, can take a whole host of formats ranging from traditional to contemporary and formal through to informal.

Customarily, invitations are worded as coming from whomever is 'hosting' the wedding.  This role was once the almost exclusive domain of the bride's parent's but over time, as family life has evolved and changed, so invitation formats have evolved to reflect a broader choice for couples getting married.  There are choices for the bride's parents, the grooms parent's, both set's of parents, one set of divorced parents, the bride and groom hosting for themselves, the whole family hosting together...in fact, whatever configuration you want!  The joy of bespoke stationery is that you are not constrained by another person's take on what an invitation should say.  Sure, your wedding stationer is going to have pre-set choices to offer you, and will certainly advise you if you are not sure how you want to proceed, but if you don't like any of the choices offered you can always write your own.

Regardless of your family circumstances, there is a wording that will fit.  More importantly, make sure the words fit you!  It is no longer the case that invitations have to be worded in a formal manner; If your wedding is going to be a relaxed, informal occasion then use relaxed informal wording to reflect this.  Your guests will gauge a lot from the way your invitations are worded, because, along with the design of your stationery, it's essentially the first real insight into what your big day is going to be like.  Take your time and think it through.  If you are going to have a low key beach wedding with close friends, then 'Hey, we're getting married and would love if you'd come join us as we tie the knot' is appropriate.  If however you are going for a traditional, formal day with all the ensuing pomp and ceremony (and would quite like your guests to arrive in suits rather than shorts)...you probably wont want to use this type of informal text.

Bespoke Vs. Personalised Invitations and Stationery

If you are using the internet to research and source your wedding invitations and stationery, then you will see many, many websites offering 'Personalised' invitations and stationery.  At the same time the word 'Bespoke' is being bandied about quite freely.  Are these two terms just different ways to express the same thing?

The answer is, 'well, yes and no but mainly no'.  The term 'Personalised' really means that the invitations have been personalised with regard to the text that appears on it, and maybe a few of the design elements have some options, such as colour or font.

Invitations can essentially be bought in one of three ways.  You can buy it as is, with no option to change anything.  This type of stationery comes with a set invitation 'wording' and with spaces for you to fill in the relevant information about your wedding by hand.  Because these invitations are pre-designed and are not altered (personalised) in anyway, they are generally the cheapest way to purchase your stationery and because of the plethora of designs available, you will usually be able to find something that suits.

Personalised stationery stands apart from this in that you can specify the text that appears, and this is printed onto the pre-designed invitation.  Usually you can choose from a list of available fonts and you may also be able to choose a colour, or ink type/metallic foil, depending on the original design of the stationery.  Because there is this additional element of 'work' involved for the manufacturer, personalised stationery carries an extra charge, however this is offset by saving you time at home filling in all the details by hand into each invitation.  Some personalised stationery providers will also offer services such as guest name printing, but not all. 

Bespoke stationery is not only personalised with your text and font but every other element of the design, including the images, materials and finishes are open to being changed to meet specific requirements.  With bespoke invitations you can have something designed entirely from scratch, or you could pick and mix elements from several different stationery designs.  Most wedding stationers have a huge range of fonts available to them, and it's possible to precisely colour match your stationery to other elements of your wedding that you have already chosen, such as bridesmaids dresses etc. Generally, the cost of bespoke wedding stationery is not as high as you might imagine it would be.  Most of the time you will find that it in line with, or not far from, the cost of personalised stationery.  Of course, there are always going to be exceptions, for instance if you were having large Swarovski elements or the design called for hand painting etc.

It's important to remember that when you are ordering 'Personalised' stationery, it is still manufactured by an automated, machine based system (with the exception of stationers like me who offer a range of pre-designed stationery that can be simply personalised, as well as bespoke work).  You should be sent a 'Proof' of your text before your stationery is printed and it's very important to check this for any errors, because the machines just print what exactly what you tell them to.

Wedding stationers producing 'Bespoke' work are generally working in a much more hands on way.  Not only are bespoke invitations designed for you but many aspects of bespoke stationery are hand done, although we do of course use machines for printing, foiling, embossing etc.  The 'Proofing' process still exists for bespoke work, and is still very important, however it's a person, rather than a machine, creating your stationery and I know that most good stationers do there utmost to check spelling and grammar as they work.  With a bespoke wedding stationer, any design, even one that is an existing design within their portfolio, remains flexible.  This flexibility allows a bespoke wedding stationer to create a truly unique design for each and every client. 

Design your own wedding stationery - Getting inspired

Inspiration for designing wedding invitations and stationery can come in a variety of forms.  You may have seen invitations in a magazine or online that you love. You may have a colour scheme or wedding theme that gives you a starting point, or it may just be an idea, a'feeling' of what you would like the  finished product to be.  As a designer, my clients bring or send me a vast variety of material from which to draw inspiration. One couple recently asked me to create invitations telling me 'think cricket on the village green in the 1960's'.  Whilst this certainly didn't give me anything concrete to go on, that sentence did evoke a very strong image of how their wedding would be and the type of stationery that the were after.

When you are looking at ideas, don't just stick to looking at examples of wedding invitations and
stationery.  Look too at other elements of your wedding and begin to identify what inspires you as a whole.  Table decorations and flower arrangements, even the venue itself can inform your stationery design.  What colours are you going to feature, is there a particular element that is coming through your whole wedding scheme that could also be featured on your stationery.  Don't forget, your wedding stationery is more than just your invitations, your On the Day Stationery will also be on display to your guests and at the venue on your big day and getting it all designed to co-ordinate with other decorative elements can take a wedding scheme up another notch.

Collect all your ideas together in one place, a notebook or folder.  Tear pages out of magazines, scribble down ideas that come to you, request swatches of fabric that take your fancy, or get out your phone and snap a picture of a pattern that catches your eye. Generally, a collection of this type is called a mood board, and is used throughout the design world to capture the essence of what a person likes and inspires the designer along the right road.

Finally, don't be afraid to ask your wedding stationer if they can do things that you can't even imagine is able to be done.  One of my clients was planning on wearing her mothers wedding dress on her big day.  It was a beautiful vintage dress in ivory lace and my client asked me if I would be able to copy the lacework pattern and incorporate that into the stationery design.  She didn't hold out much hope when she asked me and got quite a pleasant surprise when I said 'yes, of course I can'.  In fact it's been my experience that I vary rarely say 'no' to my clients requests.  Even the most unusual requests are generally do-able in some way.

Some people have so much inspiration and so many ideas that they begin to feel unable to choose between them.  My advice would be to go with the idea that pulls the strongest, the one you keep returning to again and again.  Oftentimes this is the original idea you had, but not necessarily always.  Of course, sometimes choosing one thing isn't the right thing.  I once made invitations for a client who was getting married abroad.  She new exactly the style of invitation she wanted; a simple wallet style with ribbon trim.  The difficulty was in choosing the ribbon colour.  In fact she was having a hard time narrowing the entire wedding scheme down in terms of colour.  In the end, she decided that her indecision was, in fact, the answer and she had me make her invitations in 8 of the colours she liked the most, and then followed this 'multi colour' theme through to the wedding scheme.

Ultimately it doesn't matter how you get inspired, or what inspires you...the object is to end up with something that you love.  In that way, your wedding stationery says something about you and is therefore truly personal.