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.