Stamps are for Lazy People

Lazy people like me!

In my last post in what has got to be the largest number of posts that one can squeeze from their save the date creation, I want to quickly tell you about the return address. The idea of handwriting our address 30 times (not to mention the outer invitation envelope, RSVP envelope, and many mess-ups I'm sure will ensue) did not appeal to me.  Yah, I know this number is way less than for most people, but please see "lazy" apart above.

I started looking into custom rubber stamps and came across Impress Rubber Stamps, which has been blogged about before on Weddingbee.  They have a good selection of sizes, and I bought a 2" x 3" customizable stamp for $13.50.

All you have to do is, after placing an order, email them a pdf of the exact image you want on the rubber stamp. To determine what image (i.e. my address) to send, I used a really advanced design program called Microsoft Word, drew various boxes to represent the envelopes and experimented with different font types and sizes (downloaded for free from Urban Fonts) to come up with our final font size and style. For fonts, I was deciding between:

 

and

 

While the Cygnet is pretty, I went with Day Roman since I was a little nervous about the cursive font not coming out as well (altho since then I have seen an Impress custom stamp that had many flourishes and looked lovely--dammit). In case any of you are wondering, I had made the executive decision to stamp our return address on the back flap of all the envelopes so that the return address font and the mailing address (done a la my handwriting) did not have to match.

Anyone else make a shortcut with the envelope addressing?

Mailing Address Tyranny

After all the focus on the design and Gocco'ing of the save the dates, it would have been nice to have immediately slapped those suckers in an envelope and sent them on their way.
In the non-wedding world, if you were sending a birthday card to mom, the scrawled mailing address in your handwriting does not merit a second thought. But oh no, as a *bride*, this rather pedestrian mailing address becomes an issue worth countless hours of internet research, drafts, agonizing, and lost sleep.

I know the etiquette is to handwrite the mailing addresses.  Apparently it's rude to print it. Why? I don't know.  Because I'm pretty damn sure that your guests will know that the each invitation was not handwritten, so why should your guests care about the mailing address? In addition, this etiquette tyranny dictates that mailing addresses can't be done with just any handwriting, it has to be really nice handwriting, so you folks out there who got a "C" in cursive in the 4th grade are out of luck.

Yeah, yeah, all this complaining, but I am a lemming.  I had to find a solution incorporating handwritten addresses as to not incur the wrath of etiquette tyrants.

I considered learning calligraphy. A loud obnoxious buzzing noise went off in my head nixing the idea as I remembered trying to do calligraphy for my sister's wedding back in the day and it SUCKED.

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I then strongly considered shortcut DIY calligraphy. It is better explained here and executed beautifully by the likes of Mrs. Labrador, but basically you print the mailing addresses on your envelopes with a printer using very light ink, and then take your pen of choice and trace the print. Isn't that genius? And look how amazing it can turn out:

 

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Well, that's how amazing it *can* turn out. Just as a quick test, I printed a fancy dancy calligraphic font on regular text paper and traced it. The final product looked like someone had been shocking me with a cattle prod every .3 seconds while I was trying to trace--it was horrible.

Source (I am not trying to make fun of this child)

Fed up, I decided that my own handwriting would do just fine. I bought Pentel gel ink pens (medium point, Sunburst gold) and addressed the save the date envelopes.

Source ($1.75 each)

They turned out fine, and will keep me out of the etiquette prison camp.


By the way, if you are going to use a gel pen or whatever, get a finer point--it's easier to write than with the bigger ones that make you feel like you're trying to write cursive with a magic marker.

What options did you explore for the mailing addresses?

My Contribution to Gocco Tips

So, you've decided to use a Gocco.  You may not be as nervous as I was, but before I started using this magical Gocco machine, I read everything I could about Gocco in order to prepare myself.  After all, since Gocco products are no longer in production, you are dealing with a finite amount of supplies and you don't want to MESS UP (I'm kidding, it's totally okay to mess up--it's practically a rite of initiation in using the Gocco.  Also, there are DIY Gocco screen options so you don't have to worry about limited supplies--see below).

When using Gocco for the first time, you are probably going to encounter little issues that make you do this:

 

Anyway, so let's say you've read all the posts you can on using a Gocco.  Want more tips? Of course you do.  Here you go.  

1. Get more screens and bulbs than you think you need. They are expensive, but trust me there will be mess-ups, and there's nothing like being on a deadline and running out of essentials and not having time to order more. You will feel much more comfortable if you have extra screens and bulbs. I bought extra screens, bulbs and inks from Northwood Studios.

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2. For solid objects in your images (as opposed to objects that are just outlined), like the heart between the two purple ducks in our save the dates, iron the photocopy between sheets of tracing paper in order to take off the excess carbon, or evenly distribute it, or something like that. We didn't do that the first time and the paper fibers from the solid object fused to the screen and the ink wouldn't come through onto the paper. So iron the photocopy image just to be safe.

3. For that day when you cannot find any more Gocco bulbs to be had because other DIY brides have selfishly hoarded them, please use this tutorial on the Unless Someone Likes You blog and keep it in a safe place. It's about how to keep using your Gocco even without the bulbs and screens. I haven't tried it yet but thank goodness this blogger had the creativity and dedication to come up with this.

Any useful Gocco tips out there?  Anybody having problems they need help on (for which other people can give advice because I've pretty much exhausted my Gocco knowledge)?

Gocco = Good Times, Coke Bottles, and Save the Dates

After I had decided that ducks were elegant enough for our save the dates, I needed to come up with an overall design for the save the dates.  What are you looking at? Me? Oh, no no no no no. Let me direct your attention to my wonderful friend, K.  I met her the first day of college, which was, gulp, 15 years ago.  She is like a sister to me, and so incredibly talented.  She's been designing wedding invitations here and there for friends and family, and she kindly offered her design talent to our wedding!


To actually put K's design on the save the dates, my sister generously bought the Gocco (she will make way more use of it after the wedding--or at least that's what I told her). K and I converged on my sister's house one lovely weekend and we Gocco'd away! An action shot from this very exciting event:

(yes, I wear circles cut out from Coke bottles for glasses, what of it?) 

So what was the final design that K came up with?  Here's the unveiling (don't get too excited...no really, don't)

Mr. Pug excited to open the save the date in the mail

Da-na-na-na-na (sung to the tune of a burlesque stripper tune)

This is probably the first time Mr. Pug actually saw our the save the dates

A close-up

Another close-up

Her Empress is rather blase about the whole thing

Sorry, I'm not good at taking pictures.  Plus I think that Kevin had futzed with the camera settings so instead of figuring out how to fix it, I will just blame him.

The back had an explanation of the ducks and our website address.

It's illegible in the photo so there's no point in rotating it, but it basically explains the meaning of ducks in Korean tradition which I mentioned previously.

Those things on the bottom of the card are abstract representations of duck prints--I knew what they were beforehand and thought they looked great, but upon showing them to some coworkers I heard things like "fans" and "umbrellas". Whatev.

Anyone else use someone else's design services to create your wedding stationery? 

Save the Dates Phase II aka Nothing Screams "Wedding" Like a Duck

I already posted a bit about choosing the paper for our save the dates. For the design, I wanted something simple and elegant. So what did I end up with? Ducks. I mean, what else says elegance more so than ducks!

I wanted some kind of simple drawing/motif/symbol that would speak personally to us. Or at least to me, since Kevin doesn't really care. After some brain-racking, I came up with Korean wedding ducks.*

Courtesy of me

In Korean tradition, a pair a carved wooden ducks represented the married couple, as it was believed that ducks mated for life (I'm pretty sure this is false, but it's a nice idea). The position of the ducks signifies the state of the household. You place the ducks facing nose to nose when there is harmony in the marriage. However, when there is discord (say, after *someone* fibbed about having gotten you a Valentine's Day present and "left it at the office"), the ducks face apart (in other words, with their butts facing each other, because when you're mad at each other, farting on each other is acceptable).

Is there anything about your save the dates that represents you as a couple (or at least the half of the couple that is doing all the work, ahem)?

* While Kevin is not Korean, he watches Korean soap operas so I'm saying that's sufficient for the Korean ducks to mean something to both of us. 

Shipping Charge: 1, Me: 0

There's a funny side story to my paper search: Limitedpapers, the company from which I purchased the save the date and invitation paper, is in Brooklyn. I was like HA! Brooklyn is not far at all, and particularly not from my office in lower Manhattan. I'll go pick those babies up and save myself a shipping fee! 

So that's how I found myself on a Friday afternoon, in 90+ degree heat, walking an interminable distance from the subway (it was midday and no shade), in business casual clothes, to warehouses and docks on the Brooklyn waterfront. You know, the kind of place where at night you might see Vinnie with a chair and baseball bat waiting for you. 

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The location was a true warehouse. Super-wide stairs, crumbling walls that revealed what I'm fairly positive was asbestos, and a "door" to the company's space that rather looked like the gate to a maximum security prison. 

 Source  (actually, this is pretty attractive as far as prisons go)

And all this, while I was huffing, puffing, sweating and stinking. But I got my paper without a shipping fee! I saved $7! I am a saver! I am thrifty!!

Total waste of time. I have much, much less qualms about paying shipping charges since that experience.

Did any of you feel like you might become a missing person after purchasing your paper?

Save the Dates Phase I

I've been planning the wedding for a while (we got engaged in July 08), so there are a bunch of things I want to tell you about.  Let's start with the save the dates.

As I mentioned in my last post, I fell in love with Gocco-made invitations, daydreaming about the "squish" of the Gocco ink as it gets pressed onto paper.  I knew Gocco'ing the save the dates and invitations wouldn't save a ton of money considering the cost of a Gocco, so that's why I made my sister buy it. Ha! (Lest you think I'm a horrible person, my sister is actually quite artistic and crafty, so the Gocco is right up her alley.)

Despite the cost, I had decided it was the best way for us to personalize the save the dates and make them say "it's us!" to the guests, as well as print on paper that was a size and thickness that I wanted.

So, in addition to the actual image that would be printed onto the save the dates, what was going to be my canvas? Rectangle, square, circle, triangle, trapezoid? Ivory, white, metallic, vellum?

I browsed through many websites for inspiration, such as Bella Figura (I almost made out with the computer screen) and Sanskripts. And lookee lookee what I found.  Who knew that rounded corners could push such an emotional button?

Source (so tiny)

Here's another example of rounded corners that I decided were absolutely necessary.

 

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I launched into research for the perfect paper to realize my vision of rounded-corner perfection. I found many a paper source, including thepapermillstore, paperpresentation, cardsandpockets, limitedpapers, and, um, well, paper-source, to name a few. I really wanted luscious paper. However, I later discovered that my idea of "luscious" paper was Crane Lettra 300gsm (yeah I don't really know what those numbers mean either) and a bit out of my price range (sound of heart breaking). 

Okay, so maybe not "perfect paper", but I still wanted a nice thick paper, at least 110lb (this is a good heft, paper that doesn't bend too easily). Cardsandpockets and Limitedpapers offer in-house custom-cutting for a fee, which was perfect for someone like me who does not have a paper cutter at home and is too lazy to find someone else to cut the paper for me.

I finally went with Limitedpapers, after ordering two sets of samples, because they had a wide selection of paper finishes and shades of white. I ended up buying the Strathmore Natural White 130 lb and had the sheets cut down to the right size.

Limitedpapers doesn't offer rounded corners (but CardsandPockets does, by the way), so on advice from Mrs. Penguin I ordered a Fiskars 1/2 inch corner rounder squeeze punch.

  

Source  ($11.99 on Amazon)

Which are pretty fun by the way. I'm going to round the corners of all of Kevin's magazines, mail and important documents (social security card, passport, birth certificate, etc.).

What kind of paper did you end up getting for your wedding stationery?