The Whole Shebang

When I first stumbled upon Weddingbee, there were a few trends that jumped out at me. One was the magical machine known as a Gocco, which some extremely talented Bees used to design and print their own invitations. Truth be told, I impulsively bought one of these a year ago and I still have no idea how to use it. Fail.

But the other two trends that jumped out at me were envelope liners and wraparound address labels...and these trends did not require that I be able to read Japanese.* I had tried my hand at both envelope liners and wraparound address labels before, and was excited to do it again to prettify these envelopes that would house my STDs.

I went to Archiver's and bought three different types of paper - I couldn't decide, and all the designs looked cute with the Save the Date card that my step mom designed. Then I made a template and traced it onto the large paper, and then cut out the liners. Actually, I got Mini Magic to cut out the liners because I cannot cut a straight line to save my life.

  

 We were working on this the night of the UNC-Duke game. I tried to take a self-portrait of us, but accidentally filmed us instead. #blondemoment

Mini Magic is so happy when crafting.

I'm not going to write an entire tutorial, because there are many online, including these from Hamster, Champagne, Tartlet, Guinea Pig, Lobster, and Starfish, to name just a few. But, I will give you two tips! I made the template so it only went halfway down the envelope, to stretch the paper farther. You couldn't see through the envelope, so it didn't matter. Also, our paper was kind of thick, so a regular glue stick did not cut it...er, stick it. Instead, I used Ad tech Permanent Glue Runner. It was easy and sticky - yay!

Image via AdhesiveTech

Here are our liners!

 Looks kinda like a honey comb, no?

 Pink for the girls!

 

Sunny yellow!

I had already made the wraparound label template, so I just changed the color to orange, to match our cute kitty cat love stamps that I got (with a coupon, of course) from Zazzle. So, without further adieu, here's the whole shebang!

I'm really pleased with how they turned out but I have to admit, I do not know how people design, print, cut, and assemble their entire invitation suites! Just making envelope liners, wraparound labels, and stuffing the envelopes took a lot longer than I anticipated, and I did not even have to design, print, or cut the save the dates! I love the way they turned out...but thinking about the invitations now has me feeling a bit overwhelmed.

Did you ever get bogged down with all the details in a project? How did you handle it?

*Actually, I took four semesters of Japanese in college...and I still can't work that dang blasted Gocco!