Making Your Own Wedding Invitations

So, you are thinking about making your own invites to your wedding?

Great! That makes you the fearless creative type that’s going to have a gorgeous wedding. “What makes you say that?” I hear you ask, it’s because you are prepared to get stuck in and put your stamp on things from the very beginning. Well done.

 Now, I decided to make my own wedding invites a couple of years ago. I’ve always made cards for people and every time I looked at getting them done professionally my eyes bulged at the price tag. So for me making my own cards was the obvious thing to do.

However there is a big difference between pouring your heart and soul into one card and churning out 100 or so cards and having them look the epitome of style and well, ‘you’!

So where to start? 
Well I’m afraid dear bride to be, that you have a lot of decisions to make, but keep focused on having fun! Perhaps you already have a board on Pinterest and maybe some colours are starting to assert themselves. What about textures? Does lace make you swoon? Or are you more a rustic burlap kind of girl? What about diamanté? Satin? Ribbons or twine?

It’s hard to isolate one element of wedding planning as each aspect can impact the next, so once you have a good idea of the overall feel of the wedding then you will find it easier to work out what you are going to do with your invites.

Now remember that whatever you decide to do, you are going to have to do again and again and again… Unless you are okay to clear your calendar for a couple of weeks and enlist the help of a small team then you are going to want to keep things simple. The simpler the better in fact, but there are ways of making your life easier.

Different Approaches 
Now if you are very artistic you could do a one off drawing and get that photocopied however many times. If this is your bag then think about the size of card you are going to use and how you will ‘present’ the image. By this I mean, will you simply cut it out and glue it on? Or will you mount it on some card, or frame it with ribbon?

Keep it Simple 
For my wedding I had a bit of a hearts and butterflies thing going on. (I know, not exactly original, but hey, it’s what I like!)

My approach was quite straight forward. I bought a heart punch and a butterfly punch and one of those pads you can get with lots of different patterned paper. Each card had three hearts lined vertically, with a butterfly on the middle one. A couple of sequins on the butterfly and bam! It was done!

Now, it was a lot of punching out, but using the different patterns in the pad kept it interesting for me. You can cut corners a bit here by looking on Ebay for die cut shapes and you will find lots of pre cut flowers, frames and pretty much anything all ready to go. Check it out and see if anything inspires you!

Another way to create your card is to use stamps. Stamps are a great way of reproducing an image a gazillion times and the imperfections add to the beauty! You could make you own stamp out of speedy carve rubber (you would need to get the carving tools too, but they aren’t expensive) or you can use a cork to carve something tiny like a heart or a star on it.

There are inks in every colour and you can also get them in pearl and distress effects. It’s so exciting. There are lots of tutorials on YouTube showing how to use them.

Embellishments
So hopefully you have got some images in mind, but how are you going to put it together? Layers will help to give your work a professional feel and will make it seem more luxurious. You don’t have to go crazy and cover the whole thing with Swarovski crystals, but one or two can help take it to the next level.

Think creatively! Perhaps buttons would suit your style more, or what about some string tied into a bow? Have you taken a look at washi tape recently? No? Seriously? It’s awesome. The choice is mind blowing! It’s easy to use, comes in every colour and you can get glitter tape and even lace.

Keep breathing! 
Hopefully you are excited, rather than stressed at this point. I know that a bride’s brain is continually processing a hundred dreams and emotions until it feels about ready to explode. Don’t do that. It would just mean more mess. Instead pour love into every moment of your wedding planning and (spoiler alert!) when it comes to day itself, you will get that feeling back, but a million times better. Yay. Good luck!

If you would like any further advice then you can find me on Twitter as Crazyelflin. I’d be more than happy to help. Jacqueline Wild is an artist and writer living in Cornwall. When she is not looking after her gorgeous 11 month old baby she is busy making special cards for special people. You can find her beautiful, frameable keepsake cards on Etsy. Perhaps after the big day you might have a few special people to thank?