Part I

Mr. Lollipop once tried to add up all the time I spent on our invitations. I had to stop him because I couldn't contemplate the amount of time I put into them without losing my mind a little. I started sketching in November, did the design in April, screen printed in May, letter pressed in June, and finally mailed them in July. Of course, I had lots of help on the last three, but the point is that I spent lots of time in the print studio that could have been used to learn a martial art or a new language.

Still, I don't think I could bear to let anyone else design our invitations.

I put invitation page together to carry on the tree theme we used on the cover: My original digital mock-up:


Luckily, our parents were really understanding when we couldn't get the letter press calibrated to add everyone's first names.

Also, I drew dozens of trees (one can be seen on the cover), but ended up buying the rights to use a much nicer one from istockphoto.com. That website is a great place to legally obtain the rights to all kinds of vector images for those who like to design, but have trouble drawing. Our map and directions page:


I drew the map using an old copy of Macromedia FreeHand. We used the pattern at the bottom of the page to register the layers of ink.

The full package, including a rehearsal dinner invitation and a website card:


An assembled invitation:

Labels: DIY, invitations, screen printing, wedding

posted by Alison 8/13/2007 12:26:00 PM : (0) comments : splink

Other People's Invitations

Need invitation inspiration? Here are a few amazing invites from around the internet:

• Luau's screen printed and letter pressed invitations
• Juicyyumburger's fantastic gocco invitations
• Cupcakes for clara's pop-up invitations
• Think_ink's playing card invitations
• Chocosaur's retro bird invitations
• Wishingline's beautiful fall-inspired invitations
• Redmeg8's DIY silkscreen invitations

Labels: invitations, wedding

posted by Alison 8/13/2007 12:12:00 PM : (1) comments : splink


Monday, July 30, 2007

Our RSVPs are Fowl

Mr. Lollipop's favorite animal is the duck. For his birthday one year ago I rented two ducks from a nearby farm and he spent the evening following them around the yard and smiling.

Lots of work went into our invitations, so I wanted to try and draw some creativity our of our guests in return. Other than real ducks, what could be better for the water fowl obsessed man than armfuls of paper ducks from our loved ones? Plus, the paper kind don't poop everywhere or gorge themselves on our our garden herbs like the real thing.

Thus, our RSVP cards were born:


We've had a terrific response so far with lots of personal messages and notes. Only three party-poopers out of the more than thirty replies have returned without some kind of embellishment.

Some of our haul:


This one was done by a professional illustrator:


Two of Mr. Lollipop's relatives couldn't come so they sent a duck in their stead:


We will display the results at the reception and have a drawing for a prize.

P.S. Numbering the invitations really saved out bacon. Quite a few came back with ducks but no names or nothing at all. Don't expect everyone to remember to write their names!

Labels: duck, invitations, rsvp, wedding

posted by Alison 7/30/2007 11:42:00 PM : (0) comments : splink


Thursday, July 26, 2007

Invitation Inspiration: The Cover Design

When I was a little girl I was obsessed with the Funk and Wagnalls science encyclopedias available in our supermarket. The first volume covering A-Aq sold for only 9 cents so it was easy to talk my mother into buying a copy. For months, it was my most prized possession and I read from 'aardvark' to 'aquarium' savoring each entry. By far, my favorite entry was 'animal'. It contained a massive taxonomy tree covering two pages. I studied the chart like it was for a grade.

Once we decided on a zoo reception venue, the chart sprang to mind as a convenient, organized way to incorporate and expand our animal theme. I drew many of the animal/plant/monera kingdom illustrations myself, though I nipped a few (namely the horse, butterfly and frog) from one of my copyright free illustration books and converted them to silhouettes.

The digital design layout:

In order to print multiple colors we broke down our digital illustration and converted each layer to a simple black and white image. Here are our results; we printed each on a transparency in order to burn them on to a screen:


Screen printing the illustrations turned out to be time consuming. The green background took more than the usual amount on time because I wanted the color to go all the way up to the edges, so when we placed each card we needed to add scraps around the edges to keep the ink from smearing onto the back of the screen and smudging future copies. Doing this 200+ times really adds up.

In addition, the tiny animal/plant/etc. illustrations lost details when we added more ink than needed. Therefore, we had to print reeeeally slowly and blot the screen at the first sign of trouble. Thanks goodness for the patience of our friends.

We also had a fourth layer of ink, the dotted swirls in the illustration above, but I couldn't decide whether I liked the extra embellishment so only half of our invitations carry it.

If you really want to learn to screen print check out this tutorial.

Labels: illustrations, invitations, wedding

posted by Alison 7/26/2007 01:26:00 AM : (0) comments : splink


Thursday, July 12, 2007

The Postal System Works!

The first reply cards have arrived! The first came from my cousin and included a lovely sketch of a duck (Clark's favorite animal) on the front. It will be our first contest entry! Yay!

The second card came with nothing, no name, no drawing. The number attending was written on the back, but there was nothing else. Luckily, we marked each RSVP with an ID number. We just checked the spreadsheet and matched the mystery card to Clark's aunt and uncle.

A refresher of our RSVP card:

Labels: duck, invitations, rsvp

posted by Alison 7/12/2007 11:04:00 AM : (0) comments : splink


Saturday, July 07, 2007

90 Down, 60 to Go

The first round of invitations have been mailed. Phew! Even with three people working for most of the Fourth of July, we only got through the first 50 out of the full 150. 90 have now been completed and we are still faced with one more day of printing, cutting, addressing and stamping.

This is our last major task before getting married, and the biggest time commitment so far. I think we spent less time in premarital counseling than we did on these things.

Luckily, we have the food, bridal party, clothes and location locked down. Now that we have notified everyone we are left with just minor tasks before the big day. Even if those don't get done we can still show up and get married and feed everyone.

Here is the resulting invitation package, including a rehearsal dinner invitation there are 7 pieces. The colors are off due to my busted camera:


The assembled invitation:


The screen printed front cover, a slightly different version from the assembled one above:


Our (redacted) invitation and map pages, letterpressed and screen printed:



We'll be having a drawing contest using our RSVP card. We'll be giving out prizes at the reception. Each is numbered just in case they arrive without a name written on them:

Labels: DIY, invitations, wedding

posted by Alison 7/07/2007 04:35:00 PM : (0) comments : splink


Thursday, June 28, 2007

Now I Know Why Letterpressing Is So Expensive

I never imagined that it would take so long to letterpress our invitations. Last week, I spent two days in a letterpress studio setting type for our invitation wording and directions. If you've never set type before, just image setting tiny metal dominoes.

I was able to use the studio for free as a favor from our friend Nick. It is located in a garage in Squirrel Hill with no running water or toilet facilities. After my hands got too dirty from the type I couldn't rub my eyes. Happily, it rained later that afternoon and I was able to hold my hands out in the downpour to clean them off. The next day I brought a bottle of water and a towel.

A few days later Nick helped me to get the type ready for printing. We spent from 8:00 pm until 4:00 am just setting up the press and adding pieces of onion skin paper so that the type would hit just right. We spent six hours the following day printing and resetting for the next page. Once we finished adjusting the press it took less than an hour for the whole 200+ print run. The same would have taken four hours with a silk screen and would have suffered a much higher error rate.

The press itself is from (circa) 1895. I runs on manual power and moves smoothly despite its age. First, the roller grabs ink from a plate and rubs it on the type. Next, the type pivots forward and kisses the card on the platform. While the roller grabs more ink a human (Nick, in this case) takes out the printed card, lays it out to dry, and then places the next card. All this happens while someone (me or a trained monkey) provides the power by spinning the wheel.

By the time we finished our two sets of cards my arms were ringing and I was sick of looking at my invitations. I gave up on letterpressing rehearsal dinner cards and returned home. I am tired of invitation work, but they still must be assembled and mailed. I would kill for a crafty post office fairy right now.

It's standing room only in the garage:


An iron frame for holding type and spacers called 'furniture' in the type industry:


Some of the type I set:


Paint and shelves of wooden type:


Drying prints:

Labels: invitations, letterpress, print, tedium, type, typesetting, wedding

posted by Alison 6/28/2007 12:52:00 AM : (0) comments : splink


Thursday, June 14, 2007

I am the Human Error in Screen Printing

My end is almost in sight! The screen printing phase of our invitations is nearing completion. Actually, it would be complete if we hadn't bungled so many copies of the cover illustrations, or rather, if I hadn't ruined so many copies. The best man and maid of awesomeness cranked out perfect invitation after perfect invitation while I smudged and stained proofs that had been perfect up until that last layer of ink. Out of the print run of 200 we are only left with 120 copies of acceptable quality. I'll probably drag my sorry behind back to the studio some time in the next few weeks, but I need some time off from screwing up my own wedding invitations. On the bright side, the other two pages have enough good proofs so that I am not embarrassed to send them out into the world.

I know that most people will toss the invitation ten minutes after it arrives, but even that can't settle the perfectionist Miss Hyde within. No more Martha Stewart for me for a few days. It unsettles the humors.

A look at our current incarnation, the cover, map and invitation wording pages:

Labels: invitations, screen printing, wedding

posted by Alison 6/14/2007 10:21:00 PM : (0) comments : splink

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