Destination Wedding Invitation
submitted by Sarah Neufeld - Ear Falls, Ontario

Materials

Vellum ($4.99 approx. at Michael's Crafts for pkg 10)
Cardstock ($2.99 approx. at Michael's Crafts for pkg 10)
Picture
Ribbon (59cents a roll at Michael's Crafts)
Metal Skewer or small holepunch
Paper cutter or scissors
Computer and printer

Directions

I wanted something unique for the invitations for my destination wedding.  I also wanted something cheap and crafty.  I had seen on this website where they did a similar invitation with the vellum overlay on handmade paper.  I love the idea but that seemed like too much work for myself. 

I found a picture on the internet of a beautiful Dominican Republic beach scene.  As soon as I saw it I could picture the invitation.  I decided that the invitation would be two layers with the photo on vellum on top, and the invitation wording beneath, tied together with ribbon.  I did a test run with a sheet of transparency and regular paper to see if I liked the effect and where the words should be placed.  Then I went shopping for my supplies. I found Walmart and Michael's Crafts to have the best selection for cheap invitation supplies.  Then I went shopping for envelopes.  I read a very good tip that when making invitations, you should always buy your envelope first.  This made great sense because I didn't want to have to fold my invitations.  The only envelopes I could find in blue (in my area) were meant for an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper folded in quarters.  So I changed my
design to fit the envelopes.

My picture printing program gave me the option of printing my picture four per page, fitting the required dimensions (4x6 I believe).  I set the printing to manual tray and put my stack of vellum in the tray.  I was worried about smearing but it printed beautifully.  I set those aside and then worked on my wording.  Because the pictures printed to 4x6, I wanted to make my wording centered to fit them.  It took a lot of playing around.  I set the page to two columns so that I could have four invitations per page and played with the spacing.  I printed it out a few times on regular paper and would hold it up behind my photo on vellum to see how it looked.  once I had the spacing right I printed them off on the cream coloured cardstock. It actually went a lot quicker than I thought it would.

Now that they're printed I used the paper cutter to cut them out keeping a thin white border around each picture.  I kept the two layers (vellum and cardstock) together when I cut to ensure they were exactly the same size. Once they were all cut up I used a metal skewer (the kind used for cake testing) to poke two holes in the top middle portion of the invitation. I thought about weaving the ribbon along the top but it would have cut off
part of my palm trees.  I tried using a hole punch but mine was much larger than my ribbon and looked very bad.  The skewer doesn't make as crisp of a hole on the back but with the ribbon you can't see it at all.  I used two colours of ribbon the length of the width of my invitation and tied in a simple knot.  They are a very simple invitation to make but don't look simple or cheap.  I am so happy with the way they turned out and plan to use
the same technique to make other cards for birthdays, christmas etc.  I've seen them done with a photo of the couple and that looked great as well. Another option is to have the picture behind with the wording on vellum. That's the best part of crafting, you can make them anyway you wish.

I spent a total of $112.45 for all of the envelopes, paper, vellum, ribbons, and postage stamps and I still have two packages of both cardstock and vellum to use for other projects.  The stamps were actually my biggest expense.