Here's the result of our weeks of work (excuse the bad quality picture - my camera is on the fritz):
We got permission from Saima Says Design to use the monogram and lotus flower from our invitation set. I then created a custom art rubber stamps from Rubber Stamps.Net. The stamps came quickly and were pretty cheap.
Then I spent hours at the Paper Source trying to find inspiration. I love that store and its so easy to get lost among all those racks of gorgeous paper and random adorable things like butterflies and mini suitcases. I finally decided to use A7 luxe cream folded cards as the cover for our programs.
I knew that I wanted to jazz up the plain cream cover with some type of orange decorative paper to build on our color theme. I wanted to use the paper to create a binding using my Xyron a la Mrs. Lovebug. Since I'm indecisive I went out and bought tons of sheets of paper in oranges and even reds because I was getting desperate.
I made Mr. Marg and my MOH weigh in before I decided on this gorgeous orange paper. If you ever use this paper, get ready to be covered in gold glitter. By the end of it all, Mr. Margarita, half my family and my bridal party had been bedazzled.
Mr. Marg and I drove all over town looking for ways to cut this paper into strips. Kinkos was our first stop and they said they could cut it into 2"x15" strips. They called me 15 minutes later saying their machines couldn't handle the paper. Turns out all that pretty glitter was really screwing up the blades on their machines. We took the paper all over town before sucking it up and cutting the paper ourselves. We needed a paper cutter and the Kinkos hand paper cutter just wasn't cutting it (ha ha). Instead of shelling out $50+ for our own paper cutter we made our way over to Blick Art Materials and used their paper cutter for free. They were mildly annoyed but the obliged us nonetheless.
Once we had all those strips in our hot little hands, my MOH came over every night after work for a week to emboss the 200 folded cards. I first had to measure out the placement of the monogram and take into account the 1" border for the orange paper. Then we got a little assembly line going of stamping, embossing and cleaning up.
My bin of arts and crafts goodness:
Versamark Watermark Inkpad (Image from Papersource):
Antique Gold Embossing Powder
Embossing Heat tool (Image from Papersource):
After those were done, we ran all those strips through my trusty Xyron 900. Make sure that you have enough adhesive for this process. I ended up having to use the removable adhesive for some which just didn't stick as well as the permanent adhesive. I was able to get about 4 strips (2"x15") at a time and about 100 strips for every 40 ft. adhesive roll. That's a guestimation - at that point I wasn't paying much attention to exactly how many strips I got per roll.
My MOH and I spent a few hours putting all those sticky paper strips on the programs. We eyeballed them and could actually reposition the strips if we had to without ruining the paper.
The programs then traveled with me to California since I didn't have time to get them printed and bind them in Boston. I got the actual programs printed and cut at Kinkos on their cream resume paper. I also got 200 sheets of Stardream Antique Gold paper from Paper Source cut to serve as a cover sheet for the inside of the programs.
The last steps (I swear) were to cut all the ribbons, hole punch the programs and covers, and finally tie the ribbons. Just a warning - it takes a lot of hand strength to hold punch with those hand punches! My bridesmaid B and I had extreme hand pain by the end of the hole punching process.
Hole puncher (Image from A.C. Moore):
Although the process was very time consuming, it was worth it in the end. Everyone loved the programs and it was a lot of fun spending all those hours bonding with family and friends.
What was the biggest DIY project for your wedding?
