Details of the Invitations

I decided that I owe my invitations a little more blog-time, simply due to the amount of time and money we spent on them. :P In retrospect, it probably would have saved me a lot of grief if I had just picked out one of the ready-made designs I found in magazines and online, but I just had to have my way with the layout and I just had to have all the colors match perfectly. So I sacrificed my sweat, blood, and tears, but came up with an invitation I really loved in the end.

I got the idea of the layout from other pocket invitations I've seen around, except most of those opened vertically, and I wanted my invitation to open horizontally, like a regular card or book. Here's where my new-found skills, adapted from a year of working at Graphic Services, came in handy.

The inner envelope was cream, lined with gold, and a quote from Antoine de Saint Exupéry's The Little Prince printed on the flap: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

I used Stardream Metallic Bronze for the body of the invitation, Astrobright Terrestrial Teal for the borders, and Luxe Cream for the text because it was perfect paper for letterpress printing. Unfortunately, I couldn't afford to letterpress all of the text, so most of them were thermographically printed.

On the inside left flap was a picture of Jules and I. This came out even better than I planned. The metallic quality of the paper gave the photo a holographic feel, which gave it the perfect there-but-not-really effect I was looking for.

The main invite was designed around Feanne's artwork. I had her work printed first as a background, then took it to a letterpress printer to have the words done.

I believe it was the inserts that earned me all the, "Nicole, your invitation is so you," comments. What?? I can't help it if I need to give a lot of out-of-town guests a lot of information, and I wanted to do so in an organized fashion! For the record, it was the printer's fault those titles were designed to be misaligned. :P






Hehe. The last insert basically says, if all else fails, just find all of life's answers on my website!