Crafty – The Wedding Edition

Are you crafty? Not in the cunning sense, in the “I am the MacGyver of scrap booking, I will turn these pages of cardstock into works of art and create paper roses with the leftovers” sense. I ask because I normally consider myself crafty, but not today. My craft has been killed by the world’s most complicated Save the Date announcements.

My wedding is now less than a year away, assuming I don’t die of blood loss from paper cuts between now and then. My mother and I have been stamping and scrapbooking for years. It’s our favorite shared hobby, and some of the best quality time I get to spend with my mom. When I got engaged I thought it was like hitting the craft jackpot. Do you know how many cute artistic things you can do for a wedding? Save the Date, Invitations, Favor boxes, Programs, Thank you cards…

We designed save the date cards based on cards we saw at our craft store (a seriously awesome place that offers card making classes as well as cool toys,) a fancy stationary store where a friend of mine works, and things we saw in magazines. The result was the world’s MOST COMPLICATED Save the Date cards.

We have a pocked card, custom cut and sealed on the sides with foam tape, into which the beribboned text and magnet go. The front of the card is decorated with a stamped image of a flower that we then hand highlighted with glitter and iridescent paint. That is placed onto of a scalloped piece of mint green paper cut using a large marvy punch, which is on top of a strip of handmade Japanese paper.

That is just one element of the decoration on the front.  Please try to imagine what the rest of it looks like and how complicated it is.

The design seemed great when we were doing ONE for fun. Now that we need 150 it is not as much fun.

But oh wow, they are so cute!

The first person who asks if I made them by hand and then tells me some “great place I know to get professional invitations done” is uninvited and then I’m going to smack them.

As I’m living in England now, and have come back to the US for a visit, I have a limited amount of time to make these Save the Date cards, as by the time I’m back in the US next I’ll need to send them.

I’m operating at wedding warp speed right now, which is why that’s what this blog is about. I have nothing writery to talk about. I should probably plug my upcoming release Calling the Wild but I have to stop typing now because my zillion paper cuts are making my fingers hurt.

Only a day ago my outlook was rosier, see my post at the Liquid Silver blog, which was written on Wednesday.

My wonderful fiancé, whom I’m talking to as I write this, has pointed out that my grumpiness may be due to the fact that it’s 5am and I haven’t gone to bed yet. He has a point, a good one. This is why I love this boy and am going to marry him, complicated Save the Date cards or not.

Lila Dubois

PS. Maybe I’ll just send everyone an email instead…