Save The Date!!!

I know, I've been a bad blogger, yet again. I started this post almost 3 weeks ago and haven't had anytime to finish it. I have been completely overwhelmed with school, the GRE, grad school applications, and life... When it comes time to blog or sleep, most of the time I choose sleep! But I am happy to say that I got my first application in, and GRE studying and school is nearing the end, so now all I really need to concentrate on is finishing strong and then finding a job for 6 months. Anyone want to hire me? I'm really nice and smart, I promise! Haha. Anywho- finally, Our Save The Dates!

I have been working on them for forever! I saw the design that I wanted to do right after we were engaged, so I started collecting supplies from the very beginning! I've talked some about Gocco, which is what I used to print them. A Gocco is basically a home screen printing machine, and it's pretty darn awesome! I ordered mine from a dealer in Japan, because they aren't sold in the US anymore. Actually, now RISO (the company that makes them) has discontinued them, so it's really difficult to track down supplies now! I stocked up, so I should be good to go to do all our invitations and other paper goods. I purchased the cards from The White Aisle, a letterpress company that was having a moving sale, and the envelopes from the always fabulous Paper Source.

After flashing a screen- all inked up and ready to go! I created a template to help me line up the image on the card each time.
See the tissue? Well, I forgot to use ink block foam (this foam that keeps the ink in one place) so I was getting ink everywhere. Oops!
Drying the envelopes, before I had drying racks!

It's really easy to use- first, you design the image that you want to print (I used Microsoft Publisher), print it out, take it to Kinko's to photocopy it (the print needs to have carbon based ink), and then flash the screen, using these crazy carcinogen-containing flashbulbs that have a warning on them to wash your hands after all uses. Eek! Once you flash the screen, the image that I designed is now burned onto a mesh screen. Apply ink, and print away! You can essentially do whatever you want, including photos, but text and basic clip art images work the best. You can also do as many layers of color as you want, but you can't print mulitple overlapping colors at one time.

Because you can only print a 4"x6" space at one time, I did our Save the Dates in 4 passes- 1 for the front text, 1 for each side design, and 1 for the back text. After we finished those passes, they had to dry for about a day, and then we stuck adhesive-backed rhinestones on them.

The Front (sorry for the crooked scan)
The back (I didn't get a good scanned copy)

The Envelope with beautiful calligraphy by Michele Clark

See where it says "Stick Us On Your Fridge"? We really wanted to do a magnet as well, so we used one of our engagement pictures taken by the fabulous Daniel Kiyoi, created a design in Publisher, and sent it off to Vistaprint.com. In about 7 business days we had our magnets!
We had cards spread out over the entire living room! Originally, I didn't think we needed any type of drying rack- boy, was I wrong! So we bought 10 20-disk CD racks at Ikea this summer, and I will be using them when we do our invitations and programs.

About a quarter of the cards, before I had drying racks... I had to lock Maverick out of the room.

I already used them for our Thank You cards that I made the other day, and it was so great! I didn't have to worry about anyone stepping on anything, or Maverick deciding that Thank You cards looked like great play toys. I even read about a girl who had printed her invitations, gone out to dinner, and came back to find that her Rumba vaccum had turned on (like it was programmed to do) and ruined all her invitations! Double eek!

We've gotten lots of nice comments about our Save the Dates, so I am happy! You can't really see it in the scanned photo, but the ink is nice and sparkly. Love it! Using a gocco is a pretty easy process, but it is easy to waste blubs and screens if you don't flash the print correctly. Unfortunately they are 1-use only, so I'm trying as best I can not to waste anything! I was a little intimidated at the beginning, but I love it now. It is an expensive investment, but still less expensive than getting letterpressed invitations or something similar. And it's fully handmade!

I'm already working on our invitation design, and I can't wait to gocco that suite!