Cards & Pockets / DIY Invitations

DansBride52911

Has anyone used Cards & Pockets?

I'm really close to designing my own stationery and having a printer do letterpress...around $650 for printing 125 invites, reception cards and reply cards. I want to use C&P for envelopes and things....but am really considering...do I REALLY need letterpress? I cold save a tonf of money printing my invites at home. Have any of you printed your own invites? Concerned about the size of the paper going through my printer.

Also, for those that went the DIY route, do you have photos to share?

TIA :-)

AmyRI

I almost bought all the supplies for our DIY invitations at Cards & Pockets, but it was actually cheaper to buy the kits from a craft store and dress them up. I spent $50 on 40 or 45 invitations, including everything but postage. I had a friend that ordered from Cards & Pockets, and it was all as ordered, no issues.

Letterpress was beautiful, but totally out of our budget. We printed on our home computer. With a little patience and the templates that came with the kit, and a couple of messed up invitations, we were able to print ours ourselves. Being the graphic designer you are, I'm sure yours will be better looking, but we made due with powerpoint to make the detailing match the pattern on our wedding rings.

The invitations where all white, so we printed in color to make it more appealing and lined the envelopes with wrapping paper (super cheap compared to specially ordered envelope liners, or thick envelopes).

I have scans of the invitation and inserts in my bio, and one picture from our photographer. I might even have an invitation at home that I could mail you if you want to see it in person.
http://amysweddingbio.webs.com/stationery.htm

eacosta1120

I was really close to doing my own invites but decided against it because I found someone who would do them for a really great price and that would save me the hassle of dealing with cutting cardstock and printer issues. Her name is Stefanie, her website is junemoonink.com and her email is junemoonink@gmail.com. I got her information from someone on th Newport boards and have seen her name pop up a few times since then.  I actually did the research on the paper-ordered it through both cardsandpockets.com and paperandmore.com and had it sent to her. We had pocketfolds with a double layer invite and 3 double sided inserts. We used the graphite pocketfolds and purple cardstock from paper and more and the pearl cardstock from cards and pockets-they are all metallic. She did the design, cutting, printing (printing addresses on envelopes as well), assemlbing for me for a ridiculously good price. Here are some photos that I just took of our invites. Oh the seal with Cinderella's Castle is because we got engaged there-we wwanted something Disney without it being in your face. She also did our menus, place cards, escort cards and programs too. My maid of honor also got her invites done by Stefanie and they were beautiful too.

RoyalOrient

I am going to DIY my invites. I would really love letter press but it isn't in the budget and I need half of my invites printed in a totally different lingo . So...I etsy it. I had a custom design pdf created for me. It  includes the invite, a blank version and a text version in English, RSVP, Event card and monogram. The total would have been $50 but I wanted an intricate design so that totaled $125. I also wanted to use metallic cardstock and text papers for my panel card invites. Here is the break down: cardstock is from Cards and Pocket and Text paper is from  Paper and More

-Pearl White Metallic Text Paper $20 for 100 sheets 0.28
- 5 X 7 Panel Metallic Card stock 0.30
-  A7 Envelopes 0.17
- RSVP Card $4/25 pc. (0.16 cent)
- RSVP Card envelope 0.12

Material Cost Per Invite: $1.03
Custom Design: $125

We have a laser printer with professional ink so I didn't add ink or printing cost. Most of our invites are hand delivered by us or our parents since that is customary in our culture and the rest will be shipped with  postage stamps so that is an additional cost.

Note: Shipping from Cards and Pockets is kinda pricey compared to other sites that charge a flate rate like Paper and More. I wait for their sale or go visit their store in MA. Might be worth the trip if you don't plan on ordering samples.

DansBride52911

you girls have been extremely helpful, insightful and detailed! thank you so much. i know i can do this myself and i KNOW i don't need to splurge on letterpress...400-500 bucks can totally be used on other things.

really, thank you for talking some sense into me :-) dan will appreciate it!

amy and emily - nice invites!

i'll update my blog when i figure it all out!

jlsimon56

I see you've already decided, but I wanted to throw my 2 cents in anyway....  We did splurge on letterpress for the invite, reply card, TY card, and reception card.  While I don't regret it, I do wish we'd only done the invite.  All those $$$ reply cards are sitting in a box in my house.  I don't want to toss them....but what am I really going to do with them??  I wish I'd printed those myself, skipped on the reception cards, and just used generic TY cards (lots of people gave us gifts before the wedding and I didn't want to use the coordinating letterpress TY cards b/c they had my married name on them.....).  We used Studio on Fire for our invites.  I designed all 4 parts in Illustrator and sent them the files.  I searched for months to get the best deal, and they were it!  Since then, I've heard of even better deals (I read about the on Weddingbee).  So it wouldn't be entirely out of the question, budget-wise.  We used a nice thick cotton paper that eliminated the need for a backing....I painted the edges myself....I ordered the envelopes separately from Crane and Paper Source.....and I ordered a custom address stamp that we used on the back flap of the big envelope as well as on the reply envelope. 

GL to you!