Foxes and Bluebells

was the theme my son and his fiancee chose for their wedding invitations.  They visited us earlier in the month and it was a busy 2 weeks but I managed to get the majority of the invitations finished before he returned to Scotland and the rest finished and posted in the following week.

Here's how I did it

• I found a digital image of bluebells online, lined 4 of them up on an A4 page and printed on vellum suitable for laser printers, then cut the A4 sheet into 4 with my guillotine;
• I cut the card bases and front panels from a sheets of A4 card stock using my guillotine (58 eventually although it started as 44, then 48) - I made pencil marks on my guillotine so I could repeat the cuts without having to measure each time;
• Centred the vellum on the front panel so that the blue bells lined up with the bottom of the panel, folded it over and taped it to the back of the panel with double sided tape and added more double sided tape so it could be attached to the gold mat;
• Cut A4 sheets of gold paper into 3 as mats for the front panel, added the front panels and trimmed using the guillotine (definitely the trickiest stage since the paper would bend sometimes rather than cut cleanly)
• Attached the gold matted panels to the card bases;
• Cut loads of left and right facing foxes (Poppy Stamps Nordic Foxes) in gold and copper and the bases in white;
• Assembled the foxes and, coloured their noses and added them to the front panel;
• Designed the inserts with ceremony details and printed 3 to an A4 page on vellum (my clever husband worked out how I could create a QR code to add to the invitation for directions to the castle - there are plenty of companies willing to provide you with a QR code if you pay money for a subscription but you don't have to pay for this!  The guy who invented QR codes gave the technology away for free and the functionality is available for free through some browsers - QR codes are a great piece of functionality and certainly beats entering a complicated link to a website!
• Cut the vellum inserts to size (again I made pencil marks on the guillotine so I didn't have to keep measuring them) and added them with a dot of glue - I would have liked to add some Nordic flowers to hide the glue dots but alas ran out of time but the glue was barely noticeable;
• Found the most gorgeous "eucalyptus" envelopes with and gold lining on Amazon (yes, they were pricy but matched perfectly the bridesmaids dresses and the green in the bluebells image);
• Created an XL spreadsheet with the names and addresses we knew about and designed a Mail Merge document to create 8 mailing labels to an A4 page and printed these on normal printer paper;
• Added strips of wide double sided tape to the back of the mailing labels and cut with a deckle edged frame and added these to the envelopes (for the addresses we already had) at which point my son realised he need at least another 8 (I made another 12 just in case);
• Designed a separate "business" card with live streaming details (another QR code) for our relatives in Australia and other friends who can't make the journey to Scotland and was able to include a photo from the pre-wedding shoot that had just taken;
• Printed 8 of these cards to an A4 sheet of smooth white card stock, cut these with a deckled frame and went around the edges with gold gilding wax (so happy with how these turned out);
• Cut hearts from gold mirror card for envelope seals;
• Posted the ones my son didn't take back to Scotland with him because we either didn't have addresses yet or weren't for the UK anyway;
• Collapsed from a mix of exhaustion and relief and realised June had almost disappeared!

Invitation Fronts - half were copper right-facing with gold overlays and gold left-facing with copper overlays and the other half were reversed!

Vellum Insert and "business" card for live streaming and those gorgeous envelopes!

This was taken during the construction process.  These foxes were just added for the photo - I attached all the panels to the card bases first ... and all the vellum bluebell wraps before that!  Throughout the construction I kept left and right foxes separated - those saddles pieces were too easily confused and it helped keep track of the number!   If you look closely you can see the double sided tape added to the back of the panels (they're upside down at the back of the larger box) and the card bases at the front of the box.  Even though I used double sided tape, I did use a little wet glue to facilitate positioning.

My son was pretty impressed with the invitations and how quickly I was able to get them done - to be honest I didn't think I would be able to do it especially when he realised he needed extras!  And his friends were pretty impressed too - here are screen shots my son sent me of messages from one of his friends

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you find this useful should you ever have to produce a large number of invitations in a rush - I hope I never have to do this again at least not in such a short period of time!   Your visits and comments are always a joy and always appreciated!  And if you leave a comment, I’ll know you were here and should be able to find you!

Kate