One Last Date With The Laser Cutter

To make our thank you cards!

I've written many times about the other things we made using the laser cutter at Mr. Cola's office, including rubber stamps, our cupcake tower, invitations and escort cards. And with only one wedding project left, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to use it a final time!

Also, I was only able to find one "Thank You" paper punch in stores for some reason, but I wanted something a little different than the all caps text with the star/flower shape on top.

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So instead I spent an afternoon at Mr. C's office, cutting out the words "thank you" in the font we used on all our other wedding paper products.

I didn't want to buy any more paper, since we still had some left over from other projects, so I used the same wood grain and green paper from LCI Paper, and the lavender paper from Paper and More than we used on our invites. It was easy enough to x-acto a single sheet in half, and use a lighter (aka cheapie bone folder) to fold it in half to make a card.

Pre-wedding, every trip I made to Michaels Crafts I would buy them out of the chocolate and lavender ribbon, so I ended up having enough of that left over to use on these cards as well. I just cut the ribbon to size, and glued the two layers together, and I was ready to assemble!

Which, compared to almost all our other DIY projects, was really easy. Just wrap the ribbon around the front half of the card, gluing it only on the front. Then glue the Thank You wood grain paper on top of that, add a paper flower to a corner, and done!

Well, almost done. I then printed out guest's fauxtobooth pictures on my printer, and made super quick photo upload cards. As you can see below, the reason I didn't glue the ribbon to the inside of the card was because I used it to hold the guest's photo (or one of the teaser pics of Mr. C and I, for older guests who didn't use the fauxtobooth) and the photo upload card inside the thank you card (we only included the photo card if we thought they were someone who might have brought a digital camera). We figured most of our guests would enjoy a photo of themselves looking silly in the fauxtobooth, rather than a photo of us.
(my handwriting sucks, so I'm only gonna show you the inside of a blank card)

I've found that writing the thank yous in batches of about 10 at a time every couple of nights helps with the hand cramping, and we've got about half of them out the door so far. With all this non-wedding-planning time on our hands, I hope to finish the rest within the next week or so.

So there you have it, our last (sniff! sniff!) wedding paper project. I'm so glad we waited until after the wedding to make these, because we sure wouldn't have had time to do much before. We did, however, send guests who sent gifts way in advance their thank you cards before the wedding, but they were plain dollar bin cards.

How soon after (or before!) your wedding do you plan on working on your thank you cards?

So. Tired. Of. Paper.

I never thought it would happen, but I am one burnt out Cola when it comes to our paper projects!

But I'm done now, I swear. I will not make even one more sign!

As you can tell, with these last few additions, I couldn't bring myself to make much effort making them look cute. Oh well, they'll serve their purpose!

A chair sign to save a seat for my grandfather that can't make it to the wedding because he's undergoing cancer treatment in Washington State:
Signs for both sides of our cupcake stand to remind people they can't have cupcakes until after the cutting:

A sign for in the window of the charter bus guests will be taking to the wedding from the hotel:
And a sign for in the bathroom at my grandfather's house, for the Sunday luncheon:

This is probably my 15th post on the various signage and paper elements I've made for our wedding and it will be the last, until we have to make thank you cards anyway! Hopefully after the wedding I'll be once again be itching to be creative....but until then, I'm so over paper!

Have you gotten burnt out on any of your wedding projects?

X-Acto Knife Happy: Escort Table Sign

The second x-acto knife intensive project I recently completed was a sign that will go on the escort card table, showing guests where to find their table on the deck.

If you remember from my crazy PhotoShop post, the layout of our reception will look very much like this, with the escort card table on the grass next to the two level deck:


At the suggestion of our DOC, I not only will number our tables in order of table placement (not in order of who's more important and sitting at that table), but I also made a diagram to put on the table, so people can look at their table assignment, then look at the diagram to see where to find their table.

Similar to my Bride and Groom chair signs, I started by printing the inverse of all my shapes out on the back of the paper (all pics were taken by me):


Then I spent an entire afternoon using my x-acto knife to cut everything out:


I then glued the table numbers together, using a layer of green paper and an offset second layer of brown (printed on the green paper). These numbers match my table numbers that I finally decided on, and will share soon:


Next, the wood grain paper strips got glued together in layers, to create "steps" on the deck, and the numbers got glued to purple punched flowers, which got glued to the round tables:


Then everything except the tables were glued to the wood "decks" on a 10" x 8" sheet of purple, to show how the tables will be arranged. (And yes, that is the gorgeous paper that Miss Apple Cider used! I spent months looking for the right color of wood grain paper to incorporate into our plans, even toying with the idea of using thin veneer, until I found the answer, on Weddingbee, of course!). For the tables I used double sided tape to attach them to the deck, just in case we need to later add or delete a table for some reason.


You can see the layers and texture a little better from the side:


I then put it in a frame that matches the framed sign with our favor table, and it's done!


Do you plan to make a sign showing how the tables are laid out at your reception, to help guests locate their assigned table?

X-Acto Knife Happy: Our Chair Signs

How do I wish I had a Cricut (or wasn't too lazy to go in to Mr. Cola's office to use the laser cutter!) after these projects I'll share over the next two days. The knuckle on my right index finger hates me after using the x-acto knife, it's still swollen and red!

First up, the Bride and Groom chair signs! Yet another unnecessary project, but it was fun to make (not for my knuckle), and I'm really digging working with our paper to tie everything together!

To start, I gathered my supplies, and printed out the inverse of "Bride" and "Groom" on the back of my butter cream cardstock (all pics in this post were taken by me):


Then painstakingly I cut out the words with my x-acto knife (I have no idea what I'll do with the cut out words, but am saving them for something now that I have them!):


Next I cut out green and purple paper to 5" x 8.5," punched the purple paper with the same punch that was used on our Paper Bag Luminaries, cut out and rounded the butter cream paper, and glued them all together:


I then punched four holes in each sign:


And thread two strings of ribbon through:



And then....well, that's it! Super easy (except the cutting out of the words)! This is what it will look like on the (nicer, less dirty) chairs at our reception, since we'll be facing our guests at the head table, the signs will only be seen when we're not in them.


Have you put your x-acto knife to good use with your wedding crafting?