My STD!

Yay, I have an STD! (I seriously, need to stop using that acronym inappropriately.) After being inspired by brides on Weddingbee and several hesitant trips to Michael's, I'm done, and it's pretty darn cute.

Now, how did I get here...

Graphic Design
I used the same fonts that I’m using on our invitations (Baroque Script and Baskerville Old Face). The background design was created on Adobe Illustrator and is similar to the design I am using on our invitations. The background looked like this when I printed it:

The flourishes and snowflakes are actually slightly edited pieces of clip art from Microsoft Clip Gallery. I printed the Save the Dates on white cardstock with my personal printer. By rotating the design 90º I could print 2 cards on each sheet. Once I used my paper trimmer to cut the cards to size, I matted them on red cardstock. That’s pretty much it for the easy parts. Here’s where it gets interesting…

The Number Strings
To cut out all the numbers, I used a Silhouette die cutting machine. If you’re not familiar with the Silhouette, the Cricut also works. The main thing to remember is to size the numbers to be approximately 1.75” tall to fit easily in the envelope.

After printing all the numbers, I used a mini hole punch to punch the holes in the numbers for lacing the ribbon. I punched the holes as follows:

For the spacers, I used a snowflake paper punch and glitter cardstock from Die Cuts With a View to create the sparkly snowflakes. The snowflake paper punch was from Martha Stewart. I bought thin, silver ribbon at Michaels for about $2 a spool. I could have found a less expensive option, but I liked the metallic silver. I cut the ribbon into lengths of about 12”, which seemed to work well. I tied mini bows at each end. Then it was pretty much back to elementary school, lacing the ribbon through.

Here's the boy, even helping with this step:

It was important that each number pair had at least 2 holes so that they would lie flat and not get tangled in the envelope. I used a mini glue dot to attach each snowflake to the ribbon between the numbers and a tiny rhinestone was glued on each snowflake. In retrospect, I see now that I make things harder on myself. I could have laced a different spacer, which would have been faster and easier and I don’t know that the rhinestone added anything (except time) to the project.

The Mini Envelopes
I used the mini envelopes from the Paper Source. I opted for the chocolate color to coordinate with my red, blue, brown color scheme.

Put it all Together
I folded the number string, accordion style, with the last 2 numbers (10) on top. Then, I gently tucked the numbers into the envelope, letting the bow stick out just enough to be slightly beyond the flap. I used the circle graphic to hold the flap shut without sealing the envelope. I created the graphic, using Adobe Illustrator. Using a 1.5” paper punch, I punched out the circles and embellished them with paper punched hearts. I put adhesive on the left side of the circle to adhere it to the envelope:

I used an adhesive roller to stick the envelope to the cardstock. I printed the photos on glossy photo paper, using my personal printer and matted them on red cardstock. The matted photos were adhered to the top of the card.

That's it... Ta da (as they say in the biz)!