Wanna an Invite to a Party?

Before we left town for the holidays we finished our DIY invitations to the Fiesta. This was a big goal of mine because I knew the next few months would be full of small projects and I didn't want this big one to be drawn out and up all hours of the night addressing them. The goal with the invites was to translate the vibe of our reception - fun and festive with lots of color.
I have been supper jealous of all of the great Gocco stationary projects I have seen out there in the blogoshpere. But this wasn't feasable. Both becasue of the cost and that they are no longer making some of the supplies :(. But I think I made good use of our home laser printer and colored card stock. I used several different edge punches (via Martha of course) to make little papel picado banners and the address labels. These patterns appear all throughout the reception decor.
I wanted to have a pocketfold design of some sort but wanted to keep the amount of paper per invitation down. It seems that some pocketfolds out there are the size of a book. Lots of paper and postage expenses with those. So instead of a pocketfold ours is more of just an invite with a small pocket on the back for the inserts. Also in an attempt to Go Green without Spending Green we asked that people RSVP via our website rather than including a reply card.

The map printed on the back of the Directions insert is my special pride and joy of this project. I really wanted a custom map by Laura Hooper Calligraphy or Couture Maps by Stephanie Barba. I wanted one so bad I was even considering cutting my dress budget down to dollars to make it happen. Then I realized that "Hey, I draw maps and figures all day long. I can do this." I don't make hand drawn maps and couldn't free hand anything like these ladies but I do have some mad skills using Adobe Illustrator. I will have a detailed DIY post later on how I designed the map but for now check out this post from Elizabeth Anne Designs.

Now that they are all done we can begin the tedious task of addressing them. In the beginning I had high hopes of learning calligraphy. Well as with several other projects - that had to go. So instead we are using our trusty laser printer and a package of full sheet labels cut down to size. We designed them so they wrap around the back of the envelope with our return address on the back and we are using the same font as the rest of the stationary (Merceed). Matt is getting in on the action and printing and punching them out. The plan is to print a sheet of labels a day and they should be all good to go for mailing in no time.