What are you making?

sweetsounding

Finally posted our invites, designed on photoshop by my OH and the map designed by me, quite a headache but we got better at it as we went along.
Brown paper from Paperchase was £3.99, envelopes were £1.25 which we opened and lined with a map of a US state which we are visting on our honeymoon (atlas was £1 from a local used book shop) so £6.24 total for 20 invites. We did have to buy a colour lazer printer (£55) as our injet had packed up but we figure we may sell this so a bit of a bargain all round. Don't know why the map one is on its side lol good ole photobucket!




We are also going to be doing our centerpieces as flowers in tin cans.
We're turning Ikea's cheapest curtains into table cloths so in all for 8 table cloths we spent £14.
Doing our own sweet table and have 10 jars which were 40p each collected from the local charity shop over the past 10 months.
OH's sisters are doing the majority of our catering (for 50 guests) and we're making cupcakes.

johannalf88

Those are fantastic!!! Can't believe you did them yourself!

sweetsounding

johannalf88 wrote: »

Those are fantastic!!! Can't believe you did them yourself!

Thankyou, i actually really enjoyed doing the maps...might well set up some business on the side lol :beer:

Hadley1

Wow - the maps are great. Can I be cheeky and ask how you did them? :T

Scotsbride

making oragmi leaves http://www.origami-resource-center.com/leaf-necklace.html and tea light going to get OH to make some candles! also thinking of making bridal wreaths for table decs (like xmas ones that hang on the door only with more seasonal flowers

sweetsounding

Hadley1 wrote: »

Wow - the maps are great. Can I be cheeky and ask how you did them? :T

Well I opened the map of the area i wanted in google as a reference point and focused on the key points, so with the lough i freehand drew the line with the pen, everything else i kept as simple as possible with the shape tool (straight lines) and then searched on google for 'clip art train' 'clip art house' etc and shrunk the images down to size and erazed any white around the edges with the rubber tool. Clip art images in black and white worked best (even ones with sample etc writting over them can be surprisingly easy to transform with the eraser tool, i know there are a few copyright problems here but it was for personal use and i'm not selling them) bascially just play around a bit.

The railway track was made by drawing every single little line on it, time consuming but worth it in the end.
I used free fonts from http://www.dafont.com/ (LOVE their stuff soo much)

Just be patient, get some good wee images and think about local landmarks that make good focal points, the maypole on the high street looks nothing like that in real life, but as a graphic everyone knows what it is and it makes the map really jump out at you!

Oh and don't underestimate the paper/card you use, the paper here has a wonderful amount of colours in it as its recycled and they really add depth to the map/design so it looks a lot classier than if it were printed on plain white.

Hummm...just realised if you were talking about map envelopes then they were really simple. Tear the envelope so that is flat and you can see the flaps, cut the flaps along the side off and use this as your template. Buy an atlas and on each page draw around your envelope template and cut it out (I used a mini guillotine from poundland to get straight edges!) . Now carefully tear open all your envelopes, stick the maps on the inside with glue, put pressure on them and leave to dry whilst you do the same with the rest of your envelopes. Then once dry, use a ruler to fold back along the envelope folds and stick back together with glue! again apply pressure to help stick. Volia, easy peasy but its fiddly and takes ages but worth it in the end!