My First Completed DIY Project: Save the Date Postcards!

Okay, so this post isn't going to "wow" some of you more craft-savvy hive members. But darnit, I'm proud of myself! I successfully printed off 85 save the date postcards and sent the little boogers on their way. And only a few were "casualties" of my first official DIY wedding project. Not bad, eh? I bought my postcards from Etsy seller turnofthecenturies who offered to create a design with our information and print them for an extra $30. But I decided that I could manage on my own and save the extra money. Here's the blank canvas I had to transform:

I started off by visiting Dafont.com to find some unique (& free!) fonts that would suit the feel of the postcard. I ended up choosing "Scriptina" for the main font and "Champagne & Limousine" for the supplementary font (which was the closest I could get to resembling the font on the front of the card). I chose to do our names & website info in the same green from the front of the card and the rest of the type in black. As it turned out, my FMIL's printer wouldn't print in black even though the cartridge is full. She and I spent about an hour trying to figure out why it was doing this to no avail. I finally decided to use the 80% grey option and it worked perfectly to give a more "antiquish" look to the printing! I didn't use any fancy equipment for the STDs, just good ol' Microsoft Word.

The formatting took FOREVER. I'm no whiz with a computer, so it was just a lot of trial and error. I basically held the real postcard up to the screen of the computer while in 100% view mode to roughly measure the card (I didn't have any other measuring devices handy at the moment). It ended up being a great jumping off point! I printed my trial runs using scrap paper and then placed the paper on top of a postcard to see if it was aligned correctly. When I was sure I had it perfect, I fed the first card through (remembering to turn it upside down and aligned on the right side because that's the way it prints!).

But alas, my second obstacle awaited! Although the alignment was on point, the printer chose that moment to start running out of ink! It figures. So I had to abandon my efforts and resume the task at hand the next day (after saving the template of course!). When I finally restocked the ink (thanks to FMIL Lab beating me to the store after work and graciously buying replacement cartridges), I began hand-feeding the postcards into the printer 10 cards at a time. In no time at all I had these simple little beauties:

I then began the tedious task of hand-addressing each invite. Because many of the guests are couples, I ended up using way less than the total 100 postcards I ordered. But it's better to have some left over than not have enough! The extras came in handy for the "boo-boos" and as a keepsake for our wedding scrapbook!

I hand-delivered* as many of the postcards as possible to save on postage costs (most of them to local family and co-workers). Because my small town's post office apparently doesn't operate at times when people can actually stop in *cough*Saturday afternoon*cough*, I'm going to have to mail the rest of them this week. But at least postcards are cheap to mail at $.28 a piece! Woo-hoo! I just hope the post office has a semi-cute stamp for them since the only ones I saw online at that rate have a polar bear on them (not that polar bears aren't cute, but they're not exactly wedding material).

Cost Breakdown!

Postcards: $.85 x 100 = $85.00 (down from $2 each b/c I bought in bulk!)
Shipping to me: $5.00
Postage: $.28 x 50 = $14.00

Grand Total $104 \ 100 = $1.04 each
ACTUAL Total: $104 \ 85 = $1.22 each

*Yes, I said "hand"-something 3 times in this post. haha